Thinkpads Forum

I bought a T61p from ebay 5 or 6 months ago with no knowledge of the disease ridden quadro fx570m chips that they were shipped with. Inevitable mine says 08/01 on it meaning it is and affected model.

Should I sell it while it still works and buy a T5x0 or should I just try to put it out of my mind? How prolific is the issue? Is it really a case of when not if?

If I do decide to hang onto it, what can I do to get the most out of it? I already have a 128GB m4 SSD in it but I've heard talk of a modded BIOS to improve performance. Can someone point me in the right direction?

As for cooling, I've had the keyboard off to clean everything out with canned air but is it generally recommended to redo the thermal paste with something like AS5? I've heard conflicting reports about thermal paste and pads and can't find a concrete answer about what I can and can't replace with decent paste. How should I have tpfancontrol set up to help improve the lifespan of the GPU?

Thanks in advance guys. Apart from the paranoia it's a lovely machine to use.

One other question, even when set to 15, the backlight gets brighter when I plug it in, can I get that brightness on the battery? As it's an older model, the light is starting to get a little dim.

Welcome to the forum!

Panda90uk wrote:I bought a T61p from ebay 5 or 6 months ago with no knowledge of the disease ridden quadro fx570m chips that they were shipped with. Inevitable mine says 08/01 on it meaning it is and affected model.

Should I sell it while it still works and buy a T5x0 or should I just try to put it out of my mind? How prolific is the issue? Is it really a case of when not if?

No reason to panic. If you keep the machine on to avoid the heat cycling, and maintain it running cool using ThinkPad Fan Control, you'll get the most out of it. If and when it dies, just move on to a new(er) laptop.

If I do decide to hang onto it, what can I do to get the most out of it? I already have a 128GB m4 SSD in it but I've heard talk of a modded BIOS to improve performance. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Google for "Middleton's BIOS".

As for cooling, I've had the keyboard off to clean everything out with canned air but is it generally recommended to redo the thermal paste with something like AS5? I've heard conflicting reports about thermal paste and pads and can't find a concrete answer about what I can and can't replace with decent paste. How should I have tpfancontrol set up to help improve the lifespan of the GPU?

You can redo the paste, and the pads are not likely to need replacing if you remove the heatsink carefully. TPFC at stock setting will be just fine.

Thanks in advance guys. Apart from the paranoia it's a lovely machine to use.

One other question, even when set to 15, the backlight gets brighter when I plug it in, can I get that brightness on the battery? As it's an older model, the light is starting to get a little dim.

Go into BIOS>Configuration>Display set it to "high" press F10 to save and exit, you should be done.

Thanks!

I had heard that the heat cycling thing isn't so much between hot and cold but how quickly you let it cool down. Would it make sense to go with a static fan speed that's just always on? I've played with tpfc a fair bit since installing it and I now have n idea what the stock settings are.

Most of the paranoia comes from a friend being unlucky enough to buy a similar laptop which died within weeks.

Panda90uk wrote:Thanks!

I had heard that the heat cycling thing isn't so much between hot and cold but how quickly you let it cool down. Would it make sense to go with a static fan speed that's just always on? I've played with tpfc a fair bit since installing it and I now have n idea what the stock settings are.

Uninstall and re-install. Less than five minutes...

Most of the paranoia comes from a friend being unlucky enough to buy a similar laptop which died within weeks.

"Similar" is the key word here. His board might have been baked after the initial failure, or he might have been just plain unlucky.

Was the defect within nVidia chips real? You bet.

Should you lose sleep over it? Absolutely not. Serves no purpose.

I'm not breaking a sweat while owning a custom built machine based on an "unsafe" board with over $1K invested...you can see it here:

http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 1&t=109360

I think I've seen that laptop on ebay. The things people will do to stick with a classic model. Not that I'd say no to one!

Well, I've installed middleton's BIOS and it took my Windows experience index for the system drive from 7.2 to 7.7. I don't put much stock in that rating system but it's a quick way to prove it's better than it was.

I also went into the BIOS and changed the backlight setting, it's now even brighter than it was when it was plugged in so I'm not sure what was going on. Not complaining though, it's made the weird "sort of like a pressure mark thing" that the ebay seller neglected to mention all but invisible.

Thanks very much for your help, I appreciate it. Fingers crossed I should get plenty more use out of this. For a 5 year old laptop it really flies along with an SSD, and I'm used to an i7 based desktop!

Avoid watching videos (especially high-res ones) or doing anything graphics-intensive on this laptop.