Hi all. I’ve been happily using my 11th Gen Intel 13inch happily for the past few years. Unfortunately, I noticed my laptop has been extremely sluggish and hot today. I got a shocked as I opened up the cover and noticed the fan has melted, and the bottom of the keyboard shows sign of heat damage.
This was a little scary as I could imagine my laptop catching fire if I left it unattended. Has this issue happened before? And what will be the cheapest way for me the fix this problem?
Electronics enclosures are required to have fire retardants incorporated in. Does make it harder to start.
Hi @Proton1,
Nothing where the short occurred is combustible. Even if the processor heated up, it has a temp sensor that throttles it and as a last resort thermal cutoff that shuts the machine down. Even if you tried to restart it the same thing would happen and it would shut itself down if the system overheated. The fan is easily replaceable following the guide @MJ1 linked. 
If the keyboard is working fine; it is just cosmetic damage that will never be seen. Otherwise, a replacement keyboard can be ordered with the replacement fan. This is where the Framework design really shines; everything is repairable/replaceable and easy enough for almost every user to do themselves. 
Thank you all for the helpful replies. As suggested, I’ve just ordered the heatsink fan part.
Are there any underlying causes for this failure? It’s the first time I’ve experienced fan failure in all the laptops I’ve historically used.
Looks like the motor driver in the fan decided to go out in a blaze of glory.
Never seen that on a fan before, they usually just stop working.
I’d at least put some tape on the hole in the keyboard foil to prevent dust and stuff getting in there but if it still works with no Issues I’d keep using it.
Location wise it was likely the motor controller of the fan (pc fans are actually brushless ac fans so you need a controller for it to make it spin using dc), while I have never seen one fail open like that a motor controller can fail short and then basically heat up until something gives, in this case likely the red fan wire burning out/de-soldering itself here.
Did you ever blow that fan out with compressed air? over-spinning a pc fan can put quite a lot of stress on the motor controller which could have damaged it enough to cause that later on. Could also just be bad luck though.
The good news is you pan port is likely undamaged and there are likely no fuses blown (the state of red wire on the fan indicates it got power until it stopped by itself) so a replacement fan probably will just work.
