I ended up usng a 1mm thick pad for the northbridge and just bending + article silver for the GPU. This cools the GPU DRASTICALLY better than the factory solution - even under stress testing it doesn't get over 84C, but because of how much more heat the heat sink is taking away from the GPU, the CPU cooling isn't quite as good. What's a safe temp for the T7400? The CPU will get up into the low 90C under stress. I guess at some point I'll get the fan assembly that is for the core 2 duo, but in the mean time I want to make sure I'm not harming anything.

EDIT: turned out there was a glitch wit Rescue and Recovery causing launcheg.exe to constantly use 50-60% of the CPU, adding considerably to the temps. I unchecked the "Warn me when backups exceed ___ gb" box and all seems to be well now.

What is the exact distance between the top layer of GPU chip and the heatsink over gpu AFTER removal of thermal pad? If I would like to assure proper fitting the heatsink over CPU and GPU - what thickness of copper tin/plate/sheet is needed? Should I use the same thickness to fill the gap over northbridge or some other?
I have flipped and rotated the image to make heatsink match locations of chips:


the heatsink plate seems to be lowered over northbridge, so dependant on the manufacturing process precision the distance between plate over GPU might differ from that over NB, that's probably why they used thermal pads instead of just thermal grease ...

Having done what you are considering doing, I'd say not to worry. A 1cm thick spacer will be very nearly the correct thickness, and the heat pipe on the cooling fan is flexible enough to bend up or down as needed, without difficulty. The spring clip will apply the proper force on the heat pipe to bend it to the desired fit. And, if you retain the thermal pad to cool the Northbridge chip, it will conform to the chip and take up any slack one way or the other. By the way, although I worry about bending the heat pipe too much, some have had good luck simply removing the GPU thermal pad altogether and bending the heat pipe so that it makes direct contact with the GPU. I've tried that, too, and it works, but I worried about bending it so much and went with the metal spacer instead.

I seriously would not advise using anything that thick.

Best range between 0.7mm - 1.6mm for the Copper Shim, better still to try measuring the gap, the thinner the better heat transfers.

Many modern GPUs require more heat transfer/dispersion than what Thermal pads can provide, hence they over-heat. What many people do is to replace the Thermal pads with a thin piece of Copper Shim (eBay search Copper Shim results with many variable thickness Listings). Best to use Arctic Silver 5 because the viscosity is more suitable in helping the shim to stay in place.

Link for guide for this Copper Mod, although it's for a different laptop, the basics are same same:- http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/268081-dell-xps-m1330-nvidia-geforce-8400m-gs-copper-mod.html

Also contrary to popular believe, do NOT spread the Thermal paste with a spatula/credit card etcetera, they create a surface which will trap air, juts use a small blob.

For optimised Thermal Paste application:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyXLu1Ms-q4

My apology for been unable to use the YouTube Embeded Code so you can stay within this web-page.

I'm pretty sure it was a typo and what he meant is a 1mm piece of copper. I'd put a 1mm piece of copper on the gpu and leave the factory goop on the northbridge.

As far as the blob vs spreading method, I know a guy who makes several hundred thousands of dollars a year using his knowledge in a relavent field of physics and he says to spread it so....

Sorry to bump an old thread, but where can you buy the cooling fan arrangement as a spare?

The fan in mine is making telltale noises of early failure and I want to replace it before it goes south

Marf: - Ebay seems to be a good place to check-out - (Providing you have access to an ebay account of course) -

Thanks P2P, I hadnt checked eBay as I'd figured it would be an IBM only FRU.

Thanks for the link

don't use a bronze shim (awful thermal conductivity) or a penny coin (97.5% zinc, also poor thermal conductivity) but rather, either use pure copper (great thermal conductivity) or a US dime coin sanded flat (a dime is almost 92% copper)

PS - for large areas, a US quarter coin is the same metallic composition as a dime.

I need to pick up a replacement fan for my T60. Is there a particular seller that forum members would recommend?

Some of the ads don't mention thermal paste - so should I assume they do not include it?

