e5520: To replace fan, first TAKE ENTIRE PC APART

Just venting...

My hobby is to buy old laptops on eBay and fix them up; I've been doing it for years. I have around 20 laptops sitting in this room right now, all fixed up.

So I bought a cheap Latitude e5520. (I've always liked Latitudes. I have an e6510 and an e6500 that are great. I've given away a bunch of other Latitudes that are also great). The fan is a little whiny, so I thought I'd replace it. The problem is that to replace the fan one must first TAKE APART THE ENTIRE PC. (Don't believe me? Check out page 77 of the manual: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/latitude-e5520/manuals).

So maybe this is just bad engineering from Dell all of a sudden? No--the fan is in its usual position and it should be easy to replace by removing the bottom panels. But it is clear that the e5520 was DELIBERATELY engineered to make the fan difficult to replace, by putting unnecessary bits of plastic frame that block access to the fan's screw holes.

Fujitsu has also done this--made it deliberately difficult to replace the fan. In the 13" Fujitsu form factor (T5010 and T900) it was formerly very easy to replace the fan from the bottom. Now (T901 and later) one must take apart the whole PC.

 

Man.. I really wish I had read this earlier. I hope you didn't go and take apart the entire computer. You can actually get at the fan very easily by taking off two of the three bottom panels on this notebook. It's probably too late to help you out but by posting this I hope I can help out whoever does a search in the future. The E5520 is actually still a very decent machine if you can get one for cheap. I got one for almost nothing and put in a quad-core i7 processor, I ended up putting in a new fan while I was at it because I wanted to make sure it ran cool.
For anyone who does a search:
1) Take off the main (middle) bottom panel
2) Take off the secondary bottom panel ( the one on the right hand side when the laptop is flipped over ).
3) Take out fan by undoing the screws.