Thinkpads Forum

I enjoy living on the cutting edge as well but as tempting as it might be to splice
something into something else, I think you'll run into fuse blowing and at the very
least the item you splice into will become less effective as it's circuit is put under
more of a load. Since it's the main fan in this case, I think I'd pass.
Could be the open vents are all you'll need.

Tim S

dejx wrote:the 3.12 version?

Yes.

I just won an x61 palmrest on eBay. Once I get it I'll let those who are interested know
if the side vents make a difference to heat on the X60s.

Tim S

I had an x61t and the palm rest did get hot, I was kinda surprised that it got hot period. I got rid of it, got an x200t, and haven't looked back since.

My guess is that since the X200 is larger the 'hot' conponents could be moved elsewhere.
The main heat culprit on my X60s is the WiFi card, so the (X61) vents on that end of the
palmrest should help alot.

Tim S

OK some definitive answers but not for tablet users.
The X61(s) top bezel is a 100% fit onto the X60(s), even with the fingerprint reader.
After a 1/2hr of use the palmrest felt much cooler, thanks I'm sure to the vent at
the right end of the palmrest. It could also be partially due to the fingerprint reader
which on the X61(s) is right over the WiFi card and could be blocking off some of the heat.
The only negative is that there is no Infrared window on the X61(s). I don't use it but
I'm pretty sure it will still work although the range may be slightly reduced.
My X60s only has a WiFi card underneath and still got pretty warm, but machines with two
cards would surely be a lot cooler with this bezel.
So there it is..... a pretty easy fix for anyone feeling the heat!

Tim S

Lowering the Wifi transmit power to 25% also help reducing the heat.

The only time I've had issues with palmrest heat have been when using the Intel 3945 with powersaving disabled. As soon as I enabled power saving, the problem went away.

The heat shielding on the X61s assembly helps too -- but I've never had a problem with my X61s with either of the two cards I've used (an Atheros card an an Intel 4965), so I can't definitively say that the shielding was responsible for that.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention WWAN. When I added WWAN to my X60s and X61s, I *did* notice a definite increase in palmrest temperatures. I suspect that's due to the fact that the card I added (F3507g) tends to run kinda hot. Further, I was too lazy to install the secondary fan, so I can't comment on whether or not it would help prevent said increase. Still, it wasn't like the machine was unusable or anything; it simply gets slightly warmer when the WWAN card is in use. Turn off the card, and temperatures drop back into the not-really-noticeable range.

Today i got new fan from IBM service, x61s works perfectly now.

I must say i had big problems with heat, i could not type normally, especially when connected to dock, but now none, it's not even hot.
Also i don't get interference on external display on 1680x1050 (connected to ultrabase) since the new fan.

I must say, installing new fan into laptop helped remove lots of problems.

Was also looking for a fix for the "hot palmrest on the right" problem on my X61 tablet...will try turning power down on the WiFi card! That's the way it was by default by had bumped it up to max after someone suggested the "picture banding" in YouTube and Hulu could be due to that.

I was also looking into the second fan idea, looks like it's not worth the trouble, good!

So reducing the power settings of the card on my x61 tablet did help a bit, but to get to the bottom of this problem I turned off the WiFi card (Intel 3945 apparently) and plugged in a USB adapter. Well the palmrest is still warm, I'd say as warm as with the card on minimal power settings.

At this point I can't see what can be done to improve on this and get the coolness of the x31 back. Actually I think I remember the T40 palmrest got pretty warm too, maybe the x31 was unique Someone did mention above that the X200 didn't get warm, but it doesn't have 4:3 1024x768 screen so I'm not sure I'd like that...

I've never been bothered by this on any X6x series I've used. I guess some people are sensitive to heat?

Install a hacked BIOS that removes whitelisting and insert an Intel 5100 wireless adapter

See here for example: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=55837

If you search the web careful enough, you will also find one with SATAII support, so you can profit even more from inserting a SSD and running maybe even cooler..... if that is also interesting...

I don't think another card would make difference, I turned off the Intel 3945 in my X61t and used a USB WiFi adapter and the palm rest was still warm.

Maybe an SSD drive would help with the overall heat.

Going back and forth between my X31 and my X61T, the difference is subtle in terms of temperature but the way the wrist rests make a big difference on perception I think, with a much larger area resting on the X61T.

My X60s was getting really hot after a while as well. I don't know how it's possible, but I changed the palmrest and bottom plate with one from an X61s and the palmrest no longer gets as hot. It's still warm, but not hot like before. I don't mind it getting warm, just don't want it to cook my hand is all.

