Thinkpads Forum

Hello forum members.
I am a proud owner of a Think-pad x201 for over a year. I bought it used. But so far I am very happy with it.

But recently I have some concerns about the heating and temperatures of my system.
The system is 3626-A18
The configuration:
Intel core I5-520m
4Gb DD3
128mb OCZ agility SSD

When I bought it I performed a cleaning. Blew out all dusts out, replaced thermal grease with Arctic Silver MX 2. I check the thermal grease and dust every 3 months. Since I work with laptops (IT engineer)
I considered the temperatures to be high. But the system is stable and works fine. So is these temperatures normal ? What is your experiance

Idle use 40 - 50 degrees Celsius
Gaming around 80 -90 degrees Celsius
Running IntelBurntest v2.54 at maximum stress it reaches 98 degrees Celsius (never went over yet)
The T junction of this CPU is 105 Celsius.

The fan is clean, there is no dust, the heat sink is seated properly. The thermal grease is spread properly. I work with laptops for over 10 years , so I dont think there is an error in the reassembly of the system. Could it be a problem with the heat sink/pipe ? Or am I just paranoid about these temperatures, and since they are this high only with IntelBurnTest, usually with gaming or HD decoding it never goes over 90 degrees.

I also disabled the turbo boost in one of my power profiles, according tho this instruction http://www.tautvidas.com/blog/2011/04/d ... rbo-boost/ by setting the maximum CPU usage to 99%
In this mode the CPU never goes over 85 degrees Celsius with IntelBurntest

Temperatures and test
http://atviras.lt/mwf/attach/80/8380/x2 ... atures.PNG

The newer model think-pad x220 with Sandy bridge CPU (i5-2520m) in lenovo power manager has an option to DISABLE turbo boost. But the x201 Power manager does not have this option.
Maybe its possible to modify the power manager of the x220, to work with x201, and would it have the option to disable the turbo boost ?

O maybe I should just upgrade to think-pad x220 ?
But it has too many drawbacks, like 7 mm hard drive (I could not use the OCZ i have now)
The keyboard is a mess.
And the 1366x768 resolution is a bloody murder.

Moderator edit: no picture warning, picture size is WAY too big, changed it into link.
Read the Forum Rules:
5. IF you must add a photograph to your post, PLEASE limit the size to 50k or less and place a warning in the subject line.

Don't have an X201 but have a T410 with the same CPU. My T410 will sit idle (i.e. me not using it) at just below 40 C, in light use will spend some time above 40 C (at 40 C CPU fan kicks in so I hear the change). 50% CPU use sustained will push temperatures to 60 to 65 C. I don't play games on it, though if 50% raises by 20 to 25 C then at 100% I would expect it to reach 80 to 90 C. Mobile CPUs are generally designed to work at higher temperatures than desktop CPUs, in part at least as a noise/temperature trade off.

As the X201 is a slightly smaller machine your temperatures might be that bit higher.

If your system is stable then I don't see you have much of a problem. If you will use it for a lot of gaming and are concerned, maybe consider giving it some cooling assistance during that e.g. placing an ice pack (wrapped in something) underneath it.

I have x201, and also i have this problem. If I'd run a game on Windows or OCCT, temp cpu around 95*C. Sometimes notebook are shutdown, but usually throttling turns on, and cpu freq reduces to 1.1Ghz for few minutes. I changed thermal grease to MX4 and problem still exist. In idle i have circa 50*C.

My solution:
- On Windows: Install TPFC and activate 128 mode in cfg, if temp cpu is more than 85*C
- On Linux: Install thinkfan and add in config: this activate 127 if temp is more than 78.

On mode 127(128 in win) fan work in full power(probably it is dangerous) = 5000rpm(loud:P), but temp is less than 95*C, and throttling don't turn


Likely cause of the problem is:
- My(and you) fan is old, and tired:P
- This is a structural defect model

I bought a used x201 and i don't know whether the issue was previously.

PS. Sorry for my english

My X201 idles around 50*C (similar to yours), but I have never seen it over 73*C. Mind you, I'm not putting it through the paces that you seem to be! I also run TPFC to keep a low-speed fan always running because I work in a hot, humid climate and I'd like to keep temps down if possible. That may skew my "actual" temps...
Specs: Intel I5 (530m, I think...)|8Gb DDR3|7K320 HD (yeah, the kind that spins...)|9 cell battery

Run OCCT or Orthos test and check temps In normal(office,www) work generally notebook working correctly.