MacBook Pro 15" Retina (Mid 2012-Early 2013) Right Fan

Mein Problem

The right fan began to "whine" after a 1 inch drop onto a desk. The noise was annoying especially in a quiet room.

Meine Reparatur

The repair was easy. I took my time as not to damage the delicate connectors. In all it took about 25 minutes. I followed the instructions on Ifixit and the repair went fine.

Mein Rat

My Mac Book Pro is up and running again although the fan I replaced does make some noise as compared to the Apple OEM left fan. It is not noticeable unless you hold your ear to it. Be careful not to strip the small case screws and be very gentle with the Airport antenna connectors as well as the fan power cable connector.

Mein Problem

Computer kept sounding like someone had installed a small motorcycle engine in it. Sounded like it was coming from the right side. I tried cleaning it out with an air compressor but that didn't work.

Meine Reparatur

It went well. I had opened the computer before so I knew what I had to remove. The only problem I had was replacing what I believe are the three airport wires. To open the laptop, I bought a RadioShack 58-Piece Precision Screwdriver Set (Catalog #: 6400243) and used one of the star-shaped bits. Seemed to work OK.

Mein Rat

Be sure to make sure the 3 wires are reattached before closing it up, they can be a bit difficult to reconnect. You really need to push them down in the right way. If I remember, the wires should be in order, with the top wire going to the rightmost plug while the bottom goes to the leftmost.

Mein Problem

Already extremely late for an event in which I needed to download a document to use my Macbook Pro Retina 15 Mid 2012 suddenly decided to test my patience and froze itself. Out of time and my laptop decides to freeze in the process of downloading the document which I needed sent me off the edge and in a fit of frustration I pounded on the right side of my laptop onto of the speaker grill. There and then I witnessed the error of my ways as my computer let off a loud whine followed by a constant grate like whir noise. My fan was damaged though it worked as normal spooling up and cooling my laptop the constant whine and groaning made it a nuisance especially considering I used my laptop for University and studying among peers in the library caused a stir especially when I began heavy multitasking and the fans spooled up even louder thus prompting my decision to invest in a replacement.

Meine Reparatur

The repair is generally easy and very straight forward. There is a guide on this site written especially for the replacement of the right side fanned it was beautifully done. I am not one with much experience in the field of repair but the resources offered aided me to undertake a success smooth repair. I bought the required fan and tools of iFixit however I didn't option for the spudger just the T5 Torx and the P5 Pentalobe screwdrivers were enough to suffice. The fan replacement is an OEM as it is the same exact fan Apple used iFixit provides as a replacement by Delta Electronics Inc.

Mein Rat

My advice would be pay attention to where you took out the screws as some screws are off varying sizes and you wouldn't want to mix them. Apart from just changing the fan take some time to clean out any excess dust that may have been gathered there. After two and a half years being sealed I had considerable dust mites gathered.I used a soft toothbrush and my breath to blow and brush out dust. For the role of the spudger I found my nails and a tweezer as a suitable replacement you may however find otherwise . Be very careful when removing the airport and camera cables. The 3 small cables are to lift off while the larger neighboring once is meant to slide out of the socket then pull up, you can make reference to this in step 7 to step 8 of the guide. The airport card should slide out of the socket first as well and then lifted off. When putting back everything together it was fairly simple then only tiresome part I took some time on was getting the 3 small cables of the airport and camera module to stick back on. I used a tweezer and some patience fiddling around to get it to tack back onto its groove. Lastly done not over tighten screws especially the ones locking the fan in place. Generally it isn't a difficult repair and completion time should be averaged within a half hour.

Mein Problem

The right fan of our Mac was making an awful noise the whole time, so my son and me, we wanted to get the Mac being quite again!

Meine Reparatur

Thanks to the great manual from ifxit, my son, 12 years old, could replace the right fan, and I was just making sure he was really following the tasks step by step :-)

And we were happy the delivery of the new fan was very quick, it took only 3 days from the US to Switzerland!

Mein Rat

Use cups for each type of screws, see our first photo. And use a tape to mark the three disconnected cables, to connect them at the right position again, see our second photo.

Mein Problem

The right fan sounded like a jet airplane was fixin to take off from my desk. Occasionally it sounded like someone dropped a box of loose screws in that jet engine.

Meine Reparatur

The repair went well. The online walkthrough at iFixit was invaluable in knowing some of the little things about different connectors and necessary intermediate steps.

I wasn't too happy with the shipping. The new fan arrived in an envelope and had been squished on one side. I got it straightened out and hoped for the best.

Mein Rat

The repair process when smoothly. The screws and connectors you remove can be very small. Make sure you have a work area without any breezes or moving air.

Also, some of the very small screws are subtly different in size. The screws that hold the back on the laptop are all the same head, but VERY slightly different in length. Same goes for the screws that hold the fan in. Be sure you keep track of which screw came from which hole.