I have also turned the transmit power down and disabled the WWAN card in mine, that helped as well before changing the palmrest. Made it a little easier to use this computer.

The card *did* make a difference. But it probably doesn't make so much of a difference if you also have a WWAN card in it, and some of the hotter running HDs.

Unfortunately no WWAN card in my X61T so can't see what more to do.

Maybe time to explore the X200, as it can apparently run WinXP too. Not sure about the higher resolution screen for working with text many hours a day...

Perhaps add some tinfoil under the palmrest? Make sure not to short anything.

GpsPasSion wrote:Unfortunately no WWAN card in my X61T so can't see what more to do.

Umm that is good that there is no WWAN card, like I said, because the replacement of the WLAN card can make more of an improvement then.

Try the Intel 51xx series or maybe even 6xxx series (use only 2-antenna ones though)! It did make an improvement for me, so why shouldn't it do for you? They only cost a few dollars/euros/whatever... Of course you need to risk the BIOS update, but there are nearly no reports about problems, except if the user made something very wrong (like installing the wrong BIOS for another Thinkpad, so beware you install the correct X61t Bios if you like to do this approach).

Maybe time to explore the X200, as it can apparently run WinXP too. Not sure about the higher resolution screen for working with text many hours a day...

A higher resolution screen is always better, as you can always scale up fonts in your OS globally, it does only mean it's more fine-grained. The only thing not being like that is fixed size images on web sites, but for that you just set a default zoom level in your browser... Ok that was offtopic

Thanks for the tips.

The reason I'm not expecting a big impact from a wireless card change is that even when I disable it and use a UBS WiFi adapter the palmrest remains warm, not hot, just warm, not more on the right than on the left.

Now I had stopped the fan with TPFancontrol to limit the noise (it only kicks in above 65dC), I'll see if letting it run at setting 1 (the default Bios is definitely too loud ) and see if it helps with overall temperature.

fan speed and cpu configuration impacts palmrest heat I think.

My x60s with the metal plate underneath is barely warm even when watching flash videos over wifi if the fan is active. Otherwise heat seems to accumulate and palmrests starts to get hot.

Same here I'm finding, running the Fan at "1" using TPFancontrol makes the X61T much cooler overall. CPU temp drops from 55 (on average) to 37 celsius, the left side of the palm rest is cool and the right side is barely warm even though I did have to up the WiFi card settings transmit/power management from 1 to 3 as I found the speed had dropped a lot. I'll try plugging in my external USB WiFi card to see if the right side gets completely cool too.

The flipside of course is that while quiet at "1" there is now a permanent fan noise...that I don't have on my X31...that however has a noisy (sounds like it has a fan) 7200rpm drive I'm used to.

Still not sure I can use the X61T as a fulltime replacement for my x31.

Anyone know if the X200 can be used without the fan on at all and stay cool or is that something of the past with modern and more powerful chips?

http://www.shrani.si/f/2H/lD/3ZqS96Yl/tmp87de.jpg

x61s, what to do, palmrest is VERY hot.

Use an external keyboard.

Well from time to time when watching 720p movies computer just shuts down, i have external monitor from Lenovo too, Thinkvision l220x

dejx wrote:Well from time to time when watching 720p movies computer just shuts down, i have external monitor from Lenovo too, Thinkvision l220x

That 90C is with the fan in "BIOS mode" in TPFC? That's way too high, something is wrong with your machine.

If the fan sounds normal, the thermal interface must be the problem!

dejx wrote:Well from time to time when watching 720p movies computer just shuts down, i have external monitor from Lenovo too, Thinkvision l220x

If you reduce the external monitor's resolution to 1280x800 while watching these movies, that would be easier for the laptop, especially for the GPU.

pianowizard wrote:If you reduce the external monitor's resolution to 1280x800 while watching these movies, that would be easier for the laptop, especially for the GPU.

LOL are you kidding? It will make little to no difference at all for video playback, especially for the GPU. It's archaic, so the CPU is doing all the work for video decoding, and the resolution in 2D makes no difference whatsoever.

IvanAndreevich wrote:LOL are you kidding? It will make little to no difference at all for video playback, especially for the GPU. It's archaic, so the CPU is doing all the work for video decoding, and the resolution in 2D makes no difference whatsoever.

Trust me, it makes a difference. Not a huge difference, but definitely not "no difference whatsoever". I use mostly archaic equipment and so I know, through experience.

dejx wrote:http://www.shrani.si/f/2H/lD/3ZqS96Yl/tmp87de.jpg

x61s, what to do, palmrest is VERY hot.

Clean your exhaust fan. The X61s absolutely should not, under any circumstances, be running that hot.