new life to my T60! *pics*

[BKthink]

I'd like to report in on my recent T60 upgrade.

Started with a 14.1" T60/T2500/ATI X1400/WD Blue HDD/WinXP Pro that I bought new a bunch of years ago.

Swapped in a FireGL V5250 T60p board and T7600 CPU, T61p heatsink/fan, 256GB Samsung 830 SSD and Win7 Pro 64-bit.

(Also added a third WLAN antenna in the WWAN blanking cap area of the screen, but I still need to install the Intel 4965AGN card and modified BIOS).

This was the first time I've mucked around inside a notebook and for the most part everything went smoothly. The LCD bezel was a bear, but that's par for the course. I ran it for a few days with my former WD Blue HDD + XP and the upgraded hardware gave a nice little performance boost. Operating temps (TPfancontrol) actually went down. The best surprise was a clean install of Win7 Pro on the new SSD. Wow - it's a whole new computer!

Some before/after benchmarks shown below. So far I'm just running the default drivers that Win7 found, but I understand that more optimal ones are out there for key hardware.

I came thiiiiiis close to using a more capable T61 board, but decided that I wanted to keep IR port.

Special thanks to TuuS for providing great parts/support and bmwman91 for his help on the heatsink!

BK

[TuuS]

Great job, and I'm sure you'll agree that you'll never look at this thinkpad as you did before, it's now a member of the family and you've acquired the skills to fix and/or upgrade anything that could arise. I'm pleased to have been able to help, and thank you for sharing


I love reading success stories like this!


ps. pretty impressive numbers for a T60 too

[BKthink]

Couldn't agree more - now it's "mine". Still giddy about the whole thing!

I updated the chipset and SATA drivers with the current offerings from Intel for a small boost. Updated drivers = red bars in the Samsung SSD Magician benchmark.

BK

[TuuS]

Any opinions on the before/after of the T61p heatsink mod?

I know this has been covered a lot in other posts, but never hurts to get more feedback. My experience is you won't see a huge difference in idle temps because the fan will still kick-in at the same temp, but you will see a huge difference when under load.

[BKthink]

Unfortunatley I changed all the hardware at once, so it's hard to draw comparisons about the heatsinks/temps.

I installed TPfancontrol just before the T60 went under the knife to get quick a baseline. The idle CPU/GPU temps were roughly 60+/70+.

After the hardware swap and still running XP, the idle temps were down just a couple of degrees.

Changing over to Win7 Pro brought a definite drop to the 50/60 range for CPU/GPU respectively (see screenshot above). Maybe fewer processes running in the clean install of Win7?? With TPfancontrol I now get a few minutes of no fan, GPU inches up to 65, fan kicks in for a moment to bring the temp down, fan shuts off, etc. With light use it's borderline fanless operation.

I think the lowest fan RPM is higher with my new hardware? Fan noise is more apparent than I recall, but that's just my recollection.

But I think you are correct that the T61p heatsink removes the heat more rapidly and is capable of maintaining a lower ceiling. Still need to really load test the processors and record what happens. With the fan off the silence is golden!

BK

[BKthink]

Just as a point of reference...

I ran the furmark "burn in" function for 15min. After about 10min the GPU temp leveled off at 85-86C, which seems acceptable. Still running whatever default video drivers Win7 loaded at install.

With my current setup the fan apparetnly has only three states: 0rpm, ~3000rpm and ~3500rpm.

BK

[TuuS]

Try hitting the "spacebar" on your keyboard during the test, this will disable the "furry donut" on the screen, which is only necessary to stress highend desktop (gaming rigs). You can easily run any laptop gpu of this era at full cap without it and will provide for a smoother more stable test.

I'd say the temps you're seeing are typical of an ATI fireGL, but try running TPfancontrol in manual mode during the test on speed 7. The other modes either "bios" where tpfc only monitors, or "smart" where it controls the speeds both tend to be less concerned with GPU temps then CPU, but in manual mode you should get maximum cooling through the whole process, in the other modes it may slow the fan if the cpu is cool even if the gpu isn't. When your temps reach the 80s, the mode may automatically switch from manual, which is to avoid causing any harm by user input.

The most important test in regards to your cooling system is how fast the GPU temps recover when the stress test is ended. In manual mode they should quickly reduce near idle temps, if they do not, then you may have poor thermal conduction from your GPU to the heatsink which could be caused by the fitting of the heatsink or the thermal paste. I think we already established your cooling system is working efficiently, but this information is offered for the many others who may be reading this.

ps. thanks for sharing

[BKthink]

Great tip with the spacebar to delete the fury donut and raise the fps!

Just for giggles I did the test again with TPfancontrol in Manual mode at 7 and ran the no-fur burn-in for 15min. GPU rose from 59C to 76C within a few minutes and then held constant for the duration. After ending the test it took about 60sec for the temp to get back down (mostly) to the start point.

At manual fan setting #7 I can actually get ~4400rpm out of the fan.

BK

[bmwman91]

Awesome, glad to see that it is all working out for you!

Also, thanks for the special BMW transmission input shaft grease. The motor is in the car and I am just waiting for some beefed up injectors & custom chip!

[BKthink]

...The motor is in the car and I am just waiting for some beefed up injectors & custom chip!