Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying a Core-architecture Thinkpad with a Flexview/IPS screen, and I'm looking at T60 and T60p.

The T60p offers a UXGA screen, but comes with hotter graphics cards. This is of concern to me, because I don't have much use for the stronger graphics, but would like the laptop to be as quiet at idle (browsing non-demanding websites, mp3 playback, text editor, etc) as possible.

Background on my situation: I am somewhat anal about computer noise (as seen in one of the hard drive threads on the forum). I would most prefer total lack of sound from a computer, but given laptops' situation with their hard drives, I realise this is not fully feasible (barring spinning down when not in use, which I do plan to do). My ideal for a laptop, then, is one that runs fanless at idle.

I currently have a X31 with a Pentium M 1.4 GHz and a A31p with a Pentium 4-M 2.0 GHz. Using the same hard drive and OS (Ubuntu 7.10), the X31 runs with fan off at idle, and the A31p runs the fan at 3384 rpm according to /proc/acpi/ibm/fan. (Both are underclocked to respective low frequencies. I don't know if the system is somewhat misconfigured for the A31p, because the CPU temperature is barely above 40*C.) My X21 seems to run its fan most of the time, but ever so slowly that I can't hear it above the hard drive noise.

I'm looking for comments regarding idle noise of the T60 and/or T60p. I would prefer it to be closer to the X31 level than the A31p level, of course. When browsing this forum with mp3s playing, is the system fan spinning? Is it louder than the hard drive? What hard drive do you have? What OS are you using?

Thanks.

Hi,
Ok, regarding comments - mine is much more silent than my previous T41 (mainly due to T41's very old fan), but I can say that it makes a difference wheter you buy a CoreDuo laptop or a Core2Duo laptop. It seems that CoreDuo T60 is more silent (lower temps), and that's what's been bugging me too, since I plan to upgrade the processor very soon (to T7200, the T7600 is much too hot for me).
The other thing is GPU. It seems that Radeon X1400 is dissipating heat much more than X1300 (which is fine - not too fast, not too slow).
The final thing is the power settings - it makes all the difference. It's not the same at all when you set it to full speed or adaptive or low - when battery powered, I can't hear anything from my laptop (low speed), but on AC (adaptive), you can hear the fan kick in all the time.
Hope this helps...

This is from an old post of mine:

I had a T60 (Vista, discrete graphics) and the fan ran all the time, which drove me crazy, so I stopped using it. Recently I dragged it out, put XP on it and turned the graphics card down ("optimal battery life"), and the fan ran only about 50% of time. Installed TPfancontrol and set it to keep the fan off under 60C, and the fan now is mostly off. Result happiness.

I recently bought a T61 (XP, slowest penryn, integrated graphics), and out of the box the fan is mostly off. It seems to be consistently about 10C cooler than the T60 (I think the fan comes on at 50C). I'd guess most of the difference is the integrated graphics. The fan, when it's on, is just as noisy as the T60.

Some reading material...

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=35070