Will there be another fan problem solution?

Message

Bobby · #1 Post by **Bobby** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:13 pm

Hi,

I just bought a new T43 and I'm really disapointed by this fan issue. I think it's great that Marcus is helping the Thinkpad users by distributing his software, but does anybody know if IBM is doing anything to solve this problem. I don't think that you should expect the customers to solve this problem.

I think they have soled me a product that is unusable if you are working with a laptop for 8 hours every day. So my solution here would be to return the T43 if nobody knows anything about a solution produced by IBM.

Should I go for the T42 or does this noice problem happen for all T4X-series? Greatfull for any info or advice.

/Bobby

christopher_wolf · #2 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 4:19 pm

Welcome to the Thinkpad Forums

The problem seems to be strange in that it manifests itself differently and with seeming randomness, or so one would assume. Some T43s have it, some don't; some T41s and T40s have it (I have heard them), most don't. A T42p I saw seemed to have it as well. It has been reported on a few Thinkpads over the years (see the ThinkWiki page on this), but as far as I can tell, doesn't seem to repeatably manifest itself in a shipment/grouping of Thinkpads. Right now, my fan just came on and I am in a room temperature, quiet environment; no pulsing is manifest either.

Bobby · #3 Post by **Bobby** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 4:27 am

Thank you for your reply. It looks like I will return the T43 and replace it with a Z60m. I really hope that I wont be disapointed again with this laptop.

Bols · #4 Post by **Bols** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:56 pm

I definitely agree...IBM/Lenovo should come up with a fix. And I'm not sure I agree with this being a "random" thing, given the number of people who complain. Rather, some people (let's call them "normal") agree that the fan noise of a T43 is unbearable under all circumstances, while others (let's call them "deaf") don't seem to mind. But for 8-12 hours use every day, T43s have a serious deficiency.

Now, for what it's worth, the fancontrol utility makes the situation tolerable. Configure it to start upon boot, and make the fan entry point above 52-54 degrees, and the T43 will be silent. I do agree that a bios fix would feel better, and that this seems like a desperate fix...but it's a pretty good desparate fix

vincentfox · #5 Post by **vincentfox** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:29 pm

There's a whole thread about people trading their T43 back in, in favor of X-series machines which are much quieter. If this happens often enough I suppose they would take notice.

leif · #6 Post by **leif** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:42 am

I can't trade back my T43 for many reasons.

I think the solution would be:

Install Fan Control Program
Run it after windows is loaded
Set manual control the level to 1

Done.

Bobby · #7 Post by **Bobby** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 8:09 am

Ok, I gave Marcus software a try on my T43 and it is working pretty good. I'm running the Smart mode and I think the fan is kicking in a little too often. I'm using these values

Level=47 0
Level=52 3
Level=55 4
Level=60 7
Level=70 128

The temp problem in my case is the PCI. Can anyone give me some safe instructions on settings for this case. I would like to try to leave the fan off until maybe 60 but I don't know if this is safe when the temp is going up for PCI. All other values are below 50.

Bols · #8 Post by **Bols** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 3:44 pm

I wouldn't worry about the PCI. Alternatively, you can set fancontrol to ignore the PCI altogether. Though the temperature is high, it will never become critical. The only temperatures that can rise rapidly to more than 60 is CPU and GPU. Undervolting with NHC and using powerplay on the GPU flats these curves out quite a bit.

I've set the fan to start at 54 degrees, which does not happen under normal circumstances.
The PCI temperature seem to be affected by using WLAN. If you are wireless, use the most power-saving mode under card configuration (not balanced, which boosts transmit power when running on A/C).

My settings:
Level=50 0
Level=54 2
Level=56 4
Level=58 7
Level=60 128

- Trond

christopher_wolf · #9 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:44 pm

Bols wrote:I definitely agree...IBM/Lenovo should come up with a fix. And I'm not sure I agree with this being a "random" thing, given the number of people who complain. Rather, some people (let's call them "normal") agree that the fan noise of a T43 is unbearable under all circumstances, while others (let's call them "deaf") don't seem to mind. But for 8-12 hours use every day, T43s have a serious deficiency.

Now, for what it's worth, the fancontrol utility makes the situation tolerable. Configure it to start upon boot, and make the fan entry point above 52-54 degrees, and the T43 will be silent. I do agree that a bios fix would feel better, and that this seems like a desperate fix...but it's a pretty good desparate fix

So that would label me as "Deaf", oh excuse me...let's just "say" that, would it not? That furthers illustrates how this boils down to personal opinion; if you want, you can come over here and personally listen and view my T43 Thinkpad. It has been on, again, for one hour and the fan has yet to come on; based off of previous behavior, the fan ramps up to level 1 and stays there for 30-45 minutes usually. This is nearly identical, in terms of behavior, to my friend's T42. Heck, I have heard worse come from a T42p; the fan on that would come on about 15 minutes into your work in Windows.

I can say that, although this might seem like a desperate fix, it is a fix that was *directly* motivated by the Users. say IBM came up with a program to do it (you can already do it indirectly via the Power Manager); with the Fan Control Utility, at least we have the ability to go in and modify the code and help develop it. Case in point, a system-service version of it was kindly made available by a user on these forums.

