Thinkpads Forum

Anyone else experiencing the fan staying on the high setting, a.k.a 6800 RPM or BIOS level 7?

My system temperature is 38 degrees, and the fan stays on high, but when it first boots the fan will function normally for a short period, but once the system reaches a temperature to cause the fan to speed up, it never seems to slow down to the lower speeds.


mod edit: added image notification to title.

Did some testing with the tpfancontrol and looks like the fan settings are not quite as granular as I had hoped for.

Below are the fan settings as recorded using the manual settings 0-7
0=Off
1=1819 rpm
2=5206 rpm
3=5912 rpm
4=5898
5=5883
6=6632
7=6713

I also have (or hopefully had) the fan speed problem. Since I also have dead pixels on my display, I sent my x300 to the lenovo support team; I hope they can fix it.

The fan really sounds like a starting jumbo jet; way noisier than fan + hdd of my x60s!

Lenovo is turning into another run of the mill laptop maker, sometimes I think they have a senior management consisting of monkeys... they take IBM thinkpads winning strategy and butcher it thinking it will help the bottom line, cutting costs from left to right thinking that the customer won't notice...monkeys...

- Fan problems
- weak and slow GPS
- slight paint finish bubbling
- dead pixels
- sending reviewers Samsung screens (understandable that they have 2 manufacturers - but it is like they are trying to sabotage themselves!)

Ontop of that, yesterday my X300, 2 days old, wouldn't even turn on! The power button lit up, and the battery and AC lights were on, but nothing after that. I had to take out the hard drive and ram, and reseat them to get it going again.

Lenovo is just killing their whole Thinkpad line! I have had tons of problems with the 6 T61s and 4 X61ts that I manage at work, from loose screens, to intel turboboost crashes, to rescue and recovery errors from the factory...

What happens when you call Lenovo to get the NBD On-site service that we pay $$$ for, " We're sorry, that isn't covered by the On-site warranty, you will have to send it to the depot"

Maybe its just Canada but all of this blows me away!

-- Rant Over -- I imagine it might be deleted soon, thats okay... I just hope someone from Lenovo takes note of what their large account customers think...

I think mine is having the same fan problem - jet engine

For those running x64 - give this a shot if you want to try tpfancontrol: http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/tpfc64.zip

Edit:
With the following temps mine runs at 5800rpm
Lenovo is turning into another run of the mill laptop maker, sometimes I think they have a senior management consisting of monkeys... they take IBM thinkpads winning strategy and butcher it thinking it will help the bottom line, cutting costs from left to right thinking that the customer won't notice...monkeys...

- Fan problems
- weak and slow GPS
- slight paint finish bubbling
- dead pixels
- sending reviewers Samsung screens (understandable that they have 2 manufacturers - but it is like they are trying to sabotage themselves!)

Ontop of that, yesterday my X300, 2 days old, wouldn't even turn on! The power button lit up, and the battery and AC lights were on, but nothing after that. I had to take out the hard drive and ram, and reseat them to get it going again.

Lenovo is just killing their whole Thinkpad line! I have had tons of problems with the 6 T61s and 4 X61ts that I manage at work, from loose screens, to intel turboboost crashes, to rescue and recovery errors from the factory...

What happens when you call Lenovo to get the NBD On-site service that we pay $$$ for, " We're sorry, that isn't covered by the On-site warranty, you will have to send it to the depot"

Maybe its just Canada but all of this blows me away!
CPU 51°C (0x78)
APS 44°C (0x79)
PCM 46°C (0x7a)
BAT 36°C (0x7c)
BAT 32°C (0x7e)
BUS 40°C (0xc0)
PWR 47°C (0xc2)

The same "jumbo jet" experience here, however the fan stops when the CPU is down to 42°C.

