Fan Connector Broken

[Ahaan Mohan]

Hello good people,
I've done something immensely stupid: I broke part of the fan port on my laptop's motherboard (while repasting it). For the sake of clarity, when I say port, I refer to the female end on the motherboard as opposed to the male part attached to the four wires coming from my fan. Anyhow, part of the white plastic wall forming the casing of the port seems to have been chipped off and, as a result, my fan isn't working anymore (possibly because the connection isn't tight). Consequently, the cores have begun reaching 90 odd degrees on idle and my laptop has become quite unusable. I spoke to Dell and was informed that I'd have to cough up an exorbitantly high amount of money to replace the motherboard (my laptop is three and a half years old and isn't covered under their warranty anymore). As replacing the motherboard isn't an option (financial constraints), I was wondering if I could a. Manually replace the port myself (I saw some soldering tips online though I've never really soldered anything before) or b. Somehow rewire it to run off of a USB port.

In case this is relevant, I have an Alienware M14x R2 (Griefers: spare me the FAIlienware jibes, I've regretted buying this laptop for years now - obsequiously prostrates before the PC God).

Any advice in this regard would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[jsmithepa]

Well you need to take it somewhere who has a fine-tip soldering iron, the actual jobs is... trivial. If you live in a third world country I bet there is a corner electronic shop. You are in the U.S., take a picture of it, take it to the GeekSquad guys, or Fry's electronic and ask them if you they could fixed-solder the fan cable in place, how much, and you understand the work won't be guaranteed, and you won't hold them responsible if it gets damaged (scary, but it should be OK, and they won't do it without you releasing them from liability because you are asking them to do something out of ordinary)

What I mean by fixed-solder is, you are unlikely to find such a small connector, so just use a long cable and solder the ends directly to the motherboard, you won't be able to unplug it, but the long cable will allow you to remove the cover in the future if necessary