PASTE:
I would say that the choice of which thermal paste you use is at least as important as which fan you use.

don't fool around with any thermal paste besides Arctic Silver 5 - I have seen 20 degree swings due to using cheaper thermal paste. I have fixed many overheating laptops by just replacing cheap thermal paste with Arctic Silver 5.

it might seem pricey at 9.95 to your door, but it is the best money you will ever spend, and the little tube will last forever,

you get it here

~~~~~~~~~

FANS:
as far as fans, stick with the genuine T60 original fan, search ebay using correct FRU number, find a seller with great feedback, or just use the marketplace at thinkpads.com here

Thermal Effects has remanufactured T60 complete fan/heatpipe/heatsink assemblies, they do a good job, but they are not cheap, but they are reasonable, you can see their stuff here

Bill, thanks for the tip on the thermal paste. Just ordered some from NewEgg.

Hi All,
Sorry to revive an old thread, for the first time, I am about to change my 14.1' T60P-2007-84U fan and I have searched the forum for relevant posts and I would like to summarize the information spreads accross thread and add a couple of questions of my own please add/correct me if there are missing items/mistakes.

1. Items:
1.1 [optional] Replacement Fan / Fan+Heatsink Assembly , for my model 41v9932 or 41W6407 they are interchangeable.
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid ... Categories

1.2 [optional] Replacement Thermal Pads OR Copper Shim / sheet cut to shape ~ 0.7mm-1.6mm in thick applicable to
GPU and NorthBridge.

1.3 Thermal Grease for CPU.

1.4 Lint-free cloth or Tissue.

1.5 Isopropyl Alcohol (rubbing alcohol ) used to clean CPU and HeatSink contact off before applying thermal grease.

1.6 [optional] mineral oil lubricant e.g singer sewing machine oil, used for lubricating the FAN in the case you only
want to do maintenance.

2. Procedure:
2.1 to get to the fan follow directions on
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... 844_04.pdf

2.2 Clean the CPU and HeatSink Contact with LintFree cloth / tissue with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol).

2.3 Apply the thermal grease to CPU.

2.4 [optional?] replace the thremal pads with a new pad or the copper shim / sheet. if replacing with copper, apply thermal grease to both sides of the copper.

2.5 re-assemble the fan back onto the laptop.

question:

on 1.2 should the copper sheet be cut to follow the shape of the thermal pads or only the GPU?

on 1.6 I have blade oil for my haircut kit wondering if I can use this for lubricating the shaft of the fan?

on 2.1 are the thermal pad sticky when being removed ? I am afraid it might tear , How do i remove them
with out tearing ? [ done pad did not tear, but still need replacing , accidentaly touched table surface]

on 2.3 when applying the thermal greas is it necessary to cover the whole surface area of the cpu ?
because after watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyXLu1Ms-q4 spreading with CC
introduce air pockets and with X , Line , Blob there are minimal airpockets but does not cover
the whole surface area.

Once I have cleaned the fan out, lubricate it, then any way to test it, I am thinking of a bread-board+adaptor setup
anybody know how I can get the specs for the fan, voltage, current requirement.

Thank you in advance.

ennma

At one stage I was a HAM operator and had to deal with 20 - 30 year old fans in transceivers being seized up because the previous owner used the wrong lubricant.

Many have commented that TriFLow superior has had the best results with the longest periods between re-application. I would not use anything else.

http://www.triflowlubricants.com/Tri-Fl ... icant.html

How about using heatsink - a dab of Artic Silver thermal expoxy - thick aluminium foil (cut larger than contact area with GPU) - GPU, attch and let it harden (DON't apply power! - am afraid of short if applying too much thermal expoxy), remove again, if present: remove overhanging thicker area of aluminium foil / artic expoxy and then use a dab of the normal Artic Silver 5 between aluminium foil and GPU when fastening. Would this be better than the thermal pad?

I have finally done copper-shim (thickness .8mm, ca .032'') mod. Not standard though. The shim I used was cut in shape to match entire plate contacting GPU and northbridge. I had exactly the same heatsink model as on picture above. The plate I used had to be bent, since the northbridge part is about 0.1 mm lower than GPU.
I have used Arctic Silver 5 for the contact surface between heatsink and copper shim I made.To the CPU and GPU I have applied diamond paste (ca 20% better than Arctic Silver 5). I put the old thermal pad on northbridge, but squeezed it a bit more

