Thinkpads Forum

I've looked into both NHC and the thinkpad fan control utility but i'm still confused as to which one is sure to work with the the T60. Which program do you guys use and how effective is it? I'm pretty new with changing voltages but it seems to me that undervolting will do the most in terms of keeping the temp down and thereby reducing the work the fan needs to do.

dontaskme316 wrote:I've looked into both NHC and the thinkpad fan control utility but i'm still confused as to which one is sure to work with the the T60. Which program do you guys use and how effective is it? I'm pretty new with changing voltages but it seems to me that undervolting will do the most in terms of keeping the temp down and thereby reducing the work the fan needs to do.

Thats the idea. Im using NHC right now.

is there a tutorial somewhere on how to set it up...preferably thinkpad (T60) specific

Undervolting will be most helpful in reducing temperatures when you're connected to AC rather than when you're on battery as the processor would automatically underclock itself on battery (depending on your power profile).

I currently am using the latest beta version of NHC to undervolt.

Index Frequency ID (FID) Voltage ID (VID)
0 6.0x 0.950V
1 7.0x 0.975V
2 8.0x 1.000V
3 9.0x 1.025V
4 10.0x 1.050V
5 11.0x 1.075V
6 12.0x 1.100V

I've been running at these voltages for almost a month now and it is very stable. I'm also noticing about 4-6C lower CPU temps when I'm taxing the CPU.

Enabling PowerPlay through NHC somewhat works (as opposed to it not working at all through Display Properties). It doesn't automatically change to a lower clock-speed unless I enable/disable the option from within NHC a couple of times after switching to battery. I haven't had the opportunity to see if underclocking the graphics card (through NHC) actually improves battery life, but I'm pretty sure that it will.

cheers!

Im going to use those undervolt settings, thanks for posting. One thing though, you can easily underclock the GPU, but only by using Powerplay here, so only to the preset amounts. The problem is that if you want to do anything graphical you will need to turn it back to the high setting in Powerplay.

do you disable the Thinkpad power mangagement program as well as the BIOS control?

dontaskme316 wrote:do you disable the Thinkpad power mangagement program as well as the BIOS control?

You don't have to do that to undervolt or change the PowerPlay settings.

what about for the NHC stuff?

i just installed NHC and kept everything else the same in terms of BIOS and TP Power managment program. The only settings i altered in NHC were the voltages and i enabled the HDD to spin down. Am i doing anything wrong here?

Don't think so.
I personally disabled the CPU power management in the BIOS to prevent the high frequency buzzing noise when on battery. NHC's settings don't depend on whatever is enabled/disabled in the BIOS.

my cpu will not throttle and will stay at 1.83 instead of 1ghz when plugged in. when it is on battery, it will. the settings in NHC are both "Dynamic switching" so i don't understand why it being on AC will disable the speedstep stuff

edit: after staying at 1.83 for a couple of minutes, now it's at 1ghz...maybe i'm just not patient enough plugge in

edit2: umm well now after doing nothing different (i have 2 firefox windows open) the cpu is at 1.83 again plugged in

dontaskme316 wrote:my cpu will not throttle and will stay at 1.83 instead of 1ghz when plugged in. when it is on battery, it will. the settings in NHC are both "Dynamic switching" so i don't understand why it being on AC will disable the speedstep stuff

edit: after staying at 1.83 for a couple of minutes, now it's at 1ghz...maybe i'm just not patient enough plugge in

edit2: umm well now after doing nothing different (i have 2 firefox windows open) the cpu is at 1.83 again plugged in

Dynamic switching is pretty much SpeedStep, it will throttle the CPU as needed for the workload. Two Firefox windows, at the beginning, doesn't load it much...but due to memory use and more websites/downloads visited and initiated, its resource footprint will grow and, hence, the CPU will be clocked to match.

In comparison, I can have about 6-8 tabs open in Opera with it using about 60+ Mb of RAM and throughout this opening of tabs and loading flash, etc, CPU doesn't go beyond 1.50Ghz (my 2007-72A is a T2500 2.0Ghz).

Perhaps Opera is just more friendly on the CPU (though not as equally friendly on the RAM).

let me get this straight, i can disable all BIOS controls of thermal mangament as well as speedstep and battery management...i think thats all there, basically everything in the power section except for the PCI option. After disabling all that, i can use NHC to undervolt/change cpu speed and the Thinkpad Power Manager won't get in the way.

Why'd you want to disable it anyway?
If you disable speedstep, no program would be able to lower your CPU speeds (i.e. undervolting would be almost useless). You shouldn't be disabling anything in the BIOS unless it poses a real problem.

thanks for the info!

i was wondering about the "Dynamic switching". it only seems to be switching between hte highest and lowest multiplier values. the mode is not custom but rather the default dynamic switching selections.

You really don't need to disable anything, simply install NHC, select or make a profile, then apply it. All there is to it.

Various sites can also demand varying abilities from your CPU. Whilst browsing 100 plain HTML sites (very rare) will barely tax your CPU. If, however, you have 25 RSS feeds going with tabs and tabs of high quality streaming media content; that *will* tax your CPU far more than the former case.