Like the title says you cant remove the fan and clean out the dust which causes the laptop to overheat without removing the heatpipe and cleaning and reapplying the thermal paste to it. It only a small modification on Frameworks part and it would make maintenance a lot easier.
hopefully this is read and reviewed otherwise a really good laptop!
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Am just running into this now too. Expected this to be a simple maintenance job without requiring me to go out and buy anything new. Am kinda shocked just the fan can’t be taken out separately for de-dusting without having to take out and re-paste the entire heat sink! I’m hearing the fan clatter, presumably because a hair or something got caught inside it, but it’s not a trivial fix for a modular laptop?!
13 inch Framework from the Intel 12th Gen series, not replaced any parts yet and trying to do my first bit of maintenance in ~2 years.
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A bit hidden but I made a “mini-guide”
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I had been having overheating issues for a while (AMD 7040). I decided to replace the thermal paste (which I had applied a couple of weeks earlier) with PTM7950. That only helped a little. Then I discovered that my fan was still full of thick lint despite having used compressed air earlier to clean it. I was bummed that I now had to remove the heatsink again and waste the PTM I had just applied. After some tinkering, it turned out to be possible to clean the fan without removing the whole assembly. It’s a bit finicky, but there is a small gap between the fan and the heatsink where most of the debris collects. With needle-nose tweezers and a very thin needle I managed to clean out most of it (Also, I do not recommend this, but I kept the fan running at 70% while cleaning, which helped keep the debris pressed against the fins). Now it runs significantly cooler.
TL;DR: It’s possible to clean the fan without removing the whole assembly via the small gap between the fan and the heatsink using needle‑nose tweezers and a thin needle.