T41 heating too much

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NAzu · #1 Post by **NAzu** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:11 am

I bought a second hand T41 about week ago and now that I have used the laptop I have noticed that the fan is almost all of the time on (about 2900rpm). My cpu is at 43 in idle and it went to 73 in load after 3min's after I stopped the prime. So is it possible that the cpu isn't making proper contact to the heatsink or the thermal compound has dryed? I turned the heater off from this room so it's about 20 degrees or little lower in here and that seemed to help the situation a little bit. Now the fan doesn't spin all the time anymore. I would appriciate any help.

FTC · #2 Post by **FTC** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:35 am

Hi, depending on what processor you have, 73oC may be normal or not (they don't seem too wrong in general either). Also important is if you are undervolting or not (with NHC or similar), and wether you're using other componets such as the GPU at the time.. so, which is your CPU ?

In any case to reduce temps with T4x there are several options :

1. Undervolt processor with NHC (much effective)
2. Replace thermal compound (as you said).... specially important for thise units that did not have the original compound 'so well' installed.
3. Cleanup of the Heatsink zone (specially in thinkpads with several hundred running hours behind)
4. Switch processor. For instance, swapping a Banias 1.5 with a Dothan 1.8 gained 10C load temps.. besides prerformance enhancements. ... and this processors can be had quite cheap in eBay nowadays..
5. Increase fan speed with cpu fan control or NHC and ACPI specific module..
6. Reduce processor multiplier (can be done also with NHC or similar)... but note that this reduces processor speed also.
7. Improve ventilation, ambient temp or stand (making sure ventilarion openings in the machines are not blocked)
8. switch off unneeded subsystems such as IR, wireless, Bluetooth, stop hard drive at inactivity, .. generally through operating system power manager options.
....

Hope this helps

_erazor_ · #3 Post by **_erazor_** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 11:37 am

I suggest you have a look under the heatsink/fan combo.

it`s not really hard to do, unless you are extremely bad at using screwdrivers

look inside the T40 HMM (Hardware Maintnence Manual) and there the way to unmount the heatsink is described in detail. Unmounting, applying new thermal grease and remounting it takes about 20-30 minutes in total.

Just search for "T40 hmm" on the IBM site or at google. You should find a pdf file.

NAzu · #4 Post by **NAzu** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 3:24 pm

Thanks for the replies

My T41 has an 1.6GHz banias and a R9000. I have lowered the voltage at 600Mhz to 0.940v and that hasn't changed the noise. How much can I lower the voltages? I'm going to change the thermal compound to AS5 in next few days. I'm using the NHC to change the voltages and to monitor the battery and cpu. I used Orthos stress prime to load the cpu so the gpu was not in use. I don't know if this had to do with the temps but today when I was playing SB3 with this machine it freezed after 10 minuter or so and didn't boot straight after that. The game stresses the cpu and gpu quite a lot I think so I though it overheated as it booted up after I waited few minutes.

FTC · #5 Post by **FTC** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:27 pm

NAzu,

I would say 73 C load temp for a Banias 1.6 is perfectly normal.. it could even reach 80 C or so after several minutes. At least my 1.5 banias use to reach those temps. After undervolting with NHC to around 1.1V (watch out not to undervolt too much... I'd say your freeze could easily be because of this), you should see a drop in temps of about 4-5 C. If you reseat processor with AS5 or similar then you'll see a further decrease (2-3 C).
Of course the best bet would be to switch to a dothan, more powerful and fast processor, and also cooler..

NAzu · #6 Post by **NAzu** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 2:19 pm

Should I test the stability at lower voltages with Orthos prime or similar program? or is the NHC test enough?

edit. I have one more question. I have the minidock and I would like to plug my speakers to it but when I plug them to the minidock's soundplug the sound comes from the laptop and from the speakers. So how can I disable the laptops own speakers so that the sound comes only from my main speakers?

FTC · #7 Post by **FTC** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:22 am

NAzu

Definetly the NHC 'stability test' is not enough. I do personally test with prime95 for stability for at least 6-12 hours, and after that I set the voltage to almost 0.1 v above the found limit.

Re minidock, sorry I can not help you.. haven't played with one yet..

#8 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 6:47 am

NAzu wrote:I have the minidock and I would like to plug my speakers to it but when I plug them to the minidock's soundplug the sound comes from the laptop and from the speakers. So how can I disable the laptops own speakers so that the sound comes only from my main speakers?

You can use the hardware volume control buttons to lower the volume to the minimum level. Do not use the mute button as it will mute all sound. Alternatively you can use a dummy plug in the headphone jack of the ThinkPad.

NAzu · #9 Post by **NAzu** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 10:11 am

Thanks GomJabbar! Now the sound comes only from my main speakers.

agarza · #10 Post by **agarza** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 12:26 pm

The best way to keep the CPU heating too much is to apply Arctic Silver 5. Heck, I use Zalman Super ThermalGrease when gaming, CPU running at full performance (undervolted to 1.148V with NHC), GPU is a 128MB FireGL T2, the CPU barely hits the 60C (fan running at ~3800rpm (not even the highest speed) and the GPU about 74-78C max which off course drops very fast when I exit the game. Definitely you should upgrade to a Dothan if you want more performance and less heat

#11 Post by **tomh009** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 2:11 pm

NAzu wrote:Thanks for the replies My T41 has an 1.6GHz banias and a R9000. I have lowered the voltage at 600Mhz to 0.940v and that hasn't changed the noise. How much can I lower the voltages? I'm going to change the thermal compound to AS5 in next few days. I'm using the NHC to change the voltages and to monitor the battery and cpu. I used Orthos stress prime to load the cpu so the gpu was not in use. I don't know if this had to do with the temps but today when I was playing SB3 with this machine it freezed after 10 minuter or so and didn't boot straight after that. The game stresses the cpu and gpu quite a lot I think so I though it overheated as it booted up after I waited few minutes.

NAzu, I have the same processor in my X31, and I run at 0.764V at 6x, and 1.324V at 16x multiplier. It has never frozen on me -- though there could be some individual variation in CPU batches, so beware and test after setting.

I don't have the graphics chipset that you have, but my X31 runs typically between 40C and 55C (high end of the range when docked), and the fan only goes on when I run Photoshop.

NAzu · #12 Post by **NAzu** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 3:58 pm

I have now lowered the voltages at 600MHz to 0.780v and at 1.6GHz to 1.308v. Temps are now quite much lower and the fan doesn't kick in that often anymore. Next thing is to change the thermal compound to AS5

I have few questions concerning the procedure of what to take off. Can I acces the cooler and remove it after I have the keyboard removed or is it necessery to remove other parts?

mitchellst · #13 Post by **mitchellst** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 8:47 pm

I believe that you only need to remove the keyboard. 95% of the time, I'm replacing motherboards, so pulling the fan out at that point doesn't cross my mind, but I'm pretty sure it can be eased out without complication.

T41 heating too much

T41 heating too much

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