Why I'm not using TPFan Control on X301

[JoeHallenbeck]

Before I purchased my used X301 on e-bay in recent weeks I was browsing through tens of threads about users experience with this machine. Many users were using famous TPFan Control to lower so called fan noise. I don't know maybe I'm lucky but I don't hear any particularly annoying noise from the fan. Many users were complaining about upper left corner gets unusually hot.

As usually I took apart this laptop as I do with every one I purchase on e-bay for maintenance and general cleaning. I have to say that after dismantling SL500, T60, X61 Tablet and some others this machine is completely different I would say unique construction. It is pity that they discontinued production or any other hardware upgrades because I think there is nothing better than this. Not even X1 because of many parts soldered permanently. Decreasing thickness is very costly process of sacrificing many other construction options and it is constant battle between lets say portability or performance and design size. I have to say that engineers made a quite decent work constructing this laptop so it will be silent and yet cool in reasonable temperatures.

CPU fan used is something interesting as well. I don't know about right values since CPUZ is problem, HWMonitor could be showing things differently I would say that at least RPM's are showed in TPFan reasonable well. Realizing that this thing is spinning at 4990 RPM I remembered when I switched last time T60 Fan on 2Ghz C2D at max 3840 was loud but yet more silent than competition laptops like HP for example. If that fan would be on 5 thousand it would be definitely loud as hell. Yet X301 fan can be switched to 6200 RPM and I cannot say that I can hear it in room over my radio on normal volume. Some users reported that they were annoyed by noise of fan over television. Simply they made nice piece of evolution here. At 1800 RPMs I really cannot say whether it is spinning at all.

Most users will jump after TPFan as something as habit of having this thing installed and running after getting new thinkpad. This software was designed way before X301 was. I'm not saying it is not useful but there are good reasons why engineers at lenovo set bios the way they did.

After dismantling I realized that they using same method of so called "sandwich" cooling method as before. Parts of the airflow are directed underneath of the motherboard through ventilation openings and second part is directed underneath the keyboard through DVD drive gaps. If you take careful look on the RAM modules cover you can see that those are not just openings. It is made that way that entering air is directed towards the fan. Laminar flow is than dragging warm air from RAM modules towards the fan outside. To cool heat-pipes fan is taking additional cool air through openings with dense metal net. This metal net is working as regulator of air flow ratio of hot air and cool air. On T60 this was made by additional openings next to the screen hinge. Later many producers copy this way of cooling and suddenly clear visible blades of fans on the bottoms of laptops disappeared. This leads to my conclusion why many users were complaining about hot left corner of X301. Heat pipes simply needs to be cooled down constantly. Without temperature difference on both ends of heat pipes there is no creation of heat transfer from one side to another because of capillary attributes of liquids. Therefore CPU and GPU starts to heat up until temperature difference on another side is big enough to create transfer. Thus lowering fan RPM on X301 or any other Thinkpad is backward process. Many users mentioned that there is cool air coming out of the exhaust. Human hand receives heat differently than for example face or temperature sensor. That laminar flow which is dragging hot air from RAM modules is "spread" over the cold one giving up some energy and it looks like it is cool but trust me it is there.

So accidentally one day I switched TPFan on smart instead of BIOS controlled. Boy that machine became very hot! RPM went down and whole process started. The other day I noticed that on balanced power settings unplugged, things sudennly changed. BIOS lowered RPM of the fan to value of 4230 and it was barely audible. Some users are complaining that BIOS has only two options for fan. But changing values on TPFan ini there are only two options as well. Either of 1880 RPM, 4990 RPM or maximum of 6000. All other settings starting from 2 to 7 are ignored. So there is really no point of having TPFan other than to monitor temperatures. If that software had wider spread of RPMs that would be different story, for example to set fan speed at 4000 and let ti cool more longer in sense of time.

Some users are stating that 60 degrees of Celsius are all right with CPU and then on the other hand users are complaining that something hardware related has failed. I'm not encouraging people to turn hot tap at home on full flow and stick their hand in it but that is the temperature of 60 degrees. Don't tell me that is normal because it is not. Intel states that U9400 has 105 of T junction temperature as max. But that is on the CPU die, not on other hardware. Emitting 100 degrees to surround is damaging less capable materials. Typical soldering melting point range is beginning on 90 degrees to 450. Lets assume there is more sophisticated solder used in laptop these days but constant temperature abuse leads to necessary motherboard re-flowing to save it. That is why many users are complaining about their smart phones failures and other common electronics failing because they left it in summer in car or on the coffee table on sunny day. There is no device which can stand up temperature abuse for prolonged periods or shocks. It takes time but eventually it leads to failure.

