Thinkpads Forum

Hello everyone. Is that any way where i could buy new cooling heatsink for ThinkPad X220 and T440p?
On the first one the CPU i7-2640M overheats up to 96 degrees with throttling (even on new motherboard), on the second one i had to turn off the turbo boost for CPU i7-4710MQ due to overheating and make an undervolting of the processor and integrated GPU. Cooler Master MX4 paste does not help
I have such a feeling, that the refrigerant (cooling agent) in the fabric radiator of the laptops has lost its efficiency.
Laptops have turned into a pumpkin, but I would like to use it every day.

I do not understand, how do t440p boys install i7 processors like 4910MQ and 4940MX (57 Watt) in their laptops.

Thanks.

If those heatsinks get bent, they may break and lose their coolant, whatever that is.
But even an 'empty' heatsink, properly installed with a decent thermal paste, should do better than what you describe.
Makes me wonder what you do, to get them so hot!

And CPUs like the i7-4910MQ have a TDP of 'only' 47W, not 57W as you claim.

See also viewtopic.php?f=68&t=133176
For T440p on eBay from China: https://www.ebay.ie/itm/353249381425

I have that heatsink in my T440p.

Heatsink in my T440p on Google Photos

Hello everyone. I started to study the Throttlestop program a little bit and its basic functionality. I did the maximum undrevolting of my i7-4710MQ cpu (+ cache too) and so far a little for the integrated graphics. The performance is sick and the CPU frequencies are stable under load.
According to Throttlestop, the temperature limit is triggered here at 92 degrees. Why was it impossible to make 100 (stock official limit in specs of CPU)? Well, of course components and etc...
I reach temperature limit, but much less often.
i7-4712MQ is coming to me soon already with expensive thermal paste thermal grizzly with a thermal pad from same manufacturer. I think that 4712MQ will work perfectly for me. I don’t even need to change the heatsink, in general, let's see...
Now I'm definitely more happy about T440p purchase

The refrigerant in heatpipes is just plain water.

There's a very small amount of water inside the sealed copper pipe. The internal pressure is below 1 atmosphere, which makes the water boil below 100 degrees Celsius. As it boils, it absorbs the heat, becomes water vapor, and moves to the other end of the heatpipe. The other end is much cooler, thanks to the cooling fins and moving air from the fan. As the water vapor cools, it releases its stored heat and condenses back to liquid. Then it is drawn back to the hot end of the heatpipe through capillary action via a "wick"-- a porous material that lines the inner surface of the heatpipe. In heatpipes used in desktop and laptop coolers, the wick is copper powder that's deposited into the heatpipe's inner walls via sintering.

My X220's fan died the other day, and managed to replace it with a heatsink from a spare unit. TBH it's been running hot for quite a while now; I think it's similar to forum threads discussing similar issues with the older X201.
Aside from heatpipe degradation, my other suspicion is that the processor itself is aging, that the physical structure of the silicon die itself has changed, resulting in higher heat output.

This reminds me of an issue with a certain smartphone model with an unusual boot-loop issues many years after manufacture. It was found out that the big/fast CPU cores were somehow malfunctioning (or that the rest of the chip was failing to communicate with them), and the only solution Android ROM hackers found was to force Android to use only the slow (and power-conserving) CPU cores. They suspect that Qualcomm rushed that SoC out the door to meet deadlines (it was one of the early Snapdragon 800 series chips IIRC).