Thinkpads Forum

Hi, just registered after reading these forums and pulling the trigger on a 14" T61 Notebook.

I understand that there has been a problem with notebooks with the G86 and G88 cores and I was wondering the update on the issue. The notebook I purchased still has about 2 years of warranty left(until late 2011) So I'm hoping if the problem does rise, it would during that time. I also heard that the later models have bigger heatsink and pipes because of the defective GPUs not handling the heat so well. How do you tell if the notebook has the updated version of cooling?

Thanks

You should be fine. Only a very small proportion of the T61s seem to be affected by the Nvidia issue (and a different video problem in the T61p only). I've not heard of any in-production change in the t61 heatsink. It was revised after the T60 to improve cooling in the T61.

I see, thanks for the reply, gives me a little relief from whether I should've sprung a little more for the T400. I thought all T61s were subject to this failure because of the belief that every G86 and G88 unit were defective.

Also be aware, one of the later BIOS fixes from Lenovo addresses this issue by keeping the GPU fan on more often to keep it cool and prevent any future problems, at the cost of battery life (at least on mine).