Thinkpads Forum

What an incredible difference changing the mounting pressure of the heatsink/fan makes! Here is what I did to shave approximately 50C off of my load temps.

1. Open up laptop and cleaned the chips/surfaces with isopropyl alcohol.

2. Applied Arctic Silver 5

3. Bent the GPU heatpipe pretty severely (about a full half inch to inch) so that it was lower than the CPU heatsink (to get more pressure). Make sure that it is still flat or you will only get partial contact.

4. Took very thick double sided tape. I made three stacks of four little squares of tape. I then put these stacks underneath each of the little metal clips that are supposed to apply pressure to the GPU and northbridge heatsinks. Then I screwed the clips down. This provides incredible mounting pressure, which is what was sorely lacking originally.

5. Used RM clock to undervolt my CPU to 1.0v at 2.5ghz.

6. Overclocked to 681/1015 through trial and error. This is my best result with no artifacts.

7. Used ATI Tool to run its artifact checker, which as far as I know is the most intensive GPU application available.

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/4/4 ... e87803.jpg

With the GPU at full load and the CPU at low load, I can get around 50C on the GPU at full load. This was 94 degrees before the mod. The arctic silver and additional pressure cut of FIFTY DEGREES. That is ridiculous and Lenovo needs to get their act together and get a proper mounting system in place.

I'm sure some of you are asking, "Well, what happens when the CPU is at full load too?"

Stressing the CPU with dual instances or Orthos at the same time as running ATI Tool's artifact tester is incredibly intensive. In fact, it is far more intensive than any 3d game or application will be on your computer.

Results:

http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/4/4 ... 2737e0.jpg

Incredible. Cut off 30C load temps on the GPU. I was hitting 100C before this easy, 10min mod.

Hope this helps someone, and thanks to the author of the "Improve your T60's Heatsink Performance" thread for giving me the idea.

You're nuts!

I wouldn't dare rip the guts out of my thinkpad for something like that. LOL!

do you have any picture of the hardware modifications that you made?
thanks

do you have any picture of the hardware modifications that you made?
thanks

I will get some tomorrow for you. It is really very easy to do and doesn't take much time at all. I believe that the vast majority of overheating problems on the T61 and t61p series could easily be solved by increasing mounting pressure on the GPU.

My GPU is idling at 41 right now @ 680/1015. This is amazing. It never idled below 65 before.

You're nuts!

I wouldn't dare rip the guts out of my thinkpad for something like that. LOL!

Ah, you could handle it. This is nothing though! At one point before I got out of "the game", I had a highly modified phase change cooling system which used a refrigerator compressor charged with r402a gas to supercool my CPU down to -65C. Fun, but it got expensive quick.

Honestly, this is easily something that anyone could pull off.

I need to control my urges to play with hardware! If I don't, before long I just know I am going to try to find a hardware voltage modification to increase the voltage to the GPU.

Does anyone have the datasheets of the motherboard?

Also, one other thing to note is that the GDDR3 chip that the T61 uses is actually a hynix chip rated for 900mhz (1800mhz effective). That is its rated speed, and it is receiving the proper voltage (1.8v), so there is no reason not to run it at 900mhz. In fact, this same chip is used on ATI's latest desktop flagship videocards, where it runs over 1000mhz/2000mhz effective (it has better cooling here though).

I would love to do that mod, but I think it would void the warranty. Perhaps if I still have my machine after the warranty expires, I will play around with it like that.

I am undervolting with RMClock though. It helps drop the temps a bit.

im still hoping to see pictures from this mod if possible. thanks

Has there been any updates on this? By that I mean pictures!

Also, disassembling and applying AS5 alone will not void warranty, correct?

Quadro NVS 140m at 675/950 MHz !



70% performance increase... Just use Noctua NT-H1 thermal and stack some copper part on the heatsink to reach the keyboard base.

It runs 3 hours of Oblivon and more then 4 hours with ATItool scan. Quadro never reachs 75°C. Ambient temp is about 28°C !

What nvidia mobile card is the 140m similar to?

GeForce 8400m GS

Wow! I just basically did what you did ... Except I didn't bend the heat sink tube 1/2" .. I probably bent it 1/8" to 1/4" inch. I'm getting almost the same results, a little better, but I think because I have a T7300.

Lenovo really needs to get their act together. I can't believe changing out the thermal compound and making that adjustment made such a big difference.

Take care when you bent the heatpipe. If it becomes too flat in the bending area, it can't work any more.

Thanks Pascal. Yes, I noticed that it is very sensitive to bending. It flattened a little, but not as much as it was already flatten in another area that was done by Lenovo. I'm going to try and find a temperature thread and see how my T61 compares.

I'm getting (in Celsius)
cpu 58
aps 41
crd 34
gpu 57
bat 23
bat 23
bus 41
pci 46
pwr 44

To compare temps, we need to know fan rpm and what is doing your laptop (idle or running some applications).

My T61 with fan at 2970 RPM, idle :

1 CPU 42°C (0x78)
2 APS 42°C (0x79)
3 PCM 31°C (0x7a)
4 GPU 44°C (0x7b)
5 BAT 50°C (0x7c)
7 BAT 35°C (0x7e)
9 BUS 37°C (0xc0)
10 PCI 47°C (0xc1)
11 PWR 34°C (0xc2)

Hi,

Can you please put up some pictures of your hardware setup?

Thanks

Yep, pictured.

Is Noctua NT-H1 better than AS5, or what TIM is the absolute winner?

They are about the same. I use Noctua now because it last longer before being *dry*.