X61 and Fan Noise

[kennyschiff]

I'm about to hand me down my X61 to my daughter and have been living with a noisy fan for a while. I replaced the whole fan assembly 10 months ago, which made it quieter for a while, but it's now pretty loud again. I had been using Ubuntu on it, but am installing 64-bit Windows 7 on it now.

Is there a sure fire solution to making this quieter? In spite of it being 3 years old, actually an excellent computer that I would like to get some further life on this.

[IvanAndreevich]

Try RMClock to lower the voltage. That sure helps a lot on the heat output - especially on the X61.

[kennyschiff]

OK, makes sense. I also installed TPad fan control, which I'd used previously under XP.

I've been following this guide:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Undervolting-a-Laptop

However, I'm confused by what parameters to put in this screen per the article? do I literally have to change each VID value and test till I get a blue screen? or do you have other recommended settings?

I followed the direction to this point, but got stuck



Any help here is appreciated

[IvanAndreevich]

Under advanced CPU settings makes sure it's set to Auto or Mobile - not Desktop.

Download Prime95 and start it in "Small FFT" mode. It should be running (green).

Start lowering the voltage. After each step apply it and make it run at that speed and voltage. Prime should still be green.

Lower it again and again until it fails. After it fails (Prime becomes red) bump up the voltage by 2 steps, and you should have a stable CPU at that voltage and frequency.

After that just run it at all the intermediate steps to make sure it's OK there (a few minutes no each should be good enough). Likely you won't have to adjust the intermediate voltages.

[kennyschiff]

@Ivan, forgive my greeness on this, but are you saying that in this Performance on Demand profile, I would lower the VID value for each checked index until I get it to fail (assuming I use Prime95)? I'm confused by all the possible settings.

[IvanAndreevich]

Lower the highest one only, the intermediate ones should lower automatically. Then uncheck the higher multiplies one by one to make sure it's stable at all the intermediate voltages and speeds. If not stable increase some intermediate ones as necessary. Usually not necessary.

[alosito]

I noticed on my X61 that CPU core tempurature goes up from 64C to 95C immeditely after I start Prime95. Is that normal?

[richk]

I don't think 95C is ever normal. Normally, 100C triggers hard shutdown

[IvanAndreevich]

I noticed on my X61 that CPU core tempurature goes up from 64C to 95C immeditely after I start Prime95. Is that normal?

No. Blow the dust out of the heatsink HARD. If the temperature is still high, and the fan sounds normal, it means that you need to replace the thermal paste on your CPU.

An upper limit for an X61 is 90C. That's WITHOUT throttling, e.g. the CPU should still be running at 2 GHZ or whatever the maximum clock speed is.

[alosito]

Blow the dust out of the heatsink HARD.

How do I do it? Do I need to remove the heatsink?