Thinkpads Forum

I have a T601 Frankenpad with failing nVidia GPU. I was able to source a T61 42W7648 motherboard with integrated graphics only on Aliexpress, but it came without a fan. My machine has the 42W2820 heatsink for the discrete GPU, and per the HMM the integrated graphics model takes a 42W2821. I haven't been able to find one in the usual places, and the few photos I've seen all look substantially the same as what I already have -- though I haven't found a photo that I 100% believe is the 42W2821.

Is it safe to use the dGPU fan on the iGPU motherboard? I assume it ought to be, the part that would connect to the dGPU would just hang over the part of the PCB where is isn't, but figured I should ask before trying. I'm wondering if the different FRUs are the same physical part, but the dGPU FRU has a thermal pad installed, or something like that.

Should I even be bothering with that, or should I go the T500/W500 fan route instead?

That dGPU fan works perfectly on iGPU (but not the other way around).
Make sure to clean up and refresh the thermal paste.
Don't forget to apply Middleton's BIOS.

Well looking for a T61 mobo you could post in here first.
I still have a couple of T61 dGPU mobos up for sale.

Following up, I put Middleton's BIOS on today and swapped over the T7200 CPU + DGPU fansink from my old motherboard. Everything is working great, the intermittent flashing of corrupt graphics is gone, and it's running silent and cool under light load. The GPU on the old board was around 60-70C at all times, which made the fan blast constantly, and replacing the thermal pad/paste did nothing to help.

ieure wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 25, 2020 4:34 pm

Should I even be bothering with that, or should I go the T500/W500 fan route instead?

Heatsinks aside, I recall researching the same matter aways back and and discovering the latter T400 era (and T500 era, I'd surmise) Furukawa fan models to be more durable than the Toshiba ones. (I forget the FRU)