If the fan noise is not accetable, you can use the utility (which is quite nicely designed and does not impinge on resources that much). It seems to me quite strange to label something a severe "problem" when it has a sketchy repeatability characteristic. some Thinkpads exhibit it, and some Thinkpads don't. Looking at the ThinkWiki page, and gathering from personal experience, I can say that this probably goes back aways...Maybe even back to the venerable 600s. Why, then, wasn't it made out as such a big issue back then? Even with a T41 I saw (fan-always-on; now fixed with the FCU)?

GeorgeP · #10 Post by **GeorgeP** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:56 pm

Bobby wrote:The temp problem in my case is the PCI. Can anyone give me some safe instructions on settings for this case. I would like to try to leave the fan off until maybe 60 but I don't know if this is safe when the temp is going up for PCI. All other values are below 50.

Not sure, but I think the PCI is related to the wifi antenna. What may help (seems to help for me) is setting the power save mode on the wifi to "High". I believe this results in less power, therefore less heat to the antenna.

G

GeorgeP · #11 Post by **GeorgeP** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:11 pm

christopher_wolf wrote: It seems to me quite strange to label something a severe "problem" when it has a sketchy repeatability characteristic. some Thinkpads exhibit it, and some Thinkpads don't.

It could be random, but seems hard to believe there could be that much variation in the manufacturing processes of the ThinkPads and associated components. That would suggest shoddy quality control. Seems more likely the variation is result of:

- room temperature: mine seems very sensitive to room temp
- environmental noise
- application characteristics: some apps or web sites saturate the cpu
- user hearing: years of loud music will catch up with us

Thanks to the developers of TPC and NHC we can have silent ThinkPads. In buying computers going forward, for me noise level will be a bigger concern than performance.

G

GeorgeP · #12 Post by **GeorgeP** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 5:12 pm

Bobby wrote:The temp problem in my case is the PCI. Can anyone give me some safe instructions on settings for this case. I would like to try to leave the fan off until maybe 60 but I don't know if this is safe when the temp is going up for PCI. All other values are below 50.

Not sure, but I think the PCI is related to the wifi antenna. What may help (seems to help for me) is setting the power save mode on the wifi to "High". I believe this results in less power to, therefore less heat from the antenna.

Bols · #13 Post by **Bols** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 6:36 am

christopher_wolf wrote: So that would label me as "Deaf", oh excuse me...let's just "say" that, would it not? That furthers illustrates how this boils down to personal opinion; if you want, you can come over here and personally listen and view my T43 Thinkpad. It has been on, again, for one hour and the fan has yet to come on; based off of previous behavior, the fan ramps up to level 1 and stays there for 30-45 minutes usually.

No offense intended, Cristopher. Just trying to be..."sarcastic".

My point is just that the number of people experiencing very loud fans and the **** pulsing is so large that it can not be written off as individual variations or personal taste. It sounds like a very consistent design flaw. I can't prove that it applies to every T43 on the planet, but it does apply to a very substantial portion of them, enough that it should have been taken care of by now. I bought one a month ago, despite the rumours of loud fans, as I thought that IBM would clean up the mess. They haven't, and maybe they never will. The power manager application does indeed change the fan characteristics, but in a very random manner. There is NO way of making the fans silent, as far as I've seen.

The FC application is a life saver, definitely. However, it does have a couple of flaws that I would not accept from an official IBM product:
* filling event log (as we have discussed earlier)
* occasional crashing when returning from standby etc. Probably also due to non-standard device handling.

- Trond

Bobby · #14 Post by **Bobby** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 6:55 am

Ok, thank you for all great input regarding this fan issue. I have decided to keep my T43. But I have still some trouble with the GPU and maybe even the CPU which are running a bit high on temp. What I have done up until now are

Installing and running the tpfancontrol.
Disabling the wifi which solved the PCI problem (temp never over 52 now)

It would be great if you could run without the fan but as it is now it will kick in (running the smart mode) when GPU is 57. Is this high for the GPU? I would like to see if the GPU will stabalize but I don't know if I dear to increase the level to say 60. My current configuration looks like this

Level=48 0
Level=57 3
Level=59 4
Level=60 7
Level=70 128

Usually the CPU will reach 57 after 30 minutes and then the 7 level fan will kick in for a couple of minutes. So, is there anything else (safe) that I can do to maybe be able to run without the fan? I am using the laptop for work which means that no heavy 3D games are going to be used. I would be very greatfull if I could end this fan-project with a (almost) non-fan solution.

/Bobby

Bols · #15 Post by **Bols** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 3:12 pm

It is very easy to run the T43 with no fan at all:

Enable "Powerplay" on the GPU. Go to display properties -> settings -> advanced -> powerplay, and make sure power play is enabled and set to "maximum battery" (or whatever it is called). This should make sure that even if the fan is completely off, the GPU never exceeds 51-52 degrees unless you're gaming.

