Thinkpads Forum

Hello !

I recently got a L520, but ever since I thought it was running quite hot, to the point where the bottom becomes almost burning hot, and I've been quite concerned about it, I thought it was the CPU, but it's not that bad, it's running at around 54°C when idling, it's pretty bad, but a repaste should do the job.
However, watching a movie, will heat the whole thing as well, and I think the HDD is at fault here. But at the same time, I've never had such a hot HDD, is there something I can do about it, I will consider getting a new one, but this one isn't very old, and was around 47°C when the heat was at the max, which shouldn't be terrible ?

Could it be possible that the body is just [censored] at keeping the heat ? I've never had this problem on X220/X230 apart from after much use.
Or is it something hardware related, and I can actually do something about it, be it replacing the Drive, or repasting the CPU ?

Thanks in advance for the responses

at where exactly does your L520's base gets hot? it shouldn't be the entire base that gets unbearably hot, certainly it must be in only one concentrated area.

54 C isn't that bad if your ambient temperature is very high... though i have no idea how hot or cold it is over there in France. one thing that came to my mind too; did you use the motherboard's temperature sensor or the CPU's internal digital temperature sensor? the motherboard's temperature sensor is generally inaccurate when it comes to reporting the CPU's temperature, as it's not really on the CPU itself, but on the motherboard.

heat at the max?? how hot was the CPU while watching a movie? i'm wondering about that as the HDD itself is positioned dangerously close to the CPU in the L520, so it's very likely to affect your HDD's temperatures as well.

might be actually, i used to own an SL510 which has the same casing as your L520 does. i'll have a look at my old notes, see if i can find anything related to the casing getting hot under load.

it gets hot around the hatch basically

I'm not sure exactly, it didn't have a HDD when I got it, so I slapped on Fedora and tried to read temps using xsensor, so I'm not sure which are which, I assume "coretemp" gives the CPU temps and "thinkpad" are the motherboard's, if so, then after an uptime of 10min, and as much of movie-watching, it's sitting oscillating between ~60°C and ~70°C, after 25min, it's oscillating between ~65°C and ~75°C, after 35min, it's comfortably at 75°C and up

I say oscillating because it's really not stable, or at least xsensor doesn't say so

after those 35min, the hdd temp is at 44°C

so I guess it really is a CPU problem, I'll repaste it this evening and report back if it changed anything, the laptop seemed heavily used, so I wouldn't be surprised that it fixed most of the heat problem.

Repasting worked wonders, very happy about this outcome, I would have been at a loss if that didn't work, so at least I know what to do next time I get a toasty TP, repaste all the way !

Thanks people