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I recently have been hearing a low buzzing/ticking coming from the fans in the keyboard portion of my surface book 2. I’m assuming it’s from dust or hair(beard) that somehow managed to find its way around the fan. is it okay to blow compressed air in there? And if so which part is safe to do so?
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The Surface Book isn’t easy to get apart - and neither is the keyboard base. In this case it makes sense why you’d want to use canned air. However, if you can take it apart you’ll get more done by taking the display off and directly blowing the fan off, and then clearing out the vents. The issue is canned air does NOT get to the fan well in an assembled computer, so you still need to tear the machine down anyway. The dust you missed on the fan will cause the fan to run slow, and the computer will still run hotter then if you just did it right - unless you have a system where the fan is first in the chain.
The ideal way to do it is to take the display off and clean the fans with a brush if possible. That said, it looks like the fins on the heatsink are buried in these machines with reverse-installed fans. If this is beyond you, get a can of compressed air or an airless dust blower. BEWARE: Figure out if this is "gapping" or "standard" paste if you remove the heatsink; these generally use "gapping" paste.
For the performance base (which is the only one with a fan - the IGP edition is fanless); in order to open it you need to heat up the strong tape holding it together. In addition to this, you need a pry tool that will not bend the aluminum, suction cups help. Refer to the Surface Book 2 teardown video to see how to do it. The fins are accessible once the cover is off, unlike the tablet.
I would not mess with it under warranty, but if you have no choice it’s doable - but it’s not easy.
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wow thanks! but the fans I'm talking about are in the base of the surface book 2 where the graphics card is. is that possible to get to? Honestly, i bought the warranty just in case of things happen, but I'm unable to so do since Microsoft Stores are currently closed.
@theed1 I thought you were talking about the tablet because the performance base is so rare. The base is held together with high strength double sided tape.
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Although it can be done, it is extremely difficult. I work as a repair technician. We recently had to “buy out" a Surface Book since it had liquid damage and the customer had purchased accidental damage protection through our store. Since I have one of these myself and had been considering using liquid metal, I decided to grab it for practice. (They get destroyed anyways when bought out.) If you don't have experience I wouldn't recommend trying it. Normally I'm all over all kinds of DIY repairs. But not on this device. The screen took me about 3 and a half hours to take apart. The base took me about 1. I did bend the base cover just slightly since I does through this portion. Keep in mind that I work on computers on a daily basis and have done thousands of repairs in the past. Surface devices are very unique in difficulty to repair. Also, the Surface Book 2 does have issues with subtle coil whine, so it is a possibility that the noise you're hearing is actually coil whine as opposed to being caused by dust. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot that can be done about coil whine. And if that's the case, you'd be risking taking it apart for nothing. My suggestion would be to stay away from any repairs unless you can afford to lose it. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying that there's a very high chance of damaging it. So be prepared to purchase a new device just in case.
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