Thinkpads Forum

I have been using TPFanControl v062 (http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html) to pretty much silent my X61. I have the model with a Core 2 Duo T7300 (2 GHz) and have it set up thusly:


Level=65 0
Level=70 1
Level=73 2
Level=75 3
Level=77 4
Level=78 5
Level=79 6
Level=80 7
Level=90 128

Those are temps in degrees C.

I just set this up a couple of days ago, and it seems to work great for me. The fan is totally stopped and silent under normal web-browsing, word processing, etc. Under load the temps stabilize in the low 70's with the fan running. I love my X61 again!

Everything I read says that these temperatures are perfectly safe for this CPU, but I still feel a twinge of nervousness about having the fan totally stopped. Anybody care to share their experiences with similar set-up?

I spent some time researching on this forum and a few others and decided I might get cooler temperatures if I tried replacing the thermal compound on my X61. Had a free afternoon today so I went for it.

You pretty much have to tear down the whole machine to get at the underside of the motherboard to get the heatsink off the processor and graphics chip. Below is a pic of the fan with the heatsink sticking up in the air...



The motherboard is sitting upside-down on top of a towel that is on the laptop's screen. Off to the right is the inside bottom of the case, and in the background you can see the keyboard and the bezel behind my mouse. Note the large amount of grey thermal compound on the heatsink and CPU and that the GPU thermal pad was pretty much undisturbed.

Here's a (blurry) pic of the CPU and GPU...



I carefully wiped both the heatsinks and the surface of the CPU and GPU and cleaned them with a cloth dampened with window cleaner because I didn't have any better solvent. Then I put a thin layer of Arctic Cooling MX-2 down on both chips and reassembled everything.

The end result was pretty underwhelming. The idle temps have gone down a few degrees to 58 C from about 62 before and under load it still goes up into the high 70s, and even the 80s under 100% load.

I tweaked my TPFanControl.ini to the following because I can't see any difference between the fan speeds at any setting between "1" and "6":

Level=60 0
Level=62 1
Level=70 7
Level=80 64
Level=95 128

Thanks for the update and photos in any event. I was searching tonight for info on this after firing up my X61t from the closet and remembering why I put it there last year. TPfancontrol seems to be rocking for the last few hours. I was going to replace the compound but now wondering if that would help much as well.

Looking at the above pictures, the previous owner made quite a dog's dish of it!
You only need a tiny dollop of thermal paste, in the size of a rice corn, and spread that out evenly, using e.g. a credit card.
You only need to cover the rectangular shiny surface of the CPU itself, not smear it all over the green substrate!

BTW: it takes up to 200 hours for Arctic Silver to settle in and reach its best performance!

Definitely too much paste!

As RBS said a thin layer that covers the CPU die is more than enough, I have a picture here as example (although I also have put a little bit much there) with a T43p, it's another CPU but I hope it helps as visual reference.

thats a real awesome job on the termal paste application .. ref: to Tasurinchi ..
i am yet to do that on my thinkpads .. not that they run hot, just regular maintenance ..
hopefully, i will be able to document that with step-by-step procedures ..

Has anyone else done this and had any worthwhile results?

I find my X61 will keep at <50C with the fan on 1 during normal use (browsing, maybe Outlook).

I don't really notice the fan kicking in any more if I set it at 45C. Would be nice to get it down to 50C without as much fan.

My TP ini temps are :

50C 0
51C 1
60C 2
70C 7
80C 128

WOW, I think whoever did that thought that you had to use the entire tube of thermal paste. I am surprise it didn't cause more damage/problems to it. I use two different types of thermal paste one kind of generic and Arctic Silver. I got a customers computer down 5-15c using the Arctic Silver. Heck it runs cooler than my machine now!!