Thinkpads Forum

Last week, I upgraded my wife's T500 from a lower end "P" Series processor to a T9600. The CPU upgrade itself was a quick drop-in and was all done in about 10 minutes. I wasn't too terribly concerned when the first couple of boot/reboots were a little weird, but it seemed to settle down. Then a couple of days later it started doing strange things like constantly accessing the optical drive while it was supposed to be "asleep". Then it apparently ran, an continued to run while unattended until it got hot enough to lock up.

This is new behavior to me. I've not seen a machine do this regardless of OS going back to my first 701c! It's running Windows 7 64-bit on an SSD (AHCI), but otherwise unremarkable. I decided to throw this out there to see if anyone had some thoughts before I do a reload on it this weekend.

What about the thermal paste? Which one you used after upgrading the CPU? Are you sure the heatsink is sitting properly?

I recommend that you undervolt that CPU, IBM_ECW can be used for that.

But a T500 runs hot even with the fastest 25w CPU's (P9600) I really don't recommend that anyone use a 35w "T" series CPU in T500 or W500.

Tasurinchi wrote:What about the thermal paste? Which one you used after upgrading the CPU? Are you sure the heatsink is sitting properly?

I used AS5 just like on all my other machines so that's pretty much a non-factor. I was afraid that I forgot to hook the fan back up, but I could hear and feel it so that wasn't it either, besides I'd have found that out the first few days. The mystery to me is what would it run and access the optical drive with the machine should have been asleep.

You may want to take that heatsink off and re-seat it.

I've got the R500F in my sig running a T9400 and have yet to see it go over 60 degrees...granted, you have switchable graphics BUT also a more powerful fan, so something is just not right.

Good luck.

I've swapped T9900's into several machines with no problems.

The possible causes, both of which may be present:

1. Sometimes one of the CPU screws "hangs up" due to a rough thread, providing the false impression that the heat sink is properly mated.

2. Thermal paste.

3. The heatsink assembly was bent in the process of removal.

If the thing is cocked because of a screw problem, thick thermal paste is not a solution.

the T9400 and T9600 should be fine in the ThinkPad T500.

Also, check whether your CPU is an engineering sample.