Toups: I can confirm your readings, and having the fan reach level 2 or higher is extremely annoying in a silent environment. Unfortunately, there seems to be no power setting which keeps the CPU cool enough so level 1 is sufficient to do simple tasks for a longer period of time (writing text, surfing non-flash sites). I wonder whether these fan speeds are "by design", as there is virtually no acoustic difference between levels 2-5.

elmokiddo: That's quite a list, did you already hear something from lenovo? Let us know if they manage to fix your machine...

I also have problems with the fan.

After poweron it takes only a few minutes till the fan is spinning at Level 1 (2000 RPM - that's ok, because it's almost impossible to hear).
But after some more minutes (of almost no load) the fan goes to level 2 (about 5000 RPM).
As a result, temperatures fall but the fan doesn't go off. If I produce some more heat (OpenGL Game) the fan will even speed up more
(level 5, ~ 5700 RPM) but it won't go down later.

Here's how it looks like:



Some information about my system:
Linux 2.6.25
ThinkPad BIOS 7TET25WW (1.02 ), EC 7THT15WW-1.00c

(I also posted this to http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... ge.id=1426 )

And why are there no other fan-speeds between level 1 and 2? I'd love to get my own firmware into this controller

Seems that I have fan problem as well. It's annoying, because when I have my thinkpad on battery power the computer is dead silent, when I attach AC power (with or without battery in the system) the fan goes up!

Is it possible that some future BIOS will fix this or is this a problem with fan (design?) - don't think so though, because it obviously has different levels which work.

Thanks

A level 2 fan speed at 5200 rpm sounds almost crazy, and for sure will be noisy. Is this the price to pay for a thin design? Then I prefer a few millimeter thicker case, and lower fan speeds.

One can hope they try to update the BIOS with a more granular set of fan speeds, if possible.

I have lenovo x300 and my fan on level1 have 1900rpm, on level2 5200rpm... What I can do to make on level2 2500-3000rpm ??

Nothing atm.

But I configured my TPFanControl to start at fan leve 1 at 50°C up to 60°C, then it goes into level 2.

This way, the fan is only noticeable (level 2) when really pushing the CPU. Totally quiet during normal LaTeX use in Vista this way

But what do to make this level2 on 2500-3000rpm? This is only make Lenovo in software BIOS ?

Fan control works very well - thanks for all of the information.

I am wondering if anyone has some guidelines for a safe operating temperature for the CPU. I notice that the BIOS likes to spin the fan up when the temperature goes above 45. Using the scheme above the temperature hovers above 50 and occassionally hits 60 where the level 2 fan will usually cool it down to 50 within about 30s. The case certainly gets toasty on the back left side. With the BIOS fan speeds, it is barely warm at all.

Is it safe for the CPU to run it at average of 55 instead of 45?

jflamm wrote:Fan control works very well - thanks for all of the information.
I am wondering if anyone has some guidelines for a safe operating temperature for the CPU. I notice that the BIOS likes to spin the fan up when the temperature goes above 45. Using the scheme above the temperature hovers above 50 and occassionally hits 60 where the level 2 fan will usually cool it down to 50 within about 30s. The case certainly gets toasty on the back left side. With the BIOS fan speeds, it is barely warm at all.
Is it safe for the CPU to run it at average of 55 instead of 45?

Honestly, I don't know. What I know is, that the original Pentium M (Banias) was able to handle 99°C as max. There is not much information available for the L7100 currently.
You may tell TPFanControl to switch to BIOS mode (level 128) when reaching 70°C just to be on the safe side.
My setup above works very well for me. No noise at all the whole day. But I keep my notebook on a table (rarely also in bed) and not on my laps. At least not for long.
Additionally, Intel CPUs are totally prone to overheating: They automatically lower speed or shut down when they really get too hot. Of course this is only true for the CPU itself.

vpn-user wrote:I configured my TPFanControl to start at fan leve 1 at 50°C up to 60°C, then it goes into level 2.

This way, the fan is only noticeable (level 2) when really pushing the CPU. Totally quiet during normal LaTeX use in Vista this way

Except it doesn't seem to work at all in Vista x64 and the X300.