Thinkpads Forum

I have a T61p which spends 90% of its life in a mini-dock running off mains power.

On those occassions when I take it out of the dock the base seems very hot and I'm not sure it's alway been like that.

I'm talking about the area on the base on machine near the battery and probably more noticeable on the left hand side of machine (as viewed if you were typing on the keyboard).

How hot ? Not hot enough to burn but like fresh black coffee in thin paper cup ... really quite warm.

The battery is getting close to the end of its life (I'm getting the "Message Centre" messages about "battery life is critical") and the battery is fairly warm but the main heat seems to be in the actual machine.

Is this something I should be worried about.

(FWIW the machine had a brand new mother board approx 1 year ago and so the innards got well cleaned out then so I don't think we're just talking about 4 years of dust.)

My experience has been that docked ThinkPads run hotter in general.

Secondly, what CPU do you have in there? Do you have ThinkPad Fan Control installed?

Thank for your reply.

The processor is described as :

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20Ghz

FWIW the machine lives in a room which is reasonably cool (10-20 celsius / 50-70 fahrenheit) almost all the time.

I don't have any fan control installed that I'm aware of. Is this the one you were referring to http://sourceforge.net/projects/tp4xfancontrol/ ?

I had heard talk of fan controls which I thought were to reduce fan noise rather than to increase cooling - from what you say I take it that it could be used to run at a cooler temperature ? Would be interested to know.

Just noticed that the piece of software I linked to (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tp4xfancontrol/) is only for T4x machines. I have a T61p - is there something equivalent ?

Try here and scroll down to the download area:

http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html

The utility will allow additional control of the fan speeds and also show you the chip temperatures.

Motherboard replacement also involves new thermal compound on the heatsink/fan unit. It's possible that inferior compound or technique was used, causing elevated chip temps and less exhausted heat 1yr later. If the CPU is in fact running hot, it might be worthwhile to re-do the thermal compound to address the problem at the source.

BK

I have a backup laptop that has just started running hot after months of being fine. My impression is that when a laptop does this, either the fan is not working properly or the innards of the system are clogged with dust. I don't know how to clean one of these things.

Thanks for the information so far.

I have now installed TPFanControl but I have to say I can't make much of the comments in the TPFanControl.ini. I haven't touched that file and as the author of TPFanControl says it's intended for a T61 (which is what I have) I hope it's OK for me.

Initially I'm more interested in finding out whether it's too hot rather than doing anything about it. I'm also not troubled by fan noise but I would like to make sure that computer and the battery are running at an optimal temperature.

Here are a couple of screen shots taken approx ten minutes apart:
First:

Second:


Would be grateful for any comments.

@trudyjh - thanks for your comments. What you say about dust sounds reasonable even though the machine was opened up and cleaned about 12 months ago. I think a can of compressed air needs to go on the shopping list before this goes much further to see if giving it a dust out will help. Don't quite understand why blowing compressed air in will help - does the dust actually come out ? Seems more like it would get blown around inside - anyway willing to give it a go as it sounds logical.

You've got to remove the keyboard and then clean the fan with compressed air.

Make sure to stick a toothpick or a small screwdriver between the blades so the fan doesn't spin out of control.