Thinkpads Forum

Wow that CPU stress test is amazing. Pushed me up to 99 C

So I bit the bullet and did a disassemble. I noticed two things which are linked below as pics.

A. I went a little overboard on the artic silver. I have lots of experiences with PC repair but not much thermal grease application. I made sure not to overdo it after cleaning the cpu for a second attempt.

B. The thermal pad on the Northbridge wasn't fully applied. I do not admit fault though because I had to literally add the pad to the very edge of the copper and cut with a razor to achieve full coverage (bad design)

No lockups yet but I'm still waiting. Next is a clean install and possibly BIOS updates (nothing in changelogs were related to my issues). Then out comes the plastic for a new machine.

A. http://i.imgur.com/ZJHGD.jpg
B. http://imgur.com/H80Sx

zenlunatic wrote:A. I went a little overboard on the artic silver.

Boah... That's was really to much.

I normally apply a little bit less than this picture (taken from a T43p):



The end result after spreading the paste could look like this:



The above are old pics, I'm using a little less thermal compound lately, covering about 80% of the die, the heatsink will normally press the paste to cover the rest.

My two cents...

Yeah that is much better than mine.

Good news is that I haven't had any lockups. I really think it was that northbridge thing. They really should have extended that copper further for a less convoluted thermal putty application.

Froze again... time to move on to different hardware. This is quite dissapointing.

Have you tried a Linux Distro? You can burn a CD or install it in an USB stick and run it from there for a while. If it doesn't freeze it may point to a software rather than a hardware issue.

Have you tried running it without the battery?
That may be the culprit.

I've tried without the battery and it still froze.

I haven't recognized any sort of pattern or trigger for the freeze.

Tomorrow I will be able to reinstall to a clean slate for testing purposes.

zenlunatic wrote:Tomorrow I will be able to reinstall to a clean slate for testing purposes.

A Win clean install it's normally a lot of work until you get all drivers and stuff working. I'd really encourage you to try a Linux Distro from a CD or USB stick. You need no installation for that and you can just use internet or try any mini game to see if the Thinkpad freezes... It will be at least a quick method to check if you really have a hardware issue...

My 2 cents only...

I know. Debian Squeeze is all I use on this machine. I can do a clean install of Squeeze tommorow or this weekend.

Suprised no one mentioned the hdd. Going to do more tests on it.