Thinkpads Forum

Hi,
I installed XP with a 7200 rpm Seagate Momentus replacing a 5400rmp 160 Seagate Momentus with Win7 and noticed that the X61s now runs sensibly warmer, nothing dramatic, it's not hot, but with Win7 + older 5400 rpm drive not only was almost lukewarm but it was more silent since the fan activated less often while now it looks continuosly on. In both Win7 and XP the power setting is "performance".
With a brand new 8 cell origial Lenovo battery fully charged, the system reports 3:50 hour without battery stretching while under Win7 I think (not sure however) that it showed more than 4 hours.

Is it normal? Does XP runs the X61s hotter than Win7 with obvious repercussion with temperature, noise and battery duration. Or is it due to the faster rpm of the new drive?

Thank you for your opinions.

Where are you feeling the temperature to be warmer? Is it at the back left where the CPU vent is or under the front right palmrest or more toward the middle right?

front right palmrest: wireless, bluetooth, wwan cards
middle right: HDD (can also feel the bottom of the case since it's thinner there)

In my experience, 7200rpm drives run slightly warmer than 5400rpm drives but not by much. Windows 7 also runs hotter than XP on my X61s and X301 which I think is due to the graphics overhead from Aero. Note that I have the power settings set to dynamically switching and what not (basically to minimize power consumption/maximize battery life). If I recall correctly, 'performance' power profile in XP runs the CPU at 100% clock speed all the time without scaling down.

You should be able to manage at least 5-6 hours with moderate usage on an 8-cell if you adjust the power profile.

Lino wrote:Is it normal? Does XP runs the X61s hotter than Win7 with obvious repercussion with temperature, noise and battery duration. Or is it due to the faster rpm of the new drive?

I noticed same thing on my X60s palmrest. In my case the difference is not from HDD because I had WinXP on SSD that runs hotter than my current test case Win7 on 7200rpm drive. The effect is rather startling and the difference is quite clear. For the lack of better explanation I attribute this to much improved power management of Win7. I've loved XP to bits but this actually is the breaking point for me and I'll migrate my X60s fully over to Win7 now.