Research w/ NHC on T43p High Temps

[mpcook]

I recently bought a T43p P2.0 80GB 2GB CDRW/DVD UXGA 15" ATI FireGL V3200 128MB -- on ebay. It had three problems when I got it. 1. missing drive bay screw (the seller mailed me one). 2. Several scratches on the screen, only noticeable when the screen is all black. This was disclosed, and I decided to chance it for a good price. 3. This baby ran HOT!

Right out of the box, it was running in the 70's - 80's. When I ran the Lenovo Toolbox stress test, the CPU got up to 95 when monitoring with NHC. I resigned myself to having to tear into it, replace fan, clean it up, new compound and etc.

Also note: this machine sounded like a jet taking off when the temp was not very high, but then the fan could not keep up when the temp got too high!

I decided first to try software solutions as an experiment:

I installed NHC Pro, using the files in nhc_tpfc.zip that are available, and playing with some of the other settings. Initially, the T43p had been set to max performance in all settings, which resulted in the extraordinary temperatures.

Ambient temp was 72F (all other temps below are centigrade).
Testing was off the dock, with AC power, Wireless off, Wired LAN on, set to 1280x1024 video with 32bit color.

Here is what I did...
Set powerplay to balanced in NHC.
Set CPU to dynamic switching in NHC.
Set voltage control in NHC to: (These settings were selected to be a bit conservative based on others I have seen.)
6x 0.716v
8x 0.780v
9x 0.812v
10x 0.876v
11x 0.956v
12x 1.004v
14x 1.164v
15x 1.180v

The ACPI Fan control system was set to the following. I made a few changes to the switching temps based on wanting to have the fan kick on later, but kick up earlier at higher ranges. Then to kick down later at higher ranges, and kick off sooner. These may bear some more experimentation:

off-low 55
low-mid 65
mid-high 70
high-max 80
low-off 55
mid-low 60
high-mid 65
max-high 75

My resulting temps are now I believe much more acceptable. I am idling now at 47C. Running the stress test results in: CPU range from about 73-76 with a brief max of 80. GPU now ranges from about 64 - 66, with a max of 69 at the end of the test. The CPU drops rapidly to 50 at conclusion of the test, the GPU takes longer to drop to that range, but that I think is to be expected.

I am curious to hear comments, or if anyone else has tried something similar, especially with a T43p ATI FireGL V3200 128MB video system. This is one hot piece of equipment.

Please bear in mind, this is specific to my machine, YMMV and I want to emphasize, making these types of changes can damage your machine and void your warranty. If you have an "extra" (I am about to have 4 T43's), you may play.

Mike

[Johan]

Mike:

Congrats with your new hot babe...

I suggest you review the following threads... as they contain some good advices about how to cool down the baby to more human temperatures: T43 fan noise... really that bad? and T43p excessively hot and How do you undervolt a T43 processor? and About hight temperatures on my T43.

Note especially the outcome of the first thread...!

Johan

[visionviper]

I am curious to hear comments, or if anyone else has tried something similar, especially with a T43p ATI FireGL V3200 128MB video system. This is one hot piece of equipment.

I did the same with my old T40 - lowered the voltages - and my fan almost never came on and even when it did it was going at the lowest speed. Lowering voltages really helps to keep and laptop running cool.

[mpcook]

Mike:

Congrats with your new hot babe...

Thanks Johan, I read through all of these and more in my research, and tried to take into account all of the advice given, so my settings are a consolidation of various postings. I can probably get away with more undervolting, but right now I want to see how it runs for a while.

Mike

[Binh]

mpcook

I think that you should set the fan Low -> Off at about 50, not at 55 which is the same as Off -> Low trigger. And I would lower both these value to 45/50 degrees in order to decrease the risk of damaged after 1-2 years of use.
Also you can enable the ATI Powerplay feature or lower the GPU frequency to 100-150Mhz in the Graphic page of NHC for some decrease in temperature.
Note that the GPU and CPU share the same heatsink.

[mpcook]

mpcook

I think that you should set the fan Low -> Off at about 50, not at 55 which is the same as Off -> Low trigger. And I would lower both these value to 45/50 degrees in order to decrease the risk of damaged after 1-2 years of use.
Also you can enable the ATI Powerplay feature or lower the GPU frequency to 100-150Mhz in the Graphic page of NHC for some decrease in temperature.
Note that the GPU and CPU share the same heatsink.

Thanks for the advice, I will go ahead and lower the Low-> off as you suggest, that seems like a good idea. As to lowering the GPU frequency, I am wondering if that will impact video performance, although I can see that it will lower temperature. Having it set to "balanced" seems to help, I just cannot determine how it impacts frequency (other than it is lower than the max).

Thanks,
Mike

[ajkula66]

I'm still quite baffled with the temperatures being so high in the first place...granted, you're going the smart way with the software tweaking approach, but there might be an underlying hardware issue somewhere as well...

[mpcook]

I'm still quite baffled with the temperatures being so high in the first place...granted, you're going the smart way with the software tweaking approach, but there might be an underlying hardware issue somewhere as well...

I agree, and eventually I'll take it apart and see what I can see. Maybe the fan/heatsink came loose.

Mike