My Frankenpad Conversion and Heat Sink Mods [+PICS]

[bmwman91]

I am using RMClock to control VCore. Ignore its thermal readings since they seem inaccurate and use tpfancontrol for thermal measurements.

[Backslashnl1]

Also, what is it that makes the T500 fan quiterer? Is it the fan engine/brush noise? Or is it the air venting that is quiterer? Whatever it is, The T61p fan is just so much quiteter compared to any T4x, and insanely more quiet compared to my T420s.

I think it is mainly the T500 fan engine/brush noise. I made a sound record of both the T61 integrated and T500 discrete fan, both running on full speed (± 2900 rpm). I uploaded them both so you can compare the sound:

T61 fan sound record
T500 fan sound record
You should turn up the volume to hear it well. I prefer the sound of the T500 fan, which is in my opinion less annoying

[Rose]

Backslashnl1; yes, I found your thread yesterday and listened to the sounds and concur, but was that a T61 with integrated or discrete?

[Backslashnl1]

I mentioned in the post above; T61 integrated fan.

[Rose]

I mentioned in the post above; T61 integrated fan.

Oh, sorry about that. Just newly awake over here.

Anyway, the T61 integrated and T61p have different fans. Not just the heatsink. Atleast when looking on my fans. Now i still have such a fan, but that was the one i cut to pieces. =D

[bmwman91]

I have appended some GPU tweaking information to the original post in this thread. There are details about drivers and overclocking in there now. Enjoy!

[Thrakath]

Chico,

be careful when overclocking the Nvidia. Your Chip runs cool, that´s perfect and you achieve exactly my OC settings that i had with my T61. After one year of O/c (3,5 years of life) it started having fancy screen colors that i diagnosed as Nvidia Bug. When i replaced the Nvidia MB i saw that one corner of the graphics ram melted down so it was severly overheating because of the O/C. So i assembled again and indeed the Lenovo Recovery Doctor diagnosed a Video Ram failure instead of GPU.

So try to find some solution like a small heatspreader on the Ram, it will not produce a lot of heat...and i wish more luck than i had!

Ciaociao
Tobi

Edith: AFAIR you will find the RAM below the Wifi Card...

[Tasurinchi]

Small contribution from my side. I got a T61p fan from TuuS and I've installed it in my T60p. Since I had no tools to file the T60p clip I installed the fan in the "T61" way, using the retainers. As TuuS mentioned in his post here before, you can't use the right lower screw, but I'm quite sure the keyboard will hold it in place.

I'm using Ubuntu 12.4 on this T60p and I don't know of a reliable program to read temperatures. "Xsensors" is showing 16 temp sensors and the the first two (hopefully the CPU ) is saying 62°C which seems pretty high compared with the feeling on the keyboard, which is quite cool actually. But this is purely my feeling, without any scientific prove. Right now, after almost three hours of browsing the keyboard part over the CPU feels as warm as the right hand side of the palmrest, where the HD is.

I have no Winxx licenses around, maybe I should try the Win8 and install TPfan control... If some Linux crack is reading this I'll be happy for any hint regarding temp monitoring...

Good night!

[iwishiwasinwhistler]

tpfanco works well in Ubuntu.

It's based on the original tp-fan work by Sebastian Urban but is updated and has packages ready built for ubuntu. You'll find it on the google code pages and it's a breeze to install. The gui is excellent.

I'm not sure how accurate the temp monitoring is but I've used it for years without problems and loved the simplicity and control it brings. Definitely one of my favourite pieces of software.

[Tasurinchi]

tpfanco works well in Ubuntu.

Thanks... will give it a try. I'm quite curious to see how the GPU temps develop. Will try running a HD movie for a while...

[iwishiwasinwhistler]

IIRC when first installed the sensors are only labelled numerically. If you'd like to know which sensor applies to your CPU, GPU, etc... then ThinkWiki should give you a few clues....

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Thermal_S ... inkPad_T60

....and once you know which is which tpfanco should allow you to edit the numbers and label them as "GPU" "CPU" or whatever you'd like.

[Backslashnl1]

3 weeks ago I installed the 45N4592 (discrete) heatsink in my T61 FrankenPad. It is allmost a straight swap in, you only need to remove 3 small fins on the top.

