Thinkpads Forum

Today, while holding the laptop at near horizontal position, i heared some unusual sounds coming from around the fan or around fan area.

It sounds like a slight ratling sound, happens about 1 second apart, sounds close to the sound of pealing off adhesive tape , or a piece of adhesive tape getting moved by the airflow from the fan.., this noise could stop for few minutes, but then it is back again.

the noise is NOT like constant zzzz that you would get if you put something in the direction of the spinning fan blades.

it only happen when the laptop is in the horizontal position, or near horizontal.

i took the laptop apart, and i separated the heatsink and fan, and connected the heatsink only to the laptop to protect it from sudden overheating, and held the fan in my hand while it is spinning, and couldn't get the same noise .. i suppose maybe because this noise only happen sometime and not constant??

What could that be ?

The laptop is T520.

(NOTE: i have been running the laptop upside down for few days, maybe that affected the fan ?)
(NOTE2: i am using a modded heatsink, the nvidia part cut off to fit in the the igpu version of the laptop, maybe the heatsink is damaged ?)

AFAIK no laptop can run upside down for a prolonged time (unless perhaps if it is in the Space Station).
I'd say your fan suffered from that.

hmm just wondering, any reason why you run the laptop upside down? Believe the fan is not designed to work in that way.

This hhhd1 must have been slapped by the Sphinx: I want to keep my T520 upside down...

RealBlackStuff wrote:This hhhd1 must have been slapped by the Sphinx: I want to keep my T520 upside down...

Yup, that is what happened

So new update,
the fan is NOT the problem,
the strange noise is happening even with the fan is at level 0 by tpfancontrol.

one more things i noticed, if i put the laptop in near horizantal position where the touchpad/palm rest is up and the hinges/lcd are down, the heatsink becomes very in-eficient, and temp suddenly rises to 96c, and the cpu suddently throttles massively.

this unusual noise happens mainly when the laptop is in the opposite horizontal position, where the touchpad is down and hinges are up.

as a wild guess ... maybe that unusual sound is the gas/liquid inside the thermal tubes boiling and hitting the inside of the tubes making clinking noise ???

Heat rises and the heat sink is on top of your processor for this reason. Being upside down the heat is rising away from the sink.

Do you have an HDD? Might be the disk hitting the normally top cover which would be bad.

You could try using an external flat screen monitor to achieve what you want.

The problem with heat doesn't happen when the laptop is upside down, it only happens when the laptop is horizontol, with the heatsink , and the hinges/lcd down.

the sudden temp increase is so huge, that i doubt the reason behind it is only heat build up, because the fan is working properly at the time.

http://s29.postimg.org/sn7rsbw7r/fan_2016_02_05_1.png

This image shows what happens when the laptop is put horizontally.