Thinkpads Forum

Hey,

Just got my T60 today.
Specs are Core duo 1,83GHz, 1GB RAM, 100GB 7200 HDD, X1300.

First, I was very impressed with the build quality. The new silver buttons aren't exactly impressive, but the overall ruggedness of the case sure is-

However, I was really surprised about how much noise this thing makes. My T43 was somewhat annoying, but this T60 beats it!
The fan is ALWAYS on, blasting away at 3000rpms.
I checked the temps in tpfancontrol, and the GPU turns out to be over 60 degrees celcius - and this is always the case. It's always around 20 degrees celcius hotter than the CPU.

Do I have a faulty T60? It seems that the hot GPU is triggering the fan. Or is this normal?

Those temperature readings are pretty standard for a Core duo T60 - I have a 2 GHz core duo and it runs at identical temperatures (though the CPU runs 1-2C hotter on the mini dock at workplace). The fan does come on but atleast in my case it is not noisy to disturb me. I know fan noise is a subjective issue and I do have sensitive ears - the fact is I cant hear the fans over ambient sounds in the room. In the night when the house is silent I can hear it and it occasionally bothers me, but nothing to worry about.

I guess you have to live with the constantly on fan, many others have reported the same; infact core 2 duo machines run even hotter (CPU). You should note that the machine does not get hot at all - actually only slightly warm even during more than moderate usage, and that is more important than fan noise. If you use resource hungry programs like adobe or matlab, you'll see that the CPU will touch 50C and the fan speed does not increase much ... and the machine is still not warm to touch. I think the fan speeds in T60 were set in the BIOS keeping this in mind.

That said, if someone finds a way (apart from underclocking and manually adjusting fan speeds) to make the system run even cooler (solutions do not include operating the laptop inside a deep freezer), I am all ears!

My GPU usually hangs around 60-65 when I'm not doing a whole heck of a lot, and the fan does run at 3000 or more RPM's when it's running, which is prolly part of the problem - the fan shuts all the way off when it's done with a cooling everything below a threshold.

My graphics card is an ATI, and ATI's do have a tendency to run warmly, in my experience.

Edit: Heh, beaten. Pretty much what he said!