Thinkpads Forum

Dear T61-users,

I have a question on my T61 (7658-11J) The fan has started making grinding noises and now sometimes when switching on, the bios gives a 'fan error' and stops. I have found the relevant replacement-part, 44C0825, which I will order in the coming days.

I thought, as I will have to order this and open my laptop anyways, I could also update the cpu from my 1.8 GHz T7100 to a T9500.

The laptop is the 14 Inch widescreen (1440x900) model with the intel GM 965 integrated graphics.
Some searching of this forum and others left me with more questions than answers though...

According to the post by Johan in this thread,
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... wrapheader ,
and the posts referenced therein,
Merom-based T7xxx CPU's will work on the following motherboards:
- 42W7651,
- 42W7652,
- 42W7653, and
- 42W7875.
Penryn-based T8xxx and T9xxx CPU's will work on the following motherboards:
- 42W7876, and
- 42W7877.

I checked my configuration and the motherboard seems to be either of these FRUs:
-41U5400 42W7654 MICROASSEMBLIES; FRU CPU ASM INTEL CORE YES
-42W3782 41W1487 PLANAR ASSEMBLY FRU YES
-42W9386 0000000 MALIBU-1 MALIBU-1 MS PLANAR ELABW (INTEG NO
Of which none seems to correspond to a number above. 42W7654 is closest, but according to
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 70166#rohs
this is the cpu. In this document, however the T9500 seems also to be an option for my T61.

Does anyone know whether a T9500 would work in my T61 or if it would be better to save the money for the CPU and just replace the fan?

Thank you very much for any hints.

The MB is 41W1487. It will not take the CPU upgrade.

richk wrote:The MB is 41W1487. It will not take the CPU upgrade.

Thank you for the quick answer, I appreciate it very much. So the fastest processor supported would probably be a T7700...

Thank you very much.

True.

I heard x7800 or x7900 is the highest CPU, that ordinary T61 can use.
but after digging further, I found T9500 also work, but thermal sensing error will occure, press ESC can ignore the alarm.
some chinese say doing a minor modify on mainboard's resistor can completly solve this thermal sensing error, anyone heard about it?

Thinkpad T61 is too cool to be abandoned, let us cherish it

You can use up to an X9000 processor on your machine, even though it has the older sensor. However, you will need a BIOS upgrade that adds SATA II support, whitelists WLAN/WWAN cards, as well as removes the CPU thermal sensing message.

Just search for T61 SATA II bios and you'll either find it here or on notebook review forums by it's modder, middleton.

Hope this helps!
Kamika007z