T60: Getting the best GPU termal performance

[Lo-q]

I´ve decided I want to get my T60 to be able to run silently under light load, with the fan off, for comfortable use in silent environments such as study halls etc etc.

Using TPFanControl it seems the termal performance of the GPU is the problem here, the CPU stays comfortably in the low to mid 40s with no fan, while the temperature of the GPU creeps slowly upward towards 70 degrees over a period of about 30 minutes of use. Sometimes it stabilizes in the high 60s without ever getting higher, sometimes it gets past the 70 degrees mark, which is currently where I have the fans set in and take the temperature down to 65 degrees.

So I wonder:

1) Is it usual for an X1400 in a T60 to produce so much heat?

2 ) Can anything be done in order to make the GPU transmit heat away more efficiently, with the fan not running?

3) What are the highest temperatures the GPU should be able to tolerate without compromising longevity? Since around 70 degrees seems to be the point where the GPU can usually transmit away as much heat as is produced, I am quite sure if I´d bump the fan kick-in point up to 75 degrees, the fan would never need to come on.

[TTY]

Some T60 machines were assembled in a wrong way at the factory. The thermal device and fan (i.e. fan and heatsink) has one or two thermal pads. When the heatsinks were delivered from the factory which produced them to the assembly plant, the thermal pads were protected by thin plastic foils. The plastic foils should have been removed before the heatsinks/fans were installed into the notebook. Some workers in the T60 assembly plant seem not to have received instructions to remove the plastic foils before assembly. If these plastic foils are left on top of the thermal pads, they reduce heat flow, they insulate the GPU from the heat sink. The hot GPU makes the fan run fast and loud.

You could check whether plastic foils have been left on top of the thermal pads. If that's the case, you could remove the plastic foils. I suppose the thermal pads should stay on the heat sink. You'll need to apply thermal grease to the heat sink before putting it all together again. Full instructions can be found in the T60 hardware maintenance manual, available from Lenovo's support site.

[TuuS]

The thermal pad was replaced with thermal paste in the T61/T61p models. I'd recommend doing this mod to your T60/T60p also, but make sure you don't have an air gap after removing the pad.

I wouldn't recommend using both the pad and thermal paste.

I only use Arctic Silver #5 brand, which will usually result in the unit running a few degrees cooler.

I'll also note that I don't think it's a good idea to try to stop the fan from running. If your fan is that noisy, then you should replace it, or instead of trying to stop it, just set it to always be on at a low speed. I have a hard time even telling if mine is on when it's running slow, even in a quiet room, so if the noises is that disturbing, something might be wrong with the fan.

[ajkula66]

For reasons that I could never really fathom, X1400 tends to run hotter than V5200/5250 on many ThinkPads that i've owned.

A fresh coat of AS5 (or whatever's the norm for thermal paste in your neck of the woods) and underclocking the GPU with NHC would likely bring the temps down by quite a margin. I'm about to go down that route with my daughter's T60 (T7200 CPU over X1400 GPU, XPP).

Good luck.

[ThinkPadophile]

TuuS gave excellent advice. Removing the thermal pad to allow direct contact between the heat pipe and the GPU will lower the temperature at the GPU by 5-10º C.
However, your specific concern is fan noise, not overheating, and the ThinkpadFanControl utility can help immensely. Straight out of the box, using its default settings, the program is a great improvement over the BIOS routine. However, you can customize ThinkpadFanControl by adjusting various settings in the ThinkpadFanControl.ini file. The setting of interest is the "offset" value that you can assign to individual sensors. I found that assigning an offset value of 15º (F) to the GPU reduced the fan speed considerably while still providing excellent cooling. Experiment with various values and see what works best for you. Please post your results; I'd be interested in hearing if it worked as well for you and it did for me.

[Lo-q]

Some T60 machines were assembled in a wrong way at the factory. The thermal device and fan (i.e. fan and heatsink) has one or two thermal pads. When the heatsinks were delivered from the factory which produced them to the assembly plant, the thermal pads were protected by thin plastic foils. The plastic foils should have been removed before the heatsinks/fans were installed into the notebook. Some workers in the T60 assembly plant seem not to have received instructions to remove the plastic foils before assembly. If these plastic foils are left on top of the thermal pads, they reduce heat flow, they insulate the GPU from the heat sink. The hot GPU makes the fan run fast and loud.

You could check whether plastic foils have been left on top of the thermal pads. If that's the case, you could remove the plastic foils. I suppose the thermal pads should stay on the heat sink. You'll need to apply thermal grease to the heat sink before putting it all together again. Full instructions can be found in the T60 hardware maintenance manual, available from Lenovo's support site.

I´m quite sure this is not the problem here. I´ve spent a lot of time in "the archives" of this and other sites the last couple of days, and it seems the T60s with this problem reaches temperatures much higher than mine.

