Thinkpads Forum

Hello, all!

I've browsed around the forum enough to know that this is not a good thing, but from poking around here it seems so far off the charts that I'm wondering if there's any sense in trying to make any adjustments myself at all.

My T60p has been running rather hot and started giving me trouble tonight (it would hang on startup). After letting it cool I got it running, installed TPFanControl 0.5, switched to manual mode, cranked it all the way up to 7 and my CPU and GPU are now hanging out in the low 90s while completely idle. TPFC is reporting about 4300 RPMs from the fan, and I can hear it whirring, but it sure doesn't seem to be doing much. And I don't know what kind of breeze I should be expecting off the fan, but it's barely detectable / nonexistent. I can sure feel that heat, though.

I do, of course, always have it on a hard, flat surface with the vents completely free from obstructions. I could try the cleaning route, but even if I get a 10-15 degree drop out of that, it still looks like a big problem. Does it seem safe to assume that I have a problem more serious than typically weak cooling performance going on here? Should I even bother trying to make any adjustments, or get it into the shop ASAP?

Thanks all...

Get is back to the shop asap. Or send it to repair.

It should never be that hot, idle temp should not be no more than 60 Degress celcius.

Right now my Idle temp is 52 degress, and I have 5 browser windows open and I am uninstalling a game.
Be glad that you have a thinkpad becuase any other notebook (Acer, HP, you know.. ) would have crashed with those temps...

But about your computer... That [censored] is burned baby! Send her back!

Welcome to the forum!

I am afraid your fan has failed.

Call for service and tell them your story. I cleaned the fan based on forum posts on my primary T60p and the idle temps went down 20 F. Recently I switched to a backup T60p while the primary is being serviced. This backup has seen very little use. Exact same configuration and the fan looks new. This one idles at 126 F instead of 175 F. I am replacing the fan as part of preventative maintenance on my primary T60p.

In summary cleaning did help for six months. Now the fan appears clean but is no longer doing its job so the fan is being replaced. This is what has apparently happened to your T60p too.

Brad

Dmnkly, I don't think it's reasonable to simply assume your fan has failed because you are getting high temperatures. Open the T60P up and clean the fan area. Bet it's clogged with dust. If after a thorough cleaning with compressed air you still get high temperatures then send it in for service.

Dmnkly, something is definitely wrong. Those temperatures are way too high and you should be able to feel hot air getting pumped out at considerable volume with fan at highest setting. The fan is either hopelessly clogged or failed altogether. Try to clean it out if you feel comfortable opening up the laptop; otherwise I think sending it in is fair game.

Shade wrote:Be glad that you have a thinkpad becuase any other notebook (Acer, HP, you know.. ) would have crashed with those temps...

Yeah, because Lenovo programs our BIOSes in a special way that makes the computers more stable at high temperatures.

Oh wait, they don't. This is bollocks. If reported accurately, high temperatures are high temperatures. Crashes due to high temperatures occur because the hardware is failing. Hardware like CPU, GPU, RAM, northbridge... you know, the components that are identical in every notebook of given age.

Wow...

So I went ahead and called Lenovo and got a case open, but I decided to go the compressed air route in the interim to keep it from melting down completely.

I figured it would help a little, but a good cleaning with compressed air took my idle temps from the low 90s with a maxed-out fan to the mid 60s while BIOS-controlled. I haven't tried taxing the CPU yet, but assuming it stays in that neighborhood or the 70s, is that fairly normal or do you think that still requires attention?

Weird, since it's only a year and a half old and doesn't inhabit any particularly dusty environs... not that I'm complaining.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, all. Apparently dust can make that big of a difference. Two points for steveg47, but many thanks to everybody for the help!

(I'm off to go compress some video and see what happens )

Mid 60's is much better. Ambient room temp would definitely be a factor. For a T60P just at idle with a Core Duo 2.0 I'd expect low to mid mid 50's or so. Just keep an eye on the temps for a bit. What's the room temp there? It's 92*F outside here, Baltimore has to be even hotter.

Dom, I hope you actually pulled the keyboard, if you didn't and just blasted air thru the side vent then you didn't get it all.

steveg47 wrote:Dom, I hope you actually pulled the keyboard, if you didn't and just blasted air thru the side vent then you didn't get it all.

Heh... no worries... I pulled the keyboard and blasted from the inside out, not the other way around

Yeah, it's pretty nasty here in Baltimore this weekend (upper 90s), but we're well-cooled in here, so that's not a factor. Interestingly, it's pretty much the same idling and under heavy load right now. Nothing doing? 65-67. Compressing tons of video? 65-67. Go figure.

Check task manager for CPU utilization. Any processes hogging the CPU? System idle should be at or near 99%