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My Retina MacBook (Mid-2012, i7, 256, 8GB, 650mb hard disk drive) is making a loud fan noise. Left fan is “OK” at 3100rpm when idle but the right fan us loud even at 2700rpm. I compare it to friend’s Retina MacBook (Late 2014), his laptop sounds great and can’t even hear the fan when idle.

So:

  • Could I replace my fans with fans from a new Retina MacBook?

  • Or should I replace my old fans, with brand new ones specifically for my model?

  • Or should I disassemble my Retina MacBook and lubricate old fans ?

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I don’t think that replacing the fans with fans from another model of MacBook is an option. And replacing the existing fans in your machine with newer fans entirely is a bit radical and risky. Ditto with “lubricating” the fans you already have; typically they would need graphite to be “lubed” but unless you know what you are doing you would mostly likely risk causing more damage in your actions than anything else.

That said there is a relatively simple, low risk thing you can do to attempt to minimize noise: Clean dust out of the fans if possible. In my experience dust accumulation is the number one cause of noise—and even failure—of computer fans.

Looking at this teardown of the model I believe you have on iFixt, it seems like once you open the bottom panel you are basically in as far as you need to be to clean the fans; see picture below.

So if you are comfortable opening up the case like this, then I would recommend getting a can of compressed air and carefully blow away the dust in and around the fans to see if that helps. But anything past that is really too risky if you ask me.

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