It also seems that the people having success with the mod TuuS describes succeeds only in bringing the cooling to a level of performance similar to this T60, from a much worse starting point.

But! I found out something very interesting

First, yesterday I noticed my GPU temperatures right after having booted from hibernation after 12 hours of no-use were strangely high, over 60 degrees, and much higher than any other component. This planted an idea in my head: Maybe the sensor is faulty?

Then I read that the R60, a unit very similar to the T60, in a similar configurations to my T60, had X1400 GPUs running at temperatures around that of the CPU, not high above as I had been experiencing.

I had also noticed that it was more or less impossible for the fan, even when set manually to run at full blast for 15 minutes, to bring the temperature of a clocked down GPU in a completely idle system below 58 degrees, while the CPU easily gets into the thirties.

Then finally I stumbled upon this:

I installed instrumentation in my T60p 8744-J2U and to my satisfaction determinded that the EC reported temperature for the GPU is offset by +20 celcius. So for a reported temperature of 105c via TPfancontrol, the actual is 85c.

Ted

Very nice!

It makes a lot of sense, in relation to what I experienced earlier, and also after some testing I found that no matter what I do, there is almost always a 20 or 21 degree gap between the CPU and the GPU reading.

So now I´ve just modified the TPFancontrol .ini, using the offset setting that ThinkPadophile so conveniently made me aware of, to correct for this error.

I plan to do some more testing and tweaking of my TPFC settings over the following days, but I hope this will enable my T60 to be a very silent performer. I also plan to do some more testing to confirm that tquade really got it right. If he did, I believe this will be good news for a lot of silence-loving thinkpadders

[Dos3.1]

Could someone post a pic or more description of these thermal pads?

I had my T60 apart yesterday, due to a noisy fan. I wanted to see if adding a drop of oil to the fan motor would help at all, before I considered getting a new fan. I saw some grey pads, wondering if that's them?

To try and fix the fan noise, I put one drop of 3 in 1 oil in it and it cut down the fan noise a lot, and seems to be more efficient now. The system seems to be running cooler, as the exhaust is cooler and the fan seems slower, now. The fan was not sounding too healthy before I did this, and it was made worse since I took the machine apart to add memory. But, that machine was loud from day one, and the fan always ran fast right away. So, the oil improved it a lot, but now I want to see what else I can do.

I did try out the Speedfan program to get some readings, but it crashed my system with a BSOD on XP! After reboot, the system is running fine, thankfully.

Some T60 machines were assembled in a wrong way at the factory. The thermal device and fan (i.e. fan and heatsink) has one or two thermal pads. When the heatsinks were delivered from the factory which produced them to the assembly plant, the thermal pads were protected by thin plastic foils. The plastic foils should have been removed before the heatsinks/fans were installed into the notebook. Some workers in the T60 assembly plant seem not to have received instructions to remove the plastic foils before assembly. If these plastic foils are left on top of the thermal pads, they reduce heat flow, they insulate the GPU from the heat sink. The hot GPU makes the fan run fast and loud.

You could check whether plastic foils have been left on top of the thermal pads. If that's the case, you could remove the plastic foils. I suppose the thermal pads should stay on the heat sink. You'll need to apply thermal grease to the heat sink before putting it all together again. Full instructions can be found in the T60 hardware maintenance manual, available from Lenovo's support site.

[afraidfuture]

Could someone post a pic or more description of these thermal pads?

I had my T60 apart yesterday, due to a noisy fan. I wanted to see if adding a drop of oil to the fan motor would help at all, before I considered getting a new fan. I saw some grey pads, wondering if that's them?

To try and fix the fan noise, I put one drop of 3 in 1 oil in it and it cut down the fan noise a lot, and seems to be more efficient now. The system seems to be running cooler, as the exhaust is cooler and the fan seems slower, now. The fan was not sounding too healthy before I did this, and it was made worse since I took the machine apart to add memory. But, that machine was loud from day one, and the fan always ran fast right away. So, the oil improved it a lot, but now I want to see what else I can do.

I did try out the Speedfan program to get some readings, but it crashed my system with a BSOD on XP! After reboot, the system is running fine, thankfully.

Some T60 machines were assembled in a wrong way at the factory. The thermal device and fan (i.e. fan and heatsink) has one or two thermal pads. When the heatsinks were delivered from the factory which produced them to the assembly plant, the thermal pads were protected by thin plastic foils. The plastic foils should have been removed before the heatsinks/fans were installed into the notebook. Some workers in the T60 assembly plant seem not to have received instructions to remove the plastic foils before assembly. If these plastic foils are left on top of the thermal pads, they reduce heat flow, they insulate the GPU from the heat sink. The hot GPU makes the fan run fast and loud.

