More On My T60

[Gene]

I thought I’d post on my latest experiences dealing with the heat issues on my T60 and see if anybody here could lend some additional insight.

Replacing the thermal pad on the GPU with a .025 (.635mm) thick copper shim (with Arctic Silver 5!!) seems to have stabilized its temperature to around 56C at idle and in the 60 to 68C range when I load web pages with lots of heavy graphics. It seems to stay in that range even when I’m running 3D drawings in Microstation. The CPU stays around 50 to 53C at idle and jumps to 54C to 60C when under a heavy load. I’ve left the standard thermal pad on the Northbridge, since it doesn’t produce anywhere near the heat that the other two chips do, so it should be more than adequate.

I was able to get some .050 (1.27mm) thick copper which I’ve read is a better choice for the GPU shim. But when I replaced the .025 shim with it the temps jumped significantly and the left side of the keyboard and palm rest got more than a little warm. After playing around with it a couple of times I reinstalled the .025 shim and the temps are now back within the manageable ranges. While I was playing around I noticed the Northbridge is about .039 (1mm) lower than the GPU, and maybe there might have been a problem with the portion of the fan assembly that's on top of the CPU might not be sitting flat on top of the chip with the .050 thick shim. One thing I have noticed with this machine is the magnesium frame picks up a lot of the heat from the chips. The frame seems to be the source of the heat in the area on the left side, bottom of the keyboard where it joins the palm rest warm to the touch.

I’d be interested if anybody here can lend additional information on my observations and some possible solutions.

Gene

[Gene]

I see 180 views of my post and nobody can lend me any more help or information?

[Raceboy]

Did you polish the shim before using it?

I was thinking of soldering the shim onto heat sink after determining the best thickness (and polishing both sides to mirror-finish before that), that would help by quite a margin.

What GPU does your T60 have?