The temperature range between GPU (x1300) and CPU(T2500) dropped to 6-7 C. I have installed TPFanControl. The temperatures at text editing and web browsing (Firefox, flashblock and Noscript) with fan turned off manually reach 68-71C at GPU and 63-66C at CPU. I wonder should I use fan at all in such case ... at idle I stand at 63C GPU/ 56C CPU.
I have modified tpfancontrol ini to set


My knowledge on cpu chpis and operating temperatures says that these are most fragile to temperature changes - and operating temp even up to 70C is pretty OK as long as it remains stable. I have decided to allow range 66-71 to make use of passive heat dissipation (the higher difference between temperature in the room and the heatsink the better the heatsink works). If these settings are risky for some reason (e.g. battery life, chip life) -please warn me.

I am thinking of doing something for my T61

Why did you bother with the thermal pad on northbridge since you were using a copper shim?

I picked up a copper sheet that is 0.025" thick (0.64mm). Should I use 1 layer each for the GPU and northbridge, or should I double up to get 1.3mm thickness?

Should a piece of copper between the chip and the heatsink be about the size of the chip, or should it be closer to the size of the thermal pad that used to be there? I'm a little worried about using copper that may come in contact with other nearby chips or circuits.

Just to report back:
I ended up using a small piece of 0.025" thickness copper (available at Lowes) just a little larger than the GPU itself. The sheet is thin enough that it can be cut with scissors, but you'll need to press it flat as it will tend to curl a little. I applied Artic Silver 5 to the GPU (after cleaning with alcohol) and to the side of the copper piece that would face the heatsink, and then placed the copper piece on the GPU.

The northbridge thermal pad was intact, so I opted to continue using that, and the CPU comes in direct contact (with thermal compound of course) with heatsink. Put everything back together and GPU temps are normal.

To those with failing fans, I would definitely recommend replacing ONLY the fan. It's only slightly more involved than replacing the fan and heatsink and considerably less expensive - ~$10 vs ~$50.

Do you know of a NZ supplier? Up until now I've used Castrol VMX manual transmission oil and had no problems but I'm always willing to try improvements if the price isn't horrendous.

Cheers,

Scroll down: http://www.nzap.co.nz/glues_adhesives.php

Brilliant! Thanks Dom, I still couldn't get there from the Tri-Flow homepage but with the URL who cares?

Must get me a bottle of that stuff and keep it for just TP fans. Thanks again.

I took a video of mine, and so far it has had good effect. The sheet of copper came out of a AC adapter. I cracked it open in a vice.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Damage_in ... ing_melted

That model was recalled, so this is a good reuse of the copper.

Video of my T60 being shimmed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ4EZOl8ws4

Cool video. How thick was the piece of copper you used?

Hello everyone and sorry for bumping this old thread.

Lastweek, after months of bearing the hot GPU of my T60p, I decided to replace the thermalpad (which, AFAIK, isn't effective enough for my FireGL V5250) with a copper shim. Follow the instruction in this forum, I found a copper plate for about 1.1mm of thickness, after 3 hours of sandpapering, I got a shim for 0.9-1 mm of thickness with 2 smooth surfaces. I took the T60p apart as I've taken it out so many times before (it's a T60p 2007-8JU), took out the heatsink, remove the thermalpad over the GPU, clean the GPU then apply some thermal paste (Noctua NT-H1), put the shim on it, shook the shim a little so that the thermal paste spread out to be 'a paper thin' (but only over the top of the GPU), then put some thermal paste on the shim and put the heatsink down (of course, I changed the thermal paste of the CPU and lubricated the fan as well). At this point, I noticed that the shim was too thick for the gap, the thermalpad over the northbridge chip barely touched the northbridge chip, and needed to be push down by the 'clip' to touch it, but I though that was a good thing, the more presure on the GPU, the better it will be. Some pictures of the shim in place can be found here, here and here

After putting every thing together, I powered on the machine. Everything went on as normal, until, the machine began to shriek (or buzz, I don't know which word describes exactly the sound).

That sound seems to come from the GPU, whenever I start something GPU intensive (such as the program "GPU statibility test"), the noise appears and the GPU temperature rockets up to 85 degrees Celcius. When I put the machine in BIOS, the sound doesn't appear, so I'm pretty sure it only appears when the GPU is in heavy use.

During the last hour, I tried every variants I could come up with, including remove the shim and reapply it with less thermalpaste for many times, but the sound didn't disappear. After all, I cut a piece from the Northbridge thermalpad (2mm thick, the old one of the GPU is just about 1mm thick) and place it over the GPU, but the sound still stays there.