That is why I let the BIOS handle Fan on 4990 RPM to cool things down especially on RAM modules and Wifi card underneath the motherboard and use TPFan to monitor only.

Don't kill me it is just my observation and opinion.

[600X]

Thanks for your experience and opinion!

Yes, the X301 is a very special machine. I too noticed that extremely high RPM's are still very silent. However, you can not compare this to other ThinkPads because the amount of airflow the fan creates is so ridiculously low, it's no wonder it has to run at 5000RPM. At 5000RPM, the amount of air coming out of the fan is similar to the amount coming out of my X220 at 2000RPM!

Also, even if you switch off the fan, the X220 does not get hot on the bottom. It stays cool. If fact, heat is still transferred through the heatpipe, away from the CPU. No fan needed. This is something the X301 fails to do. I have no idea why this is the case, but that's just the way it is.

When outdoors, I always switch off the fan of the X301 to prevent dust and sand from being sucked into the machine. The CPU temperature usually idles at 50 to 55°C. When there is no wind, it will climb to about 60°C. The X301 is tasked with playing music, so there is constant but low CPU usage. It stays fairly cool, though is does get warm.

I might try changing the thermal paste, because from what I've heard it dries out extremely fast on the X300 series. Lenovo must use some really crappy paste on it. Some Arctic Silver is supposed to cool down the CPU by an average of 5°, which would make quite a noticebale difference if you think about it. Apparently you can even switch off the fan and the X300 still stays cool.

By the way, the maximum afterburner level is 8100RPM!

Fan Levels are:
0RPM
2000RPM
4500RPM
5000RPM
6000RPM
8100RPM

There are 6 fan levels.

The BIOS makes use of 4 because it does not need more. The X301 never gets that hot that it needs to rev up the fan to 6000RPM. After all we are talking about a 10W processor. It appears like there are only 2 settings the BIOS uses because, well, you obviously can't hear 0RPM, neither can you hear 2000RPM, so you won't notice when it switches. Same applies to 4500 and 5000RPM. You can barely hear a difference. Thus you perceive only two fan levels.

[JoeHallenbeck]

Yes you are right. X301 cannot be compared to other thinkpads. Therefore I titled my post as TPFan usage on X301.

To update things I installed Power manager (version 6.54) and RPMs went down to 4560 when it is not used very much. Previous values were taken without power manager, please note that power manager driver was installed before.

Bios was updated as well, current version is 3.16 date 26/10/2012 before installation of lenovo power manager.

If you take a look at CPU heat-sink of X220 it is longer than X301 heat-sink. Longer the pipe, bigger temperature differences on each end of the pipe. Maybe that's why your 220 is not getting hot even without fan turned on. I think that's why X301 needs the fan on. I would say that pwr sensor is triggering constant fan on BIOS otherwise I guess it would be on lower RPMs.

I don't know about CPU thermal paste but 301 version was technical update of 300 maybe it was already done during this upgrade process.

How did you get your fan at 8100 RPM? I tried manual setting on TPfan and it goes on maximum as initial 6190 and stabilizes at 6075.

Thanks for your input.

[Tasurinchi]

I'm using TPF in one of my X301 and I haven't detected any problem yet. Although I have to say I didn't pay a lot of attention at the temperatures since I did not feel it TP was getting hot nor did I hear the fan being loud. I replaced today the thermal paste and I will take a closer look from now. Thanks anyway guys for the hints!

[600X]

Set the fan to afterburner to reach close to 8200 RPM. This should be a ThinkPad world record.

[JoeHallenbeck]

I tried that 8000 RPM, boy that is loud. It sounded like Pratt and Whitney spooling up just before fuel ignition ha ha. However that setting is emergency only. If users are complaining about fan noise, it has to be this. I tried it on T60 and it took it above 4300 and that was even more loud than X301 on 8000. Certainly there is technological update but I'm still hesitating whether to keep T60 or X301. Really only one downside is the display on both machines.

Anyway temps are:

pwr 39 and CPU 41 and fan just kicked to 4567 on BIOS controll while writing this post.
Fan inaudible

T60 4485
X301 4438

T60 is much more lauder.