However, after boot up I noticed some keys of my keyboard not working.
It were some keys in the middle, the T, Y, G, etc. I figured I didnt install the connector firmly. So I reopened the laptop, reattached the keyboard connector and booted the T61. However, after the keyboard reinstall even more keys where disfunctional. Now half of the keyboard doesn't work... I've ordered a new (NNB) keyboard, as the damage seems to be permanent.

Besides this, the cooling performance was quite good. The first 40 minutes when the T61 was turned on, the fan didn't even had to spin to cool it down. Idle temperature of the cpu was around 40C.

However, 3 weeks later, the T500 heatsink performance isn't any better than it was with the T61 heatsink. Idle temp during the first 10 minutes is between 40-50C, Stressed it can climb up to 75C. Fan spins much more often now, sometimes for 10-15 minutes.

I post this as a warning for you guys who are considering to do the T500 heatsink mod into a T6x. The T500 heatsink damaged my keyboard and its performance isn't any better than the T61 heatsink. It is not a perfect fit, it's a few mm thicker. Its only advantage over the T61 heatsink is that it produces a less annoying noise when the fan spins.

The ultimate combo is a T61 discrete graphics heatsink with the T500 fan installed, just like bmwman91 did. I would advise against installing the T500 heatsink in a T6x system. At the time my new keyboard arives I will perform the same mod as bmwman91 did.

[Tasurinchi]

Thanks for the feedback. I will also keep an eye on my keyboard. Although there is no flex produced by the heatsink, part of the keyboard is holding the lower part of the T61p clip on place. Hopefully it will have no long term impact on it...

[Vonfeffer]

Great job, really, I'm amazed, but isn't there a problem when you use a processor that requires more power than the motherboard was designed to deliver? I mean, when you use a power supply that can deliver a lower watts capacity than the equipment you are connecting it to, the power supply gets very very hot... What about this difference between the wattage of the P9500 (35W) and the X9000 (44W) couldn't it burn up the motherboard or at least reduce it's life? I ask because I was thinking of doing this upgrade too. So is there anybody out there who can tell up to how much power is this MOBO capable of?

Thanks guys!

PS: Here is a link to a web site which sells the T61 schematics: http://www.laptops-schematics.com/lenov ... -schematic

[Tasurinchi]

....and once you know which is which tpfanco should allow you to edit the numbers and label them as "GPU" "CPU" or whatever you'd like.

Thanks for the link! According to Wiki, sensor 1 is the CPU and sensor 4 the GPU, so far Tpfanco and Xsensors are reporting the same temps. CPU is at 48°C (118°F) and GPU is around 62°C (144°F) after 10 minutes of internet use.

The latter seems quite high...

[Tasurinchi]

Since I don't know of a specific software to stress the graphic card, I let a 1080p movie (Tron Legacy ) run on continuous mode for about three hours. GPU temp reach a max of 75°C and the CPU 64°C

[TuuS]

Since I don't know of a specific software to stress the graphic card, I let a 1080p movie (Tron Legacy ) run on continuous mode for about three hours. GPU temp reach a max of 75°C and the CPU 64°C

Furmark is a good freeware app to test your GPU. I've found with an efficient cooling system these nVidia chips will run in the low 70s when stressed. With extreme use temps reaching the 80s isn't something that indicates a problem, but if it doesn't cool back down fast then I'd be concerned. When idle they usually run cooler then the CPU by a few degrees.

[Tasurinchi]

Furmark is a good freeware app to test your GPU

Thanks for the hint! I've installed it using Wine and run a 20 minutes burn-in test at full UXGA resolution for 26 minutes. GPU Temp reached 80°C! But it cooled down back to 67 after a couple of seconds (it drop from 80°C to 73°C in a matter of 3 seconds)

When idle they usually run cooler then the CPU by a few degrees.

Well, my T60p has the 256MB ATI FireGL V5200 GPU, and it's always about 10°C higher than the CPU

[TuuS]

The ATI graphics do tend to run hotter then the nVidia from what I've seen. There is also some speculation that the sensor readings are off on the ATI, but I don't know if this has been proven or not. The important thing is that the cooling system recovers to idle temps quickly, so I think you should be fine.

[Tasurinchi]

The important thing is that the cooling system recovers to idle temps quickly, so I think you should be fine.

Of course! I forgot to add in my previous post that I consider the mod to be a success.

