Thinkpads Forum

I just want to thank the designer of the fancontrol software without which I was about to get rid of my new T43 an otherwise great machine. I started to use it yesterday and so far has worked just great.
One question: is there any sensor of the six that it is not a good idea to disregard?

There are 9 sensors in total for the T43; I wouldn't ignore the CPU, GPU, or PCI all together, one in a set of other sensors like BAT and BUS should be OK...but not clumped together.

Thanks. It appears that the PCI is the hottest of all, and ignoring only this one solves much of the fan noise problem while it never exceeded 54C. So setting the threshold to 55 or 60 does the job too. Another question: what is the very fine whispering constant noise coming from the right side of the laptop? Is it related with the fan problem or is it the HDD?

If it is coming from the right side of the laptop and is a low whispering noise, then it is most likely the HDD.

Are you using the the default Smart config or did you make your own?

No, I am using the default system.[quote][/quote]

What difference using the default smart cofig makes?

The difference is that you can define a profile that couples a temperature range to the fan behavior...The default one was deemed as a good, general candidate from some feedback and tests on a T43. Each machine, however, and envrionment it is used in is a bit different; so some minor amount of tweaking of the config may be in order.

Could you help me out in this? Is there another tool for controlling the HDD fan too?

kovacsab wrote:Could you help me out in this? Is there another tool for controlling the HDD fan too?

The HDD has no fan, any whirring noises you hear coming from the HDD are from the HDD itself. It needs proper ventilation, usually through a little hole in the HDD case proper, and it has its own air filter as well due to the aerodynamics of the heads literally flying over the platters which are *very* close together. Most of the noise, however, comes from the platters spinning.

You can tweak the spin-down profile and power management scheme for the HDD with NHC and the Hitachi tool if your drive is a Hitachi; as a bonus with NHC, you also get the SMART utility information. Silent operation coupled with the 128 spin-down state are pretty good for everyday use and keep the HDD very quiet.

HTH

Thanks for the info. As you can guess I am not a very big expert.
I downloaded NHC and it immediately knocked out the TP fancontrol tool. Apparently the two cannot go together.

No, they don't quite work together; it works better if you turn off the temp readings in NHC. If you want, you can use RMClock and MobileMeter for essentially the same things. NHC is, more or less, pretty much a suite of tools in one application; SMART Utilities, ATI clocking, etc...

Well, NHC settings didn't make much difference to the HDD's whirring noise which is far less annoying though than the fan noise was. I'm already happy with that...