You could check whether plastic foils have been left on top of the thermal pads. If that's the case, you could remove the plastic foils. I suppose the thermal pads should stay on the heat sink. You'll need to apply thermal grease to the heat sink before putting it all together again. Full instructions can be found in the T60 hardware maintenance manual, available from Lenovo's support site.

The ultimate combo is a T61 discrete graphics heatsink with the T500 fan installed into Standard T60P 14inch standard case， The T61 heat sink is well designed compared to T60p's, and The T500 fan is well engineered than T6x's, it is amazing silent when it turned the same speed as T6x's, My t60p used to run noisy, I have tried penny's mod,and bend the heat pipe, and eventually the T61 heat sink with T500 fan is best solution for T60p temperature and noise level, and the installation process is dropping in, with small file on the presser over the GPU, the detail info, you can check the thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 4&start=30, Hope it can help you. It will run much quieter and cooler under light load, cpu/gpu: 54/62.

[Peptate]

My T61p originally came with a T7700 (Memrom) and was replaced with a T8300 (Penryn) for $30 bucks a year ago if I remember correctly. 65nm to 45nm gave me a noticeable reduction in heat. Replaced the thermal paste with Prolimatech PK-1. Now idles at ~38C idle and 45C lightly browsing the interwebs. YMMV, but I'm glad I went through the process.

[afraidfuture]

My T61p originally came with a T7700 (Memrom) and was replaced with a T8300 (Penryn) for $30 bucks a year ago if I remember correctly. 65nm to 45nm gave me a noticeable reduction in heat. Replaced the thermal paste with Prolimatech PK-1. Now idles at ~38C idle and 45C lightly browsing the interwebs. YMMV, but I'm glad I went through the process.

Hi, Peptate, As far as I know, The original T60 motherboard can only support up to T7600 2.33 CPU, it cannot udgrade to anyother higher CPU, please correct me if I was wrong. Unless you replaced the motherboard to T61's.

[RealBlackStuff]

@afraidfuture:

Peptate was talking about his own T61p, not about a T60.

[afraidfuture]

@afraidfuture:

Peptate was talking about his own T61p, not about a T60.

Sincerely apologize on this. I thought peptate was suggesting upgrading the CPU for T60 at the first beginning, sorry for my crappy English.

[Peptate]

@afraidfuture:

Peptate was talking about his own T61p, not about a T60.

Sincerely apologize on this. I thought peptate was suggesting upgrading the CPU for T60 at the first beginning, sorry for my crappy English.

Ah, my fault as well. I mis-read thinking we were talking about the t61. Sorry about that.

The ultimate combo is a T61 discrete graphics heatsink with the T500 fan installed
The T500 fan is well engineered than T6x's, it is amazing silent when it turned the same speed as T6x's,

Placed an order for a t500 fan after reading this. thanks

[Spudgun99]

Hello All,

I am new here and am trying to get some info about GPU cooling for my t60. My motherboard recently crapped out cd t2500 with x1400 gpu with a mobo with the ATI V5200 gpu. I have been reading up on HSF mods and am curious if I can just do the copper plate mod with the 41V9932 HSF. I would attach the copper shims with the arctic silver epoxy and then use the arctic silver 5 on the northbridge and gpu (and cpu) possibly with the penny mod for consistent pressure.

Should I upgrade to the t61 HSF? If so what mods need to be done to fit the mobo with the v5200 gpu? Will the t61 hsf 42W2820 work?

Thanks in advance.

[Peptate]

penny mod for consistent pressure.

If there's any advice I can give you, never use coins as a material on a heatsink. Anyone who tells you to doesn't know what they're doing. Too much pressure, un-even surfaces, alloys with low thermal conductivity....

Use proper materials and you'll get better results (even if only marginally) every time.

[afraidfuture]

[img]

Hello All,

I am new here and am trying to get some info about GPU cooling for my t60. My motherboard recently crapped out cd t2500 with x1400 gpu with a mobo with the ATI V5200 gpu. I have been reading up on HSF mods and am curious if I can just do the copper plate mod with the 41V9932 HSF. I would attach the copper shims with the arctic silver epoxy and then use the arctic silver 5 on the northbridge and gpu (and cpu) possibly with the penny mod for consistent pressure.
Thanks in advance.

Hi, Spudgun99. I don't suggest to try the copper plate modification, I have tried many times, it didn't work for my T60p no matter how many time I tried(14inch, with V5250), just like pepmate said in the above thread, it might be un-leveling of the shim, or the low conductivity because of the un-leveling.

Should I upgrade to the t61 HSF? If so what mods need to be done to fit the mobo with the v5200 gpu? Will the t61 hsf 42W2820 work?[/quote]

To my experience, it is best to upgrade to T61 heat sink(42w2820 is correct, this one can be installed into 14inch T60heat sink), but you need to file the corner a little(very small work), and also the fan unit, I suggest you to install the T500 fan over the T61 fan, because it is much quiter. I don't know how to upload the picture yet