Thinkpads Forum

Hi, just starting to enjoy the new machine.
Everything excellent, I like win seven,
but I am a bit concerned about the noise.
It whined, there is a special thread on it, high pitched noise from motherboard.
It was solved, thanks to advice on this board, by disabling CPU power management in BIOS

However, in generalI had expected a quieter machine from lenovo. I just saw a sh*tty Acer with a Celeron in it and it was more silent...of course, it has less processing power etc.

the fan is mostly on, and I find it relatively loud.
The machine has a discrete graphics card.
It is still quite noisy even after I created a special power mgt profile in the Lenovo power utility, aimed at silent fan
- any advice on how to make it more silent?
- do you think a T500 with switchable graphics would help, would be more silent, thx.

Did you try to deactivate the dedicated gpu? If the R500 is thicker than the T500 - which I do not know -, it should be easier to cool and therefore it should be less noisy.

well the thing is, i have no idea if it can work without the dedicated gpu.
Does it also have an itegrated one? is the switchablity of gpu s not the domain of only T series?

I have just googled up that R500 is the only one that does not have switchable graphics.
I dont know if it is worth the extra money for the T version..It seems I can silence the thing with the TPsomething utility. A TP fan control software.
btw, any idea which are the safext maxima of the temperatures ? thx

PRAGUEGUY wrote:btw, any idea which are the safext maxima of the temperatures ? thx

That's a highly discussed topic. There are T60 users that have constantly 90 celcius even if the fan is on maximum because of their intensive cpu / gpu use. I turn on the fan once my notebook is hotter than 80 celsius. The cpu is designed for hotter degrees, but I am unsure about the motherboard. Telling you all this - these are not temperature I'd call as safe. But when you use a T60, experience these high degrees and call lenovo - they'll say you this is okay.

Maybe there is a program where you can downclock your gpu?

With tpFanControl you can definitely see whether the cpu or the gpu makes your notebook hot

thanks..I am trying to work out a "noise paranoid" night mode.
It is quite ok now... I think I can live with what I have now, cpu at 63 and the TP fancontrol says Fan 0...
I will not use performance intensive stuff at night
couple of questions
1. how many fans are in this thing? I definitely hear something fan-like in the right bottom quadrant of the laptop, even when the "big " fan that fancontrol indicates is off. could it be the hard drive?
2. can I try to down clock the main processor as well, without damaging anything?
3 the most weird question: To get rid of the high pitch whining noise, discussed elsewhere, I have disabled power mgt of the CPU. Can this be in conflict with all the other tweaks I am perpetrating? e.g., can I not destroy the laptop , as fan controls info will be confucsed, by the fact that power mgt of cpu is disabled? or can I damage the CPU, as I have disabled its power mgt, and at the same time, tampered with the temperatures at which the fans kick in?
thanks I hope this is food for thought
I am a bit of a noise neurotic as it surely shows

I deactivated the cpu "whining" with the rmclock tool.

I think your R500 only uses one fan - but that is only a guess. The harddrive does make noise. If it is a solid state hdd (ssd), it does not make any noise.

You may downclock your computer by down"clocking" it from 2 GHZ to 1 GHZ for example. That only slows down your computer.

Or you can undervolt it. That is always no problem - the more you undervolt your computer, you may find the limit the computer needs for staying on: your computer may lose power and therefore you may have problems with your windows installation due to "shutdowns", but for the hardware it is no problem at all.

thanks
the whining went away when I switched the cpu power mgt on, and did not seem to react to the tool you refer to
so I hopw thats settled

- there still seems to be something distinctly fan-like even when Tp fan control shows the no 0 under State, Fan 0, and zero speed under Speed. So maybe theres another fan..anyway I think one can live with that
I do not have a solid state hdd...

Pls, how do I uncderclock? if it is trivial, I will be grateful for links only, thanks

btw, I guess I am hearing the HDD. No vents near the place where I hear it. grateful for your help.
also, these utilities are just a godsend thanks to those who made them, I will surely contribute to them.
I was just considering I will buy the T version only because of the noise. these utils will help me not to do that.

PRAGUEGUY wrote:I was just considering I will buy the T version only because of the noise. these utils will help me not to do that.

Good decision!

With rmclock you have to change something of the "c3 / c4" cpu state. You may want to search for both cpu states in this forum. Unfortunately I do not know more about this now.

With rmclock you can also downvolt your cpu which may not be the right thing for you.

Windows underclocks by default if you have your settings on "battery maximum" instead of "maximum performance".

Instead of buying a new T500 you may think of buying a ssd hdd to replace your non-ssd hdd. I am unsure about whether you are comfortable to install a complete new operating system on the new hdd with dvds - that's up to you then.

thanks, do you think that replacement is always possible?

PRAGUEGUY wrote:thanks, do you think that replacement is always possible?

You can always replace your hdd. It's the one of the most easy things to do. A cheper ssd can cost you less than 100 € but I am unsure how the prices are in prague. Be careful to have some install dvds for installing the operating system on your new ssd hdd.

thx..I just looked at my vendors pages, and the only one they have is about 1000+ euros... could you put in a link? have no idea how to choose it

try to google for "intel 80gb ssd" - they should be in the 200-400 € price range. Intel ssds are one of the best. You might want to find a cheaper one.