Next (optional) step is to Install Notebook Hardware Control and undervolt your CPU. Not a necessary step, but it will cool down your CPU (and, I believe, your GPU since they are possibly cooled by the same heatsink...?). Usually you can undervolt your CPU to 0.7 volts@700Mhz and somewhere around 1.1 volts@max. That, combined with using "automatic switching" of CPU speed should lower your CPU temperature a few more degrees.

57 degrees will probably not destroy your GPU, even if it is unecessary hot for idling. I allow mine to reach 78 degrees when gaming, which has been working so far.

- Trond

dave92270 · #16 Post by **dave92270** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 12:42 am

Hello all,

I'm one of the ThinkPad owners who feel that the fan is way too loud. I bought my R52 about a month ago from Newegg (who has strict no-return policy on laptops, only replacement for identical item). While I like almost everything on this laptop, the fan noise is major disappointment and if I was able to return for refund, I would’ve done that within the first week. I installed fancontrol program (thanks!) and it works quite well, but since it is not the official IBM utility/patch and crash of the program can result in hardware damage, I see it only as temporary solution; unless IBM/Lenovo will look into this, I’ll consider to sell this machine within a few months (with major $ loss) and buy something else.

Now I’m curious whether IBM decided for the more-then-necessary cooling to perhaps ensure 100% stability and top performance of the system? It could be, since this is not typical home-user/family laptop (but neither gaming rig), rather business type machine (as is T43 I assume), down to the preloaded software selection and hardware features - maybe they wanted smooth run no matter what the noise? I have to admit that R52 runs louder then I’d like, but is very cool under all settings when controlled either by Power Manager, or by the BIOS. I have nearly silent iBook G4 - can’t hear it, but the left palm rest on that laptop gets quite hot even under minimal load.

Well I’m playing with fancontrol settings for smart control; I feel that 55C is too hot so I’m testing to keep it under:

Levels= 47°C -> 0, 54°C -> 3, 57°C -> 4, 60°C -> 7, 70°C -> 0x80

If there would be more future updates to fancontrol, off course I’m interested.

Regards
Dave

pipspeak · #17 Post by **pipspeak** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 3:17 pm

Interestingly, my T43's fan issue seems to have got worse over time. I used to be able to use it for about 6 hours before the fan kicked up to 4 and became noticeable. Now it's up there after only a couple hours, and despite all sensors being under 50 degrees the fan stays at 4 the rest of the day. In other words it only ever increases in speed, never decreases, even if the machine is left doing nothing for a few hours.

Ambient temperature could be one factor, but room temp never varies by more than 5-10F. There must be some other factor in play here, or perhaps some of the sensors degrade over time. Whatever the case I find it discouraging that under bios control the fan NEVER slows down once it's done it's job cooling. It only speeds up and stays. That, to me, is a problem that deserves a fix.

If my car's engine cooling fan came on and stayed on, even after it had done its job, it would be classified as a problem and fixed. Why not a T43's fan?

christopher_wolf · #18 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 10:18 pm

pipspeak wrote:Interestingly, my T43's fan issue seems to have got worse over time. I used to be able to use it for about 6 hours before the fan kicked up to 4 and became noticeable. Now it's up there after only a couple hours, and despite all sensors being under 50 degrees the fan stays at 4 the rest of the day. In other words it only ever increases in speed, never decreases, even if the machine is left doing nothing for a few hours.

Ambient temperature could be one factor, but room temp never varies by more than 5-10F. There must be some other factor in play here, or perhaps some of the sensors degrade over time. Whatever the case I find it discouraging that under bios control the fan NEVER slows down once it's done it's job cooling. It only speeds up and stays. That, to me, is a problem that deserves a fix.

If my car's engine cooling fan came on and stayed on, even after it had done its job, it would be classified as a problem and fixed. Why not a T43's fan?

Easy, not all T43s do that; it isn't exclusively limited to the T43 either as I have heard various Thinkpads with fan noises far worse than my T43 which is very quiet. It is one of those things that is a variable variable. It is present to some extent on all Thinkpads seemingly since the T40, at least on the ones I have heard.

I don't even know if there is a definite solution that can be guaranteed (i.e. 95% or better chance that it will fix the problem after being applied) to work. People have tried replacing the fan, undervolting, running at the lower bounds of the CPU, etc. Now we even have some people, including me, look at the EC H8S code to see if there is a problem with it. This appears to be a good example of "Simple and Obvious Symptom; Extremely Complicated Cure/Solution."

simms · #19 Post by **simms** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 1:55 pm

T40 was loud. T42 is quiet. I can't explain it.

agarza · #20 Post by **agarza** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 12:27 am

I can't use the Smart nor Manual control in the TP T43 fan control to work in my T42P, any ideas?

pianowizard · #21 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 12:34 am

I am really curious about how bad this fan problem is. I will find out soon, when I receive mfratt's T43.

pianowizard · #22 Post by **pianowizard** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 9:59 am

I confirm that my T43 has a loud fan! But because it's constantly on, I get used to it. Of all the laptops I have used, only two others had equally loud fans: the Dell Inspiron 8200 (Pentium 4), and the Toshiba Portege 7020CT (Pentium II).

Will there be another fan problem solution?

Will there be another fan problem solution?

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