Thinkpads Forum

I have been letting my bro play WOW on my T61p 6460-67U w/ 4gb of Ram on the weekends when we are away from home and his desktop. He recently began complaining that the upper left part of the keyboard becomes very warm almost hot to the touch. I too felt it and decided to download tpfancontrol. Well after a while the CPU skyrockets to 94*C and the GPU is not far behind.

I have 3 year accidental coverage so I called them, sent it in because I knew that last time the planar board was replaced the thermal compound was not replaced so I thought this was the issue. I received the laptop back and it is still happening. The receipt says that the GPU was replaced along with the fan assembly.

Is this normal? My brother never remembers this happening.

Any and all input would be appreciated, if you feel it is the thermal compound, I do feel comfortable taking it apart and applying some Arctic Silver.

Thanks in advance.

PS my CPU is idling right now at 64 in the high performance mode with tpfancontrol set to "smart"

Well, they didn't replace the GPU - that's for sure (maybe they replaced the motherboard, but that's called the "planar"). I would check the fan that there is no gap between the heatsink and the GPU or CPU. There should be no thermal grease between the thermal pad for the GPU and the heat sink. And if there's a thermal pad for the CPU, that shouldn't have grease either. A "new" fan should have new heatsink pads - they can be messy if you try to reseat or replace them, and if you try to use thermal paste instead, the gap is usually too thick. So there's a lot can go wrong with the cooling setup!

Thanks for the tips, I didnt realize that it was setup that way. So, are these temps high?

90 is very high. Anything over 90 is too high.

Thanks for the pointers. Any idea what I should do?

Call Lenovo and tell them your CPU and GPU temps under full load and ask them what needs to be done.

sktn77a wrote:90 is very high. Anything over 90 is too high.

Is 70c bad? I don't think I'm at full load... I think it's because of the surface I have it on.

If it's on a cushion, pllow, thick carpet, that's asking for trouble. A hard flat surface should be your usual work surface. If it's idling at 70, then that might be a problem when its under full load. Run Spybot Search and Destroy - that takes up all pretty much CPU utilization you let it and will stress your cooling system.

I have a T61p with a T7700 processor. (I think that generates as much heat as anything) I have never gotten temperatures above 75

Try cleaning the fan with some compressed air. Also, your idle temps will be lower if you use the "Balanced" power profile rather than "High Performance", which keeps the CPU at full speed.

Well a dude is coming tomorrow to replace the CPU and the fan assembly. Ill be watching over him very carefully to ensure everything goes in as it should.

I received it back from the depot originally with the keyboard warped... somebody didn't take the time to reconnect the wifi antennas and just jammed the keyboard on the loose wires.

Well they replaced the CPU and fan assembly this time at my house so I was able to inspect everything. CPU temps now under full load for hours are 78*C so a far better improvement. Idle is around 50 now so all is good and Im happy now

The onsite 3yr $180 accidental warranty has paid for itself multiple times over due to:

2 motherboards, 1 because defective ram bus caused the laptop to BSOD during memory intense apps (games) - was a well documented issue, spilled beer on the second one
3 new keyboards
1 new CPU
2 new fan assemblies.

Sweet!