[Backslashnl1]

Today I installed the T500 fan into the T61 discrete heatsink. Many thanks to bmwman91 for his detailed photo's and explanation in his opening post
After installation everything seemed to be fine. I also installed a new keyboard because my previous one was broken, so I took the opportunity to upgrade it to a NNB version (previous one was a ALPS) which is a small but appreciable upgrade.

It ran about 15 minutes without problems, but suddenly went straight into standby. I immediately got a flashback to my random shutdown problems with my previous FrankenPad. At that time I blaimed the motherboard, but now I think it was the T61 discrete heatsink + fan I had. The only strange thing is that this T61 discrete heatsink gave me no problems in my T60 config. (This means I have a spare 42W7872 lying in the attic )

Fortunate I also had a T61 integrated heatsink laying around, which gave me no problems with this FrankenPad before the T500 heatsink installation. I installed the T500 fan in this T61 integrated heatsink and so far everything seems to be fine.
Also, the T500 fan was a perfect swap into the T61 integrated heatsink. Perhaps my T61 discrete heatsink is an older revision.

Anyone who is considering this mod I advise to use a discrete heatsink only if you have discrete graphics. If you have integrated graphics, use the integrated fan. This works best in my experience.

[iwishiwasinwhistler]

3 weeks ago I installed the 45N4592 (discrete) heatsink in my T61 FrankenPad. It is allmost a straight swap in, you only need to remove 3 small fins on the top.

However, after boot up I noticed some keys of my keyboard not working.
It were some keys in the middle, the T, Y, G, etc. I figured I didnt install the connector firmly. So I reopened the laptop, reattached the keyboard connector and booted the T61. However, after the keyboard reinstall even more keys where disfunctional. Now half of the keyboard doesn't work... I've ordered a new (NNB) keyboard, as the damage seems to be permanent.

Besides this, the cooling performance was quite good. The first 40 minutes when the T61 was turned on, the fan didn't even had to spin to cool it down. Idle temperature of the cpu was around 40C.

However, 3 weeks later, the T500 heatsink performance isn't any better than it was with the T61 heatsink. Idle temp during the first 10 minutes is between 40-50C, Stressed it can climb up to 75C. Fan spins much more often now, sometimes for 10-15 minutes.

I post this as a warning for you guys who are considering to do the T500 heatsink mod into a T6x. The T500 heatsink damaged my keyboard and its performance isn't any better than the T61 heatsink. It is not a perfect fit, it's a few mm thicker. Its only advantage over the T61 heatsink is that it produces a less annoying noise when the fan spins.

The ultimate combo is a T61 discrete graphics heatsink with the T500 fan installed, just like bmwman91 did. I would advise against installing the T500 heatsink in a T6x system. At the time my new keyboard arives I will perform the same mod as bmwman91 did.

I'm glad you finally managed to get the problem with the bulging keyboard sorted. Your post got me thinking as I (think) I have exactly the same setup as you were trying and have not encountered the keyboard issues you've had. I decided to revisit my T61 Frankenpad build and whilst doing it carry out another modification which may be of interest to other Thinkpadders (I'll concentrate on the keyboard issue here and detail the other mod in it's own thread later as I don't have much time now).

To be clear I use a T60p 15" chassis, QXGA flexview, T61 intel integrated graphics with a 45N4592 discrete fan from a T500. I didn't have a problem with the keyboard distorting and keys not working when I put it together. It all seemed to go together smoothly and work well. Your post encouraged me to look back with a critical eye for my own peace of mind.

When installed there appeared to be no distortion of the NMB keyboard to the naked eye. Putting a straight edge across the top of the keyboard showed what seemed to be a tiny, tiny, rise above the heatsink area but it was still difficult to be sure. On disassembly I could lay the straight edge across the chassis and over the GPU clamp to get a much more accurate assessment. There was indeed a small lift above the GPU section. I guess I'd never noticed this because with the keyboard on it was imperceptible to the eye or in use. The keyboard worked perfectly and it was certainly not touching the screen. Why Backslahnl1 got problems with his and mine seemed to go together better without problems I couldn't tell you. Maybe I was just lucky.

Anyway, just as bmwman91 found with his (different, NVidia) setup, I had no problems and no permanent deformation of my keyboard. I think I could have carried on using it as it was. For my own peace of mind I decided to sort it out and filed down the aluminium block on the heatsink to allow the keyboard to sit dead flat. A tip if you decide to do this is to put some tape on the heatsink over the fan vents and fan inlet. In fact I taped the whole area except for the part I was working on as it was easy to do and I was paranoid about stray filings. You REALLY don't want little bits of metal floating around inside your pride and joy when you put it all back together. The alu is fairly soft and didn't take me long to remove enough carefully with a hand file. After a VERY thorough cleanup with a vacuum cleaner, taking all the tape off and triple checking it was clean it all went back together easily and the straight edge confirms it's now perfect.

