Finding the fans in a Dell Optiplex small-form PC

Overview

Need to clean, replace, or troubleshoot the fans in your Dell Optiplex small-form factor computer? This video shows you exactly where all three fans are located in the Optiplex 380, 745, 755, and 780 models, and how to access them safely. Perfect for DIY PC maintenance and repair.

Key Moments

• Hard drive fan location: Remove two tabs to lift the hard drive cage
• Checking the hard drive fan connection: Located on motherboard with clip connector
• Accessing the CPU fan: Remove CD/DVD drive and lift CPU cooler assembly
• Power supply fan: Built into the PSU unit, requires opening power supply
• Reassembly tips: Be careful when pivoting the CPU cooler back into place

Full Transcript (Edited)

Hey YouTube, in this video I’m going to show you a little bit more about the Optiplex 380, 755, or 745 series of computers—the small form factor ones. I’m going to show you where the cooling fans are located. One of them is a hard drive cooler, the other one is the system fan, and then there’s the power supply fan.

For the hard drive fan, you have to press these two tabs, lift up the hard drive, and it comes off. You can just simply move it over like this. As you can see, this little fan right here has this wire coming down and it’s connected to the motherboard right here. You can make sure that it’s properly seated. It has a clip on the side, so as you can see, it has a little clip and it goes into that socket. Make sure it’s nice and tight in there. When you turn on the computer and put in some power, that fan spins—that’s the hard drive fan.

The other fan is underneath this shroud right here. To get to the CPU cooler, we have to take off the CD-ROM. Move it out of the way. So you lift up this tab and then you push that in, and then that lifts out of the way just like that. This has two screws. I don’t recommend you remove this unless you hear noises or something, because this will lift up the thermal paste. But you take these two screws off, and then this pivots over like that and comes off. There’s the other fan, and that one is connected to this plug right here.

The last one is not really serviceable. In order to take this one out, you would basically push this clip like that, and then that whole unit, that whole assembly, comes out. Then you can remove the fan from the front, but I’m not going to do that.

The last one, as I was saying, is the fan inside the power supply. In order to replace that fan, you’d have to open up the power supply, and that’s it. Those are the three fans inside these little Optiplexes. Two of them are fairly straightforward to get to. Obviously the power supply fan is very custom, and this one is more standard.

That’s it. Hope that was helpful!