[Solved] T420s with FHD screen mod - normal operating temperatures?

[ji2o0k]

Hoping someone can assist...

I have a T420s that I completed the FHD screen mod (seen here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=118070) and have been monitoring my temps and they seem a little high:

On boot up, the temps start at 48-50 C and then with some light web browsing quickly go up to 65 - 75C. I can hear the fan on constantly and if I place my hand above the vents on the left side...definitely feels hot. This is mainly while plugged in...seems to run a bit cooler on battery....temps are provided by Speccy app...

With some torrenting, the temps go up to 85 C....

Is this normal? Unfortunately I didn't run the T420s too much prior to the screen mod (picked up a deal on the T420s)...

While I was doing the screen mod, I took the opportunity to airblow out the heatsink fan (nice and clean now) and clean out the old thermal paste (with rubbing alcohol) and re-apply new Arctic Silver 5...

Below are some additional details of the T420s:
Intel Core i5 2540M @ 2.6Ghz (Sandy Bridge)
16Gb Ram
500GB Crucial MX200 SSD (temps are about 30C)
Intel 7260 AC wireless card (with whitelisted BIOS)

Are my temps normal? If not, any additional ways to lower the temps? The T420s is now set up beautifully the way I like and I'd like to make sure I don't kill the laptop with high temps...

Thanks in advance!

P.S. This is the 2nd unit I have screen modded - I also screen modded a T430s with the FHD screen mod and I checked those temps (and did the same thing cleaning out the heatsink fan and reapplying the thermal paste) and the temps range from 45-55C constantly - regardless of what I am doing...

I don't game....mainly web browing, Youtube and torrenting...

[SaskFellow]

Temps should be a bit higher, due to extra load on the GPU. I'm guessing that you have an iGPU model. Torrenting will also load a system up pretty good, it's why I'm not a fan of running torrents on laptops.

Why type of web browsing are you doing?

What power scheme are you running? Balanced is far and away better than running the high performance options, they will only cause the system to get hot unnecessarily.

I'll report on my T420s with its i7-2640m and Quadro NVS4200M temps when I get home from school.

Just a quick q... Do the screen backlight controls work with the screen mod?

[bit_twiddler]

I haven't done a T420s yet, but my T420 with integrated graphics runs at much lower temps than you are seeing,
more like your T430s.

[ji2o0k]

Thanks for the replies!

The web browsing I am doing is mainly reading! Like ESPN, online newspapers.....I might do some Youtubing....


With the screen mod, yes the keyboard controls still work (guessing you mean FN + Home for increased brightness and FN+ End for decreased brightness)....

Darn, didn't know torrenting would max the laptop.....

The power scheme I am using is Balanced - whatever is default as I haven't changed anything....

Perhaps I applied the thermal paste incorrectly or too much......just don't want to have to dissemble the laptop again...lol

[Thinkso]

Just look at the task manager to figure out how much CPU is used.

I have a T420s with the FHD mod and a Core i7. It tends to idle at around 45-46°C with the fan off. When watching videos it goes up to around 50-52°C with the fan slowly spinning (barely audible).

When CPU use is above 50%, it tends to get "loud" though and can go up to 65-70°C.

Start looking at the CPU use. You can also check whether the Intel or Nvidia graphics adapter is used. With the Nvidia adapter on, it tends to heat up more and use much more power as well.

[SaskFellow]

With my T420s I get the following out of the temps using TPfanCtrl and I'm rocking customized temp/fan speed thresholds.

Boot up 40-50'C
Idling Desktop 38-40'C
Light web use: 40-70'C ->Using Edge, handful of tabs, usually 40-50'C but when on pages with 'heavy' ads then it spikes but usually falls back down after the ads stop or I close the tab.

My T420s is an i7-2640M, 16GB DDR3, NVS 4200M (Optimus kind of), 480GB 850Pro, currently 1600x900 display, MX4 cooling paste, and Windows 10Pro x64.

My t-paste method is to spread a thin layer over the die with a spreader to insure even coverage. I only use the pea dot method when there's a heatspreader involved.

[jaspen-meyer]

T420s: i5-2540 (HT enabled in bios)
OS: Debian
with a video playing, and a torrent running and browsing temp is 58C.
after boot and 8min of idle and with wifi on, temp is 37C.

[ji2o0k]

Thx all for the replies, very helpful!

Now this is interesting....i was having problems with Wifi and the Intel 7260 AC card (laptop would try to connect and not be able to, or was connected but pages wouldn't load).

So I ended up swapping back in the stock Intel Centrino N card and wifi is working great.....AND the Temps are aroun 40-50C constant....goes up to 65C at most when I am also torrenting..

Thinking maybe the poor Wifi connection and Firefox might have been taxing the CPU usage and thus the high temps?

I have only used the laptop sparingly the last 2 days since the wifi card swap, will do more testing on the weekend.

Does the above sound plausible?

[jaspen-meyer]

Yes it's likely the wifi card was causing your high temperatures.

[ji2o0k]

Thanks! Learn new stuff everyday....love this forum!

[ji2o0k]

Ok - here's the latest update and I think I have it figured out....

The temps were still going up to 70-75 C and all I was doing was light web browsing (reading and youtubing).....

From Thinkso's post about looking at CPU usage - I was seeing that my CPU was at approx. 50% usage - spiking erratically...

The process that was causing it was the System Kernel - PID = 4...

Did a bunch of research and turns out you should use Kern Rate viewer to see what exactly is causing the high CPU usage...

Turns out it was a bad driver for the Ricoh Media reader (risdxc64.sys causing 70% CPU usage)

I have updated to the latest and see the CPU usage go down to 25% while torrenting and temps down in the 50 C range...will monitor during the weekend and see if this stays consistent

Great read on the kernel issue here:
http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/fix-n ... windows-7/

TL; DR - Bad driver causing high CPU usage and the high temps. Updated driver and seems to be ok...

[csioucs]

This topic seems intriguing and promising at the same time! My CPU almost never is below 70°C, more likely just below the 80°C. I have had a hardtime finding the culprit. Maybe my acumen on KrView is below the needed level. I could not find the command line argument that would point me to the process, and I tried a few. What did you use in command line as an argument? Just running the tool did not do it for me.

[ji2o0k]

here is more info on what I ended up doing....

I read more info here:
https://danieladeniji.wordpress.com/201 ... -kernrate/

I downloaded the Windows Device Driver Kit found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=11800

and followed the install steps found on the page and ran the command prompt kernrate.exe found under the amd64 directory (for Intel 64-bit)....

And identified the file causing the high CPU usage and used Process Explorer found in the previous link to identify the offending driver.

However, even with updating the driver - the CPU eventually would spike later (not sure why).

So I ended up disabling the Ricoh card reader device within Device Manager - no more high CPU usage.....not the best answer but at least it solved my problem for now...

Forgot to add that I am using Win10 64bit on the T420s....

[SaskFellow]

Ricoh seems to have lousy drivers at the best of times. Luckily you can remove the card reader from the system and have an available expresscard slot instead too.