Page 1 of 1

How hot does your Thinkpad get? (idle and full load temps)

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:44 am
by Steve06
Hi,

how hot does your Thinkpad, especially its CPU, get, as well in idle as under full load.

For measurement (senor read out), I use a nice little german tool, http://fancontrol.de which is free by the way. It's called PFControl.

Please don't forget to mention your Thinkpad's specs (T60/61/62/p, CPU and so on).

And if possible post your temperatures in °C, not °F.

Mine range from 55°C to 60°C under idle, and go up until approx. 70°C under full throttle.

Regards,
Steve

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 5:51 pm
by Pascal_TTH
T61p T9300 Quadro FX 570m

Load (Prime for CPU 3D Mark for GPU)
CPU : 73°C
GPU : 83°C
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/3102/image5yr4.png

Idle (fan don't spin)
CPU : 50°C
GPU : 60°C

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 6:37 pm
by marlinspike
Mine gets way too hot. I'm talking close to 100C under load if I let the BIOS control the fan, 85C if I use that fan controller to overdrive it to 4800rpm (setting it to 64 will make it even faster than 7). At idle if I let the BIOS control the fan I'm looking at about 68C. CPU and GPU numbers are usually within a few degrees of each other.

I'm thinking my thermal paste is at fault from what I've seen of the internals. Figuring on getting some artic silver, but where can I get replacement thermal pads for the things that don't use paste?

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:49 pm
by Steve06
marlinspike wrote:Mine gets way too hot. I'm talking close to 100C under load if I let the BIOS control the fan, 85C if I use that fan controller to overdrive it to 4800rpm (setting it to 64 will make it even faster than 7). At idle if I let the BIOS control the fan I'm looking at about 68C. CPU and GPU numbers are usually within a few degrees of each other.

I'm thinking my thermal paste is at fault from what I've seen of the internals. Figuring on getting some artic silver, but where can I get replacement thermal pads for the things that don't use paste?
open your machine, remove the keyboard so that you gain access to the fan. clean it thoroughly with a vacuum cleaner and maybe some q-tips. so did i and my temps dropped to by about 10°C on average.

Posted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:53 pm
by marlinspike
That's after cleaning the fan. Before cleaning the fan it would get to about 105C and crash.

Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 5:38 pm
by marlinspike
Yay, Artic Silver 5 to the rescue! Scraped off all the factory thermal paste from the CPU, GPU, and mobo and then I put Artic Silver 5 on the CPU, the GPU, the mobo chip (don't know what it's called) and on the heat sink where it contacts the CPU and filled in the gaps in the factory thermal pads on the heat sink where it touches the GPU and mobo chip with the Artic Silver and now my idle temps letting the bios control the fan are

CPU: 53C
GPU: 64C

and under load with the fan boasted to 4800rpm after 5 minutes of CS 1.6 (level 64 in TPFan)
CPU: 66C
GPU: 76C

Just before doing this I set the fan 4800rpm and ran CS 1.6 for 5 minutes and my pre-artic-silver temps were 87C and 86C. What a huge change! WOOT.