I'm very pleased with it. For my own peace of mind I'm glad I went back to it. Thanks to Backslashnl1 for posting his experiences which even with the same setup and for whatever reason seemed much worse than mine but it encouraged me to check.

[TuuS]

Anyone who is considering this mod I advise to use a discrete heatsink only if you have discrete graphics. If you have integrated graphics, use the integrated fan.

I've found the discrete heatsink works exceptionally well on the integrated system, but you do need to remove the grey thermal pad from the chipset platform and use arctic silver instead, and you will also need to do some careful fitting to make sure the platform seats flush.

However if anyone wants either integrated or discrete fans for a T61/T61p, I have them both.

[miro_gt]

I see you've put some work in that thing, lol, good job. Here's couple things that will help you out further:

- use ThrottleStop instead of RMClock. The reason is the first uses less CPU to operate and in general does the job a bit better. I can give you approximate voltages for VID if you want to clock that x9000 higher. You can go up to about 3.2GHz before start hitting close to 100 deg C. Read my post in here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=102163 I run 2.8GHz at 1.075V on one and 1.050V on the other laptop in my sig (one is not the best spec from the production chips while the other is)

- in RivaTuner -> go to Power User, expand RivaTuner\overclocking\global, and write value 100 where it says MaxClockLimit. This will give you more space on the bars when you overclock, so indeed you can put higher clocks than the maximum 600/900 that you see right now. I run 600 core and 950 memory for stability in gaming, but I can go higher depending on the particular software in use.

- in TPfanControl -> use setting of 64 when temps get past say 70 deg C. This will spin the fan to its maximum ~4600rpm, so the cooling gets better. You will have to alter the stock profile in smart mode big time as it is preset for the most quiet operation and not for the most cooling when needed. But in general keeping your laptop on some stands will give you couple degrees benefit as well. Also if you want to go hardcore, you can drill some holes on the besel right on top of the volume buttons so that cooler air gets sucked in, thus your heatsink works better.

P.S. nice SSD .. I need to buy me one of those too, cough .. 512GB .. cough

[bmwman91]

Thanks for the tips miro_gt!

I will play around with that stuff. The overclocks might just be temporary though...I would hate to shorten the life of this thing by getting things too hot! For now, the fan stays nice and quiet with things set to stock / undervolted. Do you know of any way to undervolt the GPU?

[miro_gt]

for the GPU - yes, but it's not required, and it's not so easy too. If you undervolt it you can not overclock it, so it's kind of pointless. If you keep stock frequencies then it wont heat up so much. But it is also slow.

The good thing in the whole story is that you can spin your fan to max with the 64 setting in TPFanControl, and that's priceless. At full continues load on my CPU and overclocked GPU (working on max as well) my laptop maxes out under 80 deg C (76 to 78, or something like that, depending on the room temperature).

for testing, use LinX to load the CPU. This is Intels own stability testing software and it would heat up the CPU more than using Orthos, thus is better for testing purposes. For the GPU - just play some game, heh. I do Team Fortress 2 through Steam, it's free and it helped me sort out a BSOD from time to time after 2 hours of play or more, thus I lowered the core from 625 to 600MHz and no more problems. But for CAD work I can do higher clock as it's not so intense all the time.

I haven't red all posts in here, but I saw somewhere about TPFanControl not showing correct temperature for the GPU. You can fix that with the sensor offset setting in the .ini file. Mine was showing the same thing and I ended up putting 3 degree correction there so that fixed it.

EDIT: I run my GPU overclocked since I bought the laptop pretty much, so pushing 5th year already

[Kasm279]

I am using RMClock to control VCore. Ignore its thermal readings since they seem inaccurate and use tpfancontrol for thermal measurements.

RMClock and tpfancontrol read two different sets of sensors. RMclock reads the CPU's internal diodes while Tpfancontrol reads the thermal diode under the CPU socket.

[afraidfuture]

3 weeks ago I installed the 45N4592 (discrete) heatsink in my T61 FrankenPad. It is allmost a straight swap in, you only need to remove 3 small fins on the top.

