T43p fan stuck at one speed?

[kchung]

System info: T43p, model 2669P1U
BIOS and EC are up to date

System runs very hot under load - I've observed via Notebook Hardware Control (NHC) the CPU temperature hitting 180 F using a utility to artificially use up all free CPU cycles.

Under no load conditions, the CPU temperature is about 111 F.

I've noted that the Fan speed is stuck at one speed no matter how hot the CPU temperature is.

I don't have another T43p handy to test with, so here is my question:

For those of you with T43p laptops, do you hear the fan varying speed? I know that my T41 does chage speed when it gets hotter but this T43p does not.

Note: This system has had it's motherboard replaced twice already and I *think* the CPU once. I do not know if the Fan/heatsink assembly was replaced or if the technician cleaned either or both the CPU and heatsink.

On a separate note, NHC and SpeedFan report different temperatures - SpeedFan reporting a temeprature 13 F degrees higher - not sure if the two applications are getting readings from different places or not.

[dsigma6]

Have you tried tpfancontrol? That will let you manually adjust the RPM to see if the fan actually has a problem. Plus, it wouldn't hurt to cool her down a little bit!

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=17715

[kchung]

Yep, looked at the Fan Control software and installed it. I changed it to Active mode and tried BIOS, Smart, and Manual mode - none of the three settings made any difference to the reported Fan Speed and temperture climbed up to 80 C before I halted the test.

What I find interesting is that during the power on boot, the fan seems to kick up to a very high speed but at no time as the temperature climb do I hear the Fan go faster to try to cool the hot CPU. It's like the mother board or whatever controls the fan speed is ignoring the setting.

[dsigma6]

Have you run PC Doctor and checked out if the fan passes? I don't know if it just tests to see if it has power, or if it can switch speeds, but either way.

[kchung]

Yup, ran the PC doctor fan test and it passed.

However i didn't not hear the fan change speeds during the test.

[gauthier]

Hello,

I encounter somewhat simmilar problem with the fan on my t40p:

two days ago, I encountered a raw power down while playing a 3d game, now the system power down everytime I run application with cpu at 100% for a while (at full cpu speed), the only work arround is to set the cpu at the lowest speed (600mhz).

After checking temperature, nothing seems to go wrong, it stay arround 40-60 c° with mild cpu usage (under 50% most of the time, some cycles at 100%) using dynamic switching cpu speed.

The issue is reproducible anytime I use of the gpu and cpu more than usually, but also (however less frequently) while using cpu only (compilation tasks).

Last point, I noticed that the fan is stuck at a single speed even when running very cool, it just accelerate when it get hotter, but it never stop wich was the case before after 5min of iddling.

Is there anything I can fix myself (almost sure it isn't a software issue, will check more with another unit asap)? I'm worried my laptop having a motherboard issue...

Thanks for your help.