Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

I received a T510 and was surprised by the shoddy construction:

1.
I took the computer out of the box and immediately noticed that the hard drive bay door wasn't even properly closed:
http://yfrog.com/g0img9834j
Does Lenovo not even look at their computers before they ship them?

2.
The plastic on the wrist-rest was discolored, as if the composition of the plastic is not uniform. In some light this is very noticeable. Look near the "->" key:
http://yfrog.com/5dimg9843oj

And there were quality issues:

3.
The computer puts out a very high pitched squeal that causes my ears to ring.

4.
Within 24 hours of receiving this PC, it completely froze on me. This happened after it had been on battery power and I plugged in the power supply.

I used to rely on Thinkpads daily but something seems to have gone terribly wrong with quality control.

1 and 2 are easily remedied. #1 with a screwdriver, and #2 by calling Lenovo. #3 is a CPU whine and is a common noise on Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines. It has nothing to do with Thinkpad quality. All Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines do this to a certain extent. Perhaps you haven't owned many machines with those CPUs before. #4 could be anything, but most likely a driver problem. You'll have to figure that one out on your own, but given the circumstances I'd start by loading the latest BIOS and Power Management driver. If the machine has been on a shelf it may have down level drivers for everything.

Harryc wrote:#3 is a CPU whine and is a common noise on Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines. It has nothing to do with Thinkpad quality. All Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines do this to a certain extent. Perhaps you haven't owned many machines with those CPUs before.

I've owned and used several Toshibas that were based on the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo and they never emitted a high pitched squeal. In fact I'm using one right now, which is my backup machine, and it's totally silent. I'd bet the thin metal sheet that used to be behind the keyboard was muffling this sound. But Lenovo removed it to save weight so now we're stuck with his sound.

I don't recall seeing a T510 keyboard, but I'd be willing to bet there is a metal backing on the keyboard. There is such a backing on every Thinkpad keyboard I've seen. IMHO, if the noise bothers you return it and get another. Perhaps it's just an anomaly of that particular machine. I don't recall reading about any other T510 noise complaints here, so either your ears are very sensitive or the machine is noisy. In other words it's not a major quality flaw with all T510's. Try another one.

I've had several Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines, and seen many others, but I've never heard the CPU whine. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I think perhaps some people are just more sensitive to it.

FredGarvin wrote:I've had several Core Duo and Core 2 Duo machines, and seen many others, but I've never heard the CPU whine. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I think perhaps some people are just more sensitive to it.

I've had several of each, and pretty much every one of them has had some amount of "whine". It doesn't bother me, and has (on occasion) been useful -- as a hardcore geek I tend to spend a *lot* of time in front of my machines, and I have to say that after several months with one, it's not uncommon for me to be able to tell what it's doing based on said whine. For example: I can identify when my X61s is using the USB ports based on the pitch and intensity of its "whine".

Either way, I don't think it's indicative of any quality problems. I've been a very vocal critic of what I've perceived to be build quality issues with some ThinkPads, yet I'm skeptical. I'm not really sure that the issues you mentioned are anything more than a mis-screwed part and a faulty Windows install...

Curiously but no whine on my 2GHz Core Duo T60.

That's normal unfortunately, we have 5 new T510's at the office and all have the same problems you mentioned i remember one of them having spots on the LCD just out of box! these new cheap black PC's look like a ThinkPad but in reality they are not...

nxman wrote:That's normal unfortunately, we have 5 new T510's at the office and all have the same problems you mentioned i remember one of them having spots on the LCD just out of box! these new cheap black PC's look like a ThinkPad but in reality they are not...

What are the chances that (5) new T510's out of the box had;

1.) a hard drive bay door wasn't even properly closed
2.) The plastic on the wrist-rest was discolored
3.) very high pitched squeal
4.) Freezing on power up

Really?

At school we had Core 2 Duo's and there was constant squealing. In a computer lab of about 25 computers, at least one or two were doing it at a time.

Really?[/quote]

Yes the drive is loose on all of them i remember ,plamrest making sounds ,screen had spots, one looked really dirty out of the box This is the normal T510...

nxman wrote:Yes the drive is loose on all of them i remember ,plamrest making sounds ,screen had spots, one looked really dirty out of the box This is the normal T510...

Well, you stated, and I quote "we have 5 new T510's at the office and all have the same problems you mentioned". Then you also stated the above. Of the items you mentioned, the only one that matched with the OP is "the drive is loose", yet you stated all of them have the same problems that you mentioned. Again, here was the list of problems mentioned;

1.) a hard drive bay door wasn't even properly closed
2.) The plastic on the wrist-rest was discolored
3.) very high pitched squeal
4.) Freezing on power up

So, what is the reason for your statement.? A loose bay door is hardly a quality snafu.

