Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

my X60s's processor fan (? - its the one sitting toward the upper left corner) seems to get old. Whenever it is on it is producing a subtle but annoying rattling noise.

I will send the laptop in to Lenovo to get that fixed asap, but I need the laptop constantly at the moment.

So my question is: What general usage (heavy load, wifi, etc.) of the laptop does usually trigger the fan? Is there anything I can turn down or turn off to make the fan turn on less often? Or are there even any setting taking direct influence on the fan?

Thank you very much,
Martin

NHC with the fan control ACPI scripts work for my x40 : http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=466541 maybe you could give them a try ...

Don't have an X60 (yet) so can't say for sure. NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) was mentioned and works well on my T41 and X31. An advantage in using NHC is that it allows CPU voltage control which significantly helps reduce temps.
http://www.pbus-167.com/

Another program I use is RMclock (RightMark CPU Clock Utility). Great program! It too allows CPU voltage control as well as levels for CPU throttling.
http://cpu.rightmark.org/

Lastly, ran across SPEEDFAN some time ago but never installed it. Here's a link:
http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

zodiac wrote:So my question is: What general usage (heavy load, wifi, etc.) of the laptop does usually trigger the fan? Is there anything I can turn down or turn off to make the fan turn on less often?

Any app which throttles the cpu to >60% is going to throttle the frequency (MHz) UP, thus more heat. And although the WIFI card generates a lot of heat, it alone should not be causing problems.

As far as 'turning things off', what I do is go into device manager and make sure all USB Hubs (power management tab) are set to allow the computer to turn off the device. I also set the WIFI card (under Network Adapters) to broadcast (transmit) at 25%. This works fine for me because the TP is close to a hub. You can try various settings and see how they work for you. The lower the setting the less transmit range but also lower power consumption, thus less heat! And there is an added benefit of greater battery life if you can transmit with less power and turn more devices off when not needed.

zodiac wrote:Or are there even any setting taking direct influence on the fan?

BIOS settings have a direct influence (try setting BIOS to defaults). Software settings and device driver setting/conflicts can have a direct impact as well ... but that's far to complex an issue to get into here.

Lastly, have you opened Windows Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL), 'T' and monitored your CPU load? Your laptop should idle with no more than a 0-5% load. Also, you may want to leave it run and check CPU loads with various apps you use, this will give you an idea if there is a CPU hog (thus creating lots of heat).

One of these suggestions should help!

Thanks alot for the effort, guys. I will try out some of these tips tonight.