The GPU appears fine to me, except it misses a corner (I think it's supposed to be so, so that they can know the correct arrangement of the chip, is that correct?).

Currently, I'm using my X61 and leave my T60p shutdown in order not the make any other damage.

My question is, can anyone explain what's the cause of that sound, and did the pressure from the shim destroyed my GPU (cracked the missing corner) somehow?

Thank everyone in advace, and I'm really sorry for my crappy English.

[Quoting snipped]

Hi DK,

As I haven't seen a T60/p/ GPU assembly 'naked' I'm not sure what your copper shim is covering. However I have a feeling that it may be too big, and that when you clip the cooler assembly down and it contacts the northbridge maybe it rocks a bit so that the GPU contact area is angled? (Or even tips the shim so that it's only making contact with it's edge.)

It's been a while since I've cracked open a T60. I have a couple with the X1400 ATI GPU and I simply bent the cooler down, put coins on top and used some Arctic Silver 5.

(Quick note; I've got most flavours of thermal compound in my drawer, most came with coolers. However after years of building and re-building both desktops and laptops I'll only use AS-5. The main reason in laptops being that it lasts for much longer than most pastes without drying out, as well as cooling extremely well.)

Since I did my T60s I've been messing with T43s and T43ps so don't exactly remember the topography of the T60 GPU (and, again, haven't seen a T60/p/ GPU). Simply put I would check that the shim isn't tilting when the clip is applied and it's all tightened up.

This noise is intriguing. Have you tried going back to the standard cooler set-up?

Best of luck.

P.S. Your English is excellent BTW, I understood that perfectly.

Hello misfit, thanks for your really quick and useful reply. Let me explain the situation clearer.


Yes, I did. I cut a piece of 'known-good' thermal pad from the Intel north bridge chip and place it to the place where the thermal pad for the GPU should be, and when I checked it, it totally fit over the top of the GPU, the only difference between this 'new' thermal pad and the old GPU thermal pad is that the new one is 2mm thick while the old one is 1mm thick. However, the noise still stays on. (take a look at the "Edit" part)


About the green part: Yes, I did notice that the shim was too big for the GPU, but I have a logic to explain why I didn't change the size of the shim. I think, that the larger the shim is, the better heat transfer between it and the heat sink will be , and look at the heat sink size compare to the CPU,isn't it 'too big' for the CPU. So I think the shim's size isn't quite important, is that correct

About the red bold part: Now that you mentioned it, I didn't tell you that actually the shim was uneven on the top of the GPU, you can see that in here (the left of the shim is higher than the right). At the time, I didn't pay much attention ab out it, but come to think about it, there must be a high chance that when the clip is in place, the shim is angled and can touch only the GPU's edge, that explains the poor performance of the shim when I tested it. I will try the place the shim on the GPU again to check and paper sand it a little to get it even (of course, I'll sand paper it only when it's not on top of the GPU )

But, this theory still doesn't explain about the source of the shrieking sound

I tried to find a picture of the bare V5250 GPU over the Internet, but still haven't found any yet. Can someone tell me about the missing corner, is that a damage caused by the shim when it's angled?

Edit: I decided to turn the T60p on again to check, and now it seems that the sound is related to the program Video card stability check, not the GPU's intensiveness or temperature. When I opened that program, the sound appeared (despite the GPU's temperature was just 79 degrees C at the time), but it disappeared at once when I closed the program. And, when I tried to play Counter Strike with the machine, the GPU's temperature rocketed to 87 degrees but the sound still didn't come.

Can anybody test your machine with the program Video card stability check, and tell me if you get the noise or not? That will definitely help me a lot finding the source or the noise. Thanks in advance.

Thank everyone for reading this thread, I'm really frustrated with that sound now

Instead of trying to sandpaper the shim so it fits, get another piece of copper of the correct thickness.
You may polish that (should be enough) or 'lap' it properly if you are fanatic about 1-4 degrees difference.
Manually sandpapering it will almost always result in a non-flat surface.
See this:
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/cooling/air/39
http://www.overclockers.com/how-to-lap-a-heatsink/