Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

About a year and a half ago my T500 started making a strange noise which I thought was the hard drive. In an effort to diagnose the problem I installed 'Notebook Hardware Control Personal Edition Software' which is essentially just a suite of diagnostic tools. Anyway, I finally figured out that the problem was the CPU fan and not the hard drive and replaced it. The noise stopped but I did find that I would get the occasional pop up message from the diagnostic software warning me that my CPU temp is greater than 80C. This was especially frequent when I would play a certain flash based game on the internet. I've mostly just ignored them for the last year but recently I started using the machine very frequently in a very hot (90Fish) room and the pop up warnings have become even more frequent. Today it even hit 90C and a windows dialog popped up warning me that it was going to shut down windows.

Is there anything I can do about this? Unfortunately the atmosphere in the room in which I'm working is outside of my control. What are the chances that this is related to the fact that I made a mistake when I replaced the fan? How serious is this issue? Is it just the CPU that's in danger or might I also lose data off of the hard drive?

Thanks.

-ts1971

That diagnostic software you installed is also able to monitor HD temperature, right? As long as it's not excessive, your HD is probably fine.

However, if excessive CPU temperature causes the CPU to malfunction... Well, I'm no expert in temperature-related CPU malfunctions, but I would think there is the possibility that it would not just stop dead in its tracks, but first somehow crash the OS and whatever apps you are running. That could potentially result in logical corruption of your HD - i.e. data loss.

Recently I purchased a new T500 laptop from TuuS. (I say new because it arrived in absolutely MINT condition and it looks and feels like a brand new Thinkpad and I couldn't be happier!). Before shipping it to me, TuuS took extra effort to configure and optimize it's setup for me. The reason I mention this, is that one of the programs TuuS installed and setup was TpFanControl (tpfc) which actively monitors the T500 system temperatures and then in real-time, adjusts and controls fan speed as needed. Since receiving the T500, I have been busy putting it through its paces including playing a number of blue-ray movies back to back. As load and temperatures increase, TpFanControl steps in and adjusts the fan speed accordingly. So far, it is doing an excellent job in keeping the T500 running cool and without any overheating issues at all. Since first purchasing my T60p some years ago, I have used TpFanControl to prevent my T60p from overheating and keep it running cool. As a result, I have never experienced any overheating issues with my T60p. If you do a quick search of the forums, you will find there are many thinkpadders using this program.

If you are still experiencing overheating problems with your T500, you may want to try TpFanControl which you can download the latest release at the following url:

http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html

Download, install the program and take the default settings which should work fine. You can always adjust settings, if needed.

Hope this is of some help.

Regards,

Scott Halliday