Thinkpads Forum

When I first got my T60 4-5 weeks ago, I blew out the fan with compressed air while replacing the keyboard before using it. Idle temp was 46-47C then. Over a month has passed now with the laptop being on nearly 24/7 and idle temps have risen to 54-57C. CPU temperature in this laptop usually a couple degrees higher than the GPU. Looks like it's time to take out the compressed air again.

You won't accumulate enough dust in the fan cavity to raise the CPU temp by 10 degrees in a month unless you live in a dust bowl. Something else is going on there. Either the fan has slowed down, the heatsink needs re-installation/reseating with a quality thermal paste, or you have one or more background processes using CPU resources. Start with task manager and see what is taking up CPU resources.

Actually, it looks like what I wrote in the first post is inaccurate. I just checked it again now after being away a while and it's 50-51C for both cpu and gpu. Is a 4* jump too high as well? This is my first month with it so I'm not sure how quickly these accumulate dust.

Once a year is a reasonable cleanup time period.

Careful! A blast of high velocity air can overspeed the fan if it isn't restrained, ruining it. Please don't ask how I know that.

Remove the palmrest and the keyboard, then insert the point of a pencil or other thin object between the fan blades to immobilize it while you blast away.

Larry

Good point Larry, I always immobilize the fan blades before using canned air in the vicinity.

I didn't hold the fan still while doing, hope it's ok. I can't imagine compressed air creating it enough force to spin it faster than 3.8-4k rpm?

Compressed air will absolutely spin the fan faster than designed specs. You can hear it ...
It's very easy to destroy a fan this way. It's a simple thing to hold the blades still, so just do it.