However, after boot up I noticed some keys of my keyboard not working.
It were some keys in the middle, the T, Y, G, etc. I figured I didnt install the connector firmly. So I reopened the laptop, reattached the keyboard connector and booted the T61. However, after the keyboard reinstall even more keys where disfunctional. Now half of the keyboard doesn't work... I've ordered a new (NNB) keyboard, as the damage seems to be permanent.

Besides this, the cooling performance was quite good. The first 40 minutes when the T61 was turned on, the fan didn't even had to spin to cool it down. Idle temperature of the cpu was around 40C.

However, 3 weeks later, the T500 heatsink performance isn't any better than it was with the T61 heatsink. Idle temp during the first 10 minutes is between 40-50C, Stressed it can climb up to 75C. Fan spins much more often now, sometimes for 10-15 minutes.

I post this as a warning for you guys who are considering to do the T500 heatsink mod into a T6x. The T500 heatsink damaged my keyboard and its performance isn't any better than the T61 heatsink. It is not a perfect fit, it's a few mm thicker. Its only advantage over the T61 heatsink is that it produces a less annoying noise when the fan spins.

The ultimate combo is a T61 discrete graphics heatsink with the T500 fan installed, just like bmwman91 did. I would advise against installing the T500 heatsink in a T6x system. At the time my new keyboard arives I will perform the same mod as bmwman91 did.

Why did I find out this thread so late, I was doing the modification exactly the way as "The ultimate combo is a T61 discrete graphics heatsink with the T500 fan installed, just like bmwman91 did. " , Now I am very happy regarding the heat performance on my old T60P machine(14.1 inch, T7600, V5250), under TPFANCONTROL CPU: 53, GPU:67 under light loading, fan is less than 3000, the T500 fan is amazing quiet compare to T61's, and I think it should be even better than T60p original fans as well.

The whole install process is quite straight forward, like previous post said, everything just dropped in except the presser above GPU, you need to file a little bit. Sorry for my crappy English, Thanks for Tuus and bmwman91, my old but classic t60p with standard 4:3 screen is becoming quiet and cool all over again.

[WalkGood]

Why did I find out this thread so late, I was doing the modification exactly the way as "The ultimate combo is a T61 discrete graphics heatsink with the T500 fan installed, just like bmwman91 did. " , Now I am very happy regarding the heat performance on my old T60P machine(14.1 inch, T7600, V5250), under TPFANCONTROL CPU: 53, GPU:67 under light loading, fan is less than 3000, the T500 fan is amazing quiet compare to T61's, and I think it should be even better than T60p original fans as well.

The whole install process is quite straight forward, like previous post said, everything just dropped in except the presser above GPU, you need to file a little bit. Sorry for my crappy English, Thanks for Tuus and bmwman91, my old but classic t60p with standard 4:3 screen is becoming quiet and cool all over again.

Curious how this has been going for you since the fan upgrade? I am contemplating this on my own T60p 14.1 laptop. Been having some high temp in the GPU. Need to clean and re-apply the thermal paste first and see if that does the trick.

But looking ahead to possibly upgrading the fan assembly, where did you buy your parts and approx how much did it cost you?

Thanks!

[SaskFellow]

For the 14.1" 16:10 lappies, there is an updated cooler available, which doesn't need any modification in order to fit. They are not so cheap, but they do have the 'updated' fan installed as well. With a T9300 installed, and TPFC running in smart mode, the cpu is at 55C with the fan off, and the GPU is at 54C.

Switch to BIOS mode, the fan revs up to 3260RPM and it's barely audible, GPU instantly drops to 48C and the CPU drops to 49C, the ambient is 20C.

Letting it idle further gets me the following temperatures:

CPU: 47
APS: 38
CRD: 30
GPU: 45
No5: 33
Bat: 31
Bus: 33
PCI: 40
PWR: 37

BIOS mode, fan off, all temps in Celcius, Vista Business x86.

Manually putting the fan to mode 7, has it max out at 3700rpm, and it does get kind of loud, but it's air noise, not hideous bearing noise. As well, it does have the 'owl blade' fan, and it really does seem to cut down on the turbulence noise(high pitched), and is just a constant sound.

Smart mode 2, which holds the fan at 2900 rpm, with the cpu temp at/below 39C, is actually very quiet, and the cpu/gpu idle at 39/38C.