Dell Fan Issue

Have you tried swapping them around to prove the fan is faulty then buy another one and replace it?

You cant swap the fans on these switches.

That's odd since people sell the fans on eBay. Can you let me know the serial number so I can look up the parts on Dell's website?

Its a Dell PowerConnect 3448P

I see what you mean. Dell don't list individual parts and so they say the fans can't be replaced. Meanwhile since they are on eBay they must be replaceable or the sellers would have horrendous feedback.

I found this and it's absolutely laughable:

https://www.dell.com/community/Networking-General/3448p-fan-replacement/td-p/3990220

"The labor for repairing on site is more expensive than the cost of a replacement switch."

So Dell say the fans can't be replaced because the cost of sending an engineer to site to replace a fan is more than the switch is worth. Financially that makes sense, it's a cheap switch and although the fans only cost about $10 plus $10 shipping once you add half an hour to take it apart to change the fan plus several hours driving to site and back it's cheaper to buy a new switch.

Bear in mind I am a hardware engineer so ripping the screws out to change a fan is trivial to me but I'm not a network engineer so swapping a whole switch out is harder as I don't know what a root bridge is,

Thanks for your help andy!