Thinkpads Forum

Hi Guys,

I recently purchased an X61 and I have noticed there is a constant 'fan' noise. coming from the bottom right hand side under the right palm rest, near the vents on the underside.


I do not have WWAN so I should only have the one fan.

I can't really feel any air coming out of the vents there - so I suspected it may be jsut the hard disk spinning.

It is a constant low pitched 'hum' - it is quieter than when the fan actually runs but it is ALWAYS there.

Has anyone noticed this - I want to get rid of the noise - it is very annoying to me

It probably is the HD. You can confirm this by getting TP Fan Control, enabling manual control, then setting the fan to 0 for a moment while listening to the machine. If you still hear the noise it is definitely the HD. But that is probably extreme - it most likely in the HD.

What can you do to make it quieter?
Nothing.

Buy a new drive. Odds are if haven't swapped your factory drive out it's loud. Well, not necessarily, but probably. I noticed that my 7k60 was more silent that the 100Gb 7200RPM my T60 shipped with.

It's almost certainly the hard disk; what you're hearing is the "whoosh" sound of the rotating disk platters.

A single-platter disk is quite a bit quieter, "whoosh"-wise, than a double-platter disk.. so to get rid of as much of this noise as possible, you'd need to replace the hard disk (most likely at the expense of some disk capacity, as most single platter disks are 80GB or smaller..)

Samsung have a new "SpinPoint M5" model available that features much greater capacity per platter, but it's been difficult to find a source of these so far.

Since you say it is "always" there...perhaps it is not the HD. The HD should spin down when inactive and not make any noise at all.

It is possible that your Aussie model comes with the fan even though you didn't get WWAN. Thinkpad configs vary by country - for example, ultralight TFT is simply not an option in Canada on the x-series. In fact, Canada doesn't have access to the X61s at all (only the X60).

If you do in fact have the fan you wouldn't feel any air coming *out* of the vent on the lower right side - that is an air inlet. The air is pulled in from that inlet and pushed out through the top left side CPU vent.

Like Antioch said, get TPFanControl and turn the fan off and see what happens. You could also just simply take out your keyboard (deceptively easy) and have a look what's under there.

does it make this noise only when on battery?
mine has a noise only when on battery which apparently (from reading forums) comes from the CPU changing frequencies and sleep states. I am experimenting with RMClock and when I have some results I'll post it. In the lenovo/ibm notebookreview forums, I've read some threads with users having the same issue.

My fan noise problem went away when I held the tablet at a certain angle but always got the noise when it was flat on the desk. Apparently when they put it together they didn't tuck all the wires in right in a rush to get them out that the fan brushed up against the wire or something. I'd fix it myself but they said it'd void the warranty so had to send it in.