Thinkpads Forum

Hello a few days ago I bought a used T60 with a fan error I haven't received the laptop yet so I haven't been able to open it up. The model is a 2623D6U. should I wait until I open it up to see if I need a new fan or go ahead and order a fan now? would it be wise to buy a T500 heatsink and fan combo? Thanks

an new or good used T60p heatsink from ebay. The difference is the northbridge and GPU plate is flat, and the GPU area has extra copper on top, also the CPU area also have 2 extra pieces of copper on both sides of heatpipe.

T500 & W500 heatsink will not fit right and let alone the fan as well. What I did is use heatsink thermal pad for northbridge only and .5mm copper shim for GPU. Fix the clamp's fingers so they press down more firmly.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection.

would something like this work? http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-Thin ... Swd0BV7aPD

This fits all 14.1, 15" and 15.4" T60.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Orig-IBM-Lenovo- ... Swqu9VK3OI

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

ok thanks so is that heatsink and fan all I need? you said something about a copper shim?

For best cooling reasons instead of original GPU thermal pad.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

how would I obtain the shim and mount it? does it need thermal paste?

There are many different opinions on this subject, but IMO I don't recommend using shims, the reason being that you create an additional barrier for the heat to cross in order to transfer to the heatsink and the thermal paste or in the T60 design a thermal pad (which is a poor design for a gpu) is a barrier. A well fitted metal heatsink directly on the chips die is best, with thermal paste used to assure contact with all of the chip. Keep in mind you're using a stamped metal heatsink that is not as perfect as a milled surface when is also imperfect, hence the need for the paste.

In my opinion a T61p heatsink is the best option, it has a much larger heatsink, three heatpipes and is designed to use thermal paste, not a thermal pad and allows the ATI and CPU to run much cooler. There is also a necessary mod required on the heatsink retainer, but that is simple to do. If you are going to use the T60 ATI fan I recommend removing the pad and apply paste to the gpu die only. Some have used paste on the video ram chips too, but be careful you don't want any overspread on these ram chips and if you decide to try that I'd use it very sparingly. There are also two different heatsinks, one has a shorter heatpipe that only reaches one of the radiators and the improved version it reaches both. One advantage to the T60 heatsink is there are very cheap generic fans available that usually work pretty well, but can require some effort to get them properly aligned so they don't rub, but you can get just the fan for a very low price, it varies but I'd say certainly under $10. For the T61p heatsink, I get $25 for them and every one has been tested not only to assure the fan is working, but also the heatsink and heatpipes because for inexplicable reasons some just don't seem to work efficiently. You might find them for less, and since I struggle to keep enough on hand for my T60>61 upgrade kits I don't advertise the fans alone, but if you'd like a well tested fan and help doing the mod you can feel free to PM me, otherwise good luck and I hope I gave you some more thoughts to consider. Happy thinkpadding.

TuuS, T60/R60 heatsinks are not same as R/T61 series heatsinks due to height differences for both northbridge and GPU silicon dies. R61/T61 fans can be replaced with one from T500/W500 heatsink for improved performance fyi.

Orginally both GPU and northbridge were used with thermal pads but northbridge does not need much and is perfectly fine with a pad and a copper shim with some thermal grease both sides on GPU to make up for gap that thermal pad was used to be.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

Personally, I use a W500 heat sink and a few other mods which keep my T60 at a temperature of 45°C during idle and 55°C during stress testing. You can read more about it here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=114717