T61p + nvidia nvs 140m overheat

[andreychikoff]

Hi everyone i know the issue i'm interested in is old but it's not just the same. Ok i've bought a used t61p slightly modified recently ( win 7, t8300, 3gb (2+1) and another video card). The video card was changed, it's not a fx 570m but nvs 140 m, i've noticed that the temperature of gpu is rather high, about 60 C in idle. Sometimes the fan starts working heavily just watching the youtube video and the temperature reaches 80 - 90 C. My friend, who has some experience (he's an engineer) says that it's a bad thing... Really i've read about 2 slots of memory but that issue was for people who had some errors with their 570m, i'll try to do that(remove the 1gb stick), then i'll try to reinstall video drivers for windows 7 from lenovo site, but if the problem remains is a bad crap, cause i was planning to use it also for some gaming..
Ok i try here cause the most recent post is something like 3 years old, so i hope that some "cure" was made
anyway hope really to get some advice. Thanx

[miro_gt]

open up and put new thermal paste between the GPU and the heat sink. Then run TPFanControl to set fan speeds that would keep your GPU at temperatures that you like.

Undervolting the CPU helps as both the CPU and the GPU sit on one heatsink, so lower temperatures of one helps keeping lower temperatures of the other.

dont forget to check and clean the fan itself from various debris that might have accumulated over time.

while RAM is used as video ram as well, it should not have such drastic effect on the GPU temperature. What is changed between running 1 stick of RAM compared to 2 is that in the second case the RAM would run in dual channel rather than single, so the transfer speeds would be higher. This however greatly benefits integrated GPUs (Intel) rather than dedicated ones, and would not affect your idle temperature, which seems rather high. It should be around the 50 deg C mark.

.. and I'm assuming the MB has been changed ? .. and not only the GPU, as it's soldered on the MB.

good luck.

[TuuS]

If you have the NVS140m, then you have a T61, not a T61p. If the motherboard was replaced, then it's a downgraded system from T61p to T61.

As for your temps, I agree that the cause is most likely a heatsink problem. Cleaning it out and applying fresh thermal paste (Arctic Silver #5 is recommended) should fix that, but also make sure you have good contact from your heatsink to GPU.

I've had dozens of these systems and when the cooling system is working well you'll see the GPU running about 10c degrees cooler then the CPU. If the GPU runs hotter, this usually means you have poor thermal conduction of heat from the chip to the heatsink. Sometimes when it's assembled if the person isn't careful, the cooling pad for the gpu can become misaligned and not seat firmly on the chip. The cpu pad is held in place firmly by four screws, but the gpu pad just kinda hovers over the chip with two very weak metal brackets holding it in place, so if it's not in good contact before installing the brackets, you'll never get good heat conduction.

It's also very important that you get this problem under control as these nVidia chips are well known to fail, but if properly cooled, they can last much longer.

ps. I'd also avoid unnecessary heating/cooling cycles, they tend to stress the part of the chip that can fail.