Thinkpads Forum

hello.

so I as well as many others have encountered the t60 fan errors and i took the liberty of replacing my fan myself. after the replacement i got some cpu temp. monitoring apps to check that my computer wasnt frying up and i have been watching the temps for a couple of weeks now. When i start the computer it runs at about 55-60 degrees (all celcius), when i start using my pc, i usually have a media player running, (foobar2000), google chrome with like 5-7 tabs, and occasionally some half life 1(off the steam platform). now as far as i understand none of these 3 applications are particularly cpu intensive, and they dont really eat up my memory but my temperatures skyrocket to about 78-84 on average and once or twice peaking round 92.

should i be worried about this or is it still within "normal running range" when these temperatures are achieved? I have the laptop sitting on a cheap 25 dollar cooling pad but im fairly sure it does nothing. should i apply a new layer of thermal grease? leave as be? help plz


thanks
Boris

That's too hot (in my opinion).

Open your task manager and monitor the CPU usage during normal operation.
A normal T60, without external cooling pad, will hover around 60 degrees with normal usage (web browsing/office applications) and ~80 degrees under heavy (>85%) CPU load.

It sounds to me that you've either got some spyware eating your resources, faulty software or a dirty/broken/poorly installed fan.

When you replaced the fan, did you clean out the old gunk and reapplied fresh thermal paste between CPU and fan?
Sound to me as if not!

i did clean out the gunk and replace with fresh thermal paste when the fan was installed, and its not spyware, im fairly knowledgeable on that subject and am pretty sure my computer is clean. right now its idling at ~64degrees while running a browser and media player and if i run halflife1 cpu usage fluctuates between like 20-45% and temperatures go up like 15-20 degrees. Im using TPFancontrol to monitor these temperatures.

It sounds to me like its the fan, are there any pictures as to where to apply the thermal grease and how much a "paper thin" layer looks like, im fairly sure i applied it to the right spots as ive done it before and its worked for a few years, but id love to double check.


thanks for all your help


ps does the fact that its often 90+ degrees in this room have a high effect on the cpu temperatures? most of the other temperatures seem normal leveled.

You normally apply a film-thin layer of thermal paste on the top of the CPU (the shiny rectangular part).
Use a credit card or similar to evenly spread out a rice corn sized dollop of paste.

I thought there was also a spot that i apply the paste 2 right next to the cpu, maybe the gpu or graphics processor(also a shiny little square similar to the cpu)? im not sure but when i first found instructions they had me apply thermal paste on 2 spots on the fan