Thinkpads Forum

Finally got my X61s fully working, still need to upgrade to Middleton BIOS.
Just noticed that the fan air inlet holes on the bottom are completely covered
by the battery? Anyone else notice this? The holes are not very big to start
with.

I've worked a lot more on tower PCs and one thing I learned is that the
case needs to have very open vent holes or else the internal temp will
keep rising because outside air is not replacing the heated air fast enough.

Intel had a paper where they pointed out that the perforated metal with
1/8" holes commonly used over fans in the older cases simply did not flow
well enough and they suggested square holes with probably about twice
the area. Eventually, on some models they had the processor fan inlet
draw from an outside vent via a plastic tube, this way the fan hit the processor
with the coolest air possible from outside the unit. This also seems to be
what is done in laptops where the heat is conducted to fins right at the outlet
with the fan drawing from outside in, and blowing out over the fins rather
than pulling air through the entire laptop case. This should be the case when
the vents are not blocked anyway.
I noticed that the old Panasonic CF-51 does run air through the case with a
typical finned heat sink on the processor, there are two fans on either side
of the processor. It does not work very well in my opinion.

Anyway, has anyone drilled holes to improve the air flow on an X61s?

Never tried, what temps are you seeing on idle? load? and with what OS.

Are your fan holes covered?

I'm not pushing the system at this point and I don't hear the fan running
hard. I've just been working on it and if I take out the motherboard again
that would be the time to drill holes.
I'd really prefer to put a T8100 motherboard in it but I'm not sure what is
involved. I think I'd have to use an X61 non-S base with it.

This is not my main system so I'm not doing a lot of experimenting, seems
to be working fine though.

My X61s runs about 45C on idle and i've never felt its running hot on Archbang or Win7. I've got a Penryn 2Ghz and it idles at 40C - 43C while my 2GHz Merom idles at 45C 48C - In normal use all are fine.

I replaced the bottom cover and fan of my X61s with the X61 bottom cover and fan assembly. X61 does not have the battery spacer to block the fan vents, and with the larger heatsink it is 10C cooler.

Dekks wrote:My X61s runs about 45C on idle and i've never felt its running hot on Archbang or Win7. I've got a Penryn 2Ghz and it idles at 40C - 43C while my 2GHz Merom idles at 45C 48C - In normal use all are fine.

You have a Penryn 2GHz X61s? Which CPU are you using?

No i was comparing my X61 T8100 to it's T7300 cousin. My X61S runs with battery spacer and 90% of the time in a docking station, now that does knock the idling temps up, but my quoted temp is sans dock.