My T510 did not have any of those problems. The whining problem was on my mind when I configured the machine. I reasoned that the cheapest CPU would be the most likely to whine, and possibly also the fastest CPU. Accordingly, I chose the midrange i5-540M. Was my logic sound--or was I just lucky? To answer the question, you'd have to correlate processor model versus whine.

It seems it's relatively common to find assembly problems with the new ThinkPads.
My W510's left speaker vibrated up against the GPU cooler when playing audio, it sounded horrible, but I reseated the speaker and that solved the problem.
The cooler was also mounted wrongly, causing it to throttle after short periods of load, again the problem was fixable.
It's annoying to have such problems with a brand new machine but I'd rather have these assembly problems, then the cheap plastic the previous generation of ThinkPads sported, that couldn't be fixed.

Other then that, the new ThinkPads are among the best I have seen, and I have seen many.

As for the CPU whine, my W510 had that to an almost painful degree when I just got it, but now I have to listen carefully in a quiet room to notice it.
It was the same with my T500, so it seems that the whining decreases over time, at least in some cases.

I had problem 1, I just pushed it when I found out.

I have some creaking noise from the right palm-rest


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoDoYg339Io

Adda wrote:As for the CPU whine, my W510 had that to an almost painful degree when I just got it, but now I have to listen carefully in a quiet room to notice it.
It was the same with my T500, so it seems that the whining decreases over time, at least in some cases.

So does anybody else support this theory that the "whine" actually goes and will go down with time? I have a brand new T510 with an i5-560M processor and the sound at the current level is definitely unacceptable for any respectable ThinkPad. I am seriously debating if I should return the machine and request a replacement instead.

According to this thread at the Lenovo Forums this seems to quite a widespread problem reported by a number of Thinkpad users.
http://goo.gl/11RfW

Adda wrote:As for the CPU whine, my W510 had that to an almost painful degree when I just got it, but now I have to listen carefully in a quiet room to notice it.
It was the same with my T500, so it seems that the whining decreases over time, at least in some cases.

...or you just have accustomed to it.

Maybe some of the capacitors that didn't do their job right before broke in properly? Dunno.

Colonel O'Neill wrote:Maybe some of the capacitors that didn't do their job right before broke in properly? Dunno.

So is that a possibility. Theoretically? If that was the case, we probably should have heard a little more about it from all the users who first reported the "cpu whine" problem months ago on this forum.

Since no one else seems to have their cpu noise decrease over time I have experimented more.
I rarely use my W510 on battery power, and only use windows for certain performance tasks and Linux for everything else.
I have tested it on battery power in windows and it does indeed squeal like there is no tomorrow, with Linux it's silent.

Without doubt, if Lenovo had shipped my T510 in the condition the OP has reported then it would have gone back straight away for a replacement. Do you have any consumer protection ... never mind the warranty?

killer wrote:Without doubt, if Lenovo had shipped my T510 in the condition the OP has reported then it would have gone back straight away for a replacement. Do you have any consumer protection ... never mind the warranty?

I just got off the phone with both a Sales Associate and a Technical Support Representative. The Sales guy agreed to take the machine back for a full refund and free shipping if the Technical Support team are not able to fix the problem. According to him they don't have a replacement policy. I can just return my current machine and then place a new order if I still want another machine. Of course I will have to be praying hard that the new machine, if I order it, will turn out a lot better than the one I have now.

It's very surprising that none of them have ever heard about this problem or just fail to acknowledge it.

I plan to take my T510 to a local Warranty Service Provider tomorrow morning so that I can show them what the problem is while being physically present. If they are not able to fix it I will consider it returning it.

Has anybody tried this out (from the NBR forums) -

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo- ... ge-31.html

Sounds like the electrical hum my T400S had when I got it. I noticed it a lot more when I initially put in an Intel SSD. I played with some CPU power management features initially and that helped reduce it but did NOT eliminate it. However, since that time (6 months ago or so), I have set those back to defaults and I rarely hear the squeak any more. Also, the T510 does not have a Core 2 Duo or Core Duo processor, they have the i5/i7 series chips.

I was able to reduce the hum on my T510 too by playing around with the Power and Thermal management settings in the Power Manager and the BIOS. Also I have noticed that the hum is louder when running the 32 bit versions of the Firefox and the Chrome browser. When I downloaded and ran the 64 bit Firefox Minefield version and the 64 bit IE8 browsers I was able to eliminate the hum.

On my T410, I have some slight creaking at the left palm rest, it is the cover to the expansion slot I did not order. I am tempted to take it out, apply a couple dots of super glue and replace it. Should spot weld it tight and prevent it from making noise.

Other than that everything is just fine. I even believe it or not love the display (1440 x 900).

I would caution against gluing parts together in case you ever need to take it apart again. Not sure what kind effect glue would have on the magnesium alloy chassis either.

And some of the WXGA+ screens they're putting in the T410 are supposedly much better than the previously available 14.1" panels