Thinkpads Forum

Since I have been very worried about heat problems with the W510, I have been doing some testing, here are my results.
It seems there is nothing to worry about, using Prime95 and FurMark for 30 minutes didn't pose any problems.
The CPU cores hovered around 82-86C (186F max) and the video card crept up to around 77-80C (176F max), room temp is 22 degrees.
Since the video card keeps relatively cool, and the Core i7 is supposed to deal with up to 105C, only a hot summer day could cause trouble.
Using 820QM or 920XM would give higher temps of cause, I think the 920XM would be pushing the limits of this cooling system, but the 720QM is very comfortable.

I have not had the first problem with my new 510. Have used it for several hours, in my lap, and it did not get past warm. Only change I made was putting a 256gb SSD in it.

The 510 has been a great machine so far!

It handle the largest CS5 files and AutoCad with the processor not even sweating it. It is quiet and very stable.

I haven't had any trouble with mine so far either, but I haven't even finished configuring it's OS'es yet.
It kind of looks like a mixture between an A3x/p and a Z6xt, but feels sort of like a T4x, very nice indeed.
The HD+ display is good, a bit cold looking but fine otherwise.
The power supply is big though, but not as heavy as I feared, I think I'll keep this machine for a long time.

Now that summer and warm weather has arrived the situation has changed.
It seems that the heat causes the video card to throttle to keep the GPU temps down, this causes intermittent slowdowns when running 3d apps.
It happens when the GPU reaches the mid 70's C and doesn't seem to be related to CPU temps at all.
It's strange because it has been that hot before and then I didn't notice any slowdowns.
I have tried different BIOS versions and video drivers to try and remedy the problem, but to no avail, the only thing I haven't done is reinstall.
This is really bad, this should not happen, my T500 happily chews along with both GPU and CPU up in the mid 80's C.

Adda wrote:It seems that the heat causes the video card to throttle to keep the GPU temps down, this causes intermittent slowdowns when running 3d apps. It happens when the GPU reaches the mid 70's C and doesn't seem to be related to CPU temps at all.

You may want to try TPFanControl utility (see ThinkPad Utility Work Area), but I don´t know if it is compatible with your system. Apparently, this is not the first time when the cooling management of ThinkPads is exclusively coupled with the cpu thermals, regardless of the gpu temps.

Marin85 wrote: You may want to try TPFanControl utility (see ThinkPad Utility Work Area), but I don´t know if it is compatible with your system. Apparently, this is not the first time when the cooling management of ThinkPads is exclusively coupled with the cpu thermals, regardless of the gpu temps.

TPFanControl does work on my W510, it only shows CPU temp though.
It doesn't make any difference, the fan is already running at full speed when the slowdowns start, I think they start at 74 degrees C.
I'm going to try a complete reinstall, I desperately hope this is just a software problem.

Reinstalling Windows made no difference what so ever.
I'm going to try out an old BIOS from before Lenovo's "Optimized graphics device settings", so that would be 1.09-1.07.

Edit: On second thought, I suspect there is a reason why that BIOS version is not available in Lenovo's site.
Sigh, it seems the W510 is suffering from a cooling/video card design flaw, what good is a Quadro FX 880M if it doesn't perform like one...

Do any of you have this problem?
If you want to test it out, download FurMark, and give it a go.
The thing to watch out for is framerate drops that causes the GPU temperature to fall.
Once the laptop has been heated through these drops in performance and temperature will kick in very regularly, running fine a few secs, then lagging a sec, running fine a few secs, then lag and so on.

It's extremely annoying and a deal breaker if I ever saw one!

I solved the problem by taking my W510 apart, removing the cooler and replacing the paste.
Now the system allows it self to get hotter, but doesn't start to throttle even at high temps.
It seems the cooler was improperly mounted, strange that my temperature monitors didn't show anything out of the ordinary.

My Thinkpad W510 was constantly thermally throttling when I ran any graphical or multi-CPU applications. Very frustrating since the whole point of lugging a workstation laptop around is for the multi-cores/GPU. Taking the advice above I pulled apart the case to investigate the heatsink.

There is a large heat pipe assembly that covers both the GPU and CPU. Around the CPU, there are 4 screws with spring retention that hold down the heatink. I found that one of the 4 screws was backed out. Removing the heatsink, I found thermal paste was only covering 1 corner of the die! I reapplied ample thermal paste to both the CPU and GPU, and then re-assembled everything.

PROBLEM SOLVED!!

Before the fix - CPU hit 92C and thermally throttled bringing the machine to a stand still
After the fix - 72C !!!

TPFANCONTROL was a major help. http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html