When did they start putting fans in Thinkpads?

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leoblob · #1 Post by **leoblob** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 12:02 pm

Just curious. Must have been a long time ago... neither of my Thinkpads has one... kind of nice since they are dead silent once the hard drive spins down.

#2 Post by **BillMorrow** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 12:35 pm

ohh, might have been in the 770 series..
but certainely by the T, A and X series..

#3 Post by **AlphaKilo470** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 12:39 pm

I'm not sure what the first ThinkPad with a fan is but I do know they have been around awhile. The oldest ThinkPad I've seen that has a fan is my 380ED so it has to at least be since 1997 that they had fans in certain models. I also know that the very late 760s (760XD, 760XL, 765D and 765L) as well as the 770. I also think I once saw a picture of a 760CD (which is circa 1995) that had a fan but I'm really not sure.

christopher_wolf · #4 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 2:00 pm

I think it was after 1995 at the very least, since my Thinkpad 701c has no fan either.

Website · #5 Post by **tfflivemb2** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 2:05 pm

I am not sure about the specifics, especially for laptops, but fans started popping up after the problems that Intel and AMD faced when they went from 486 level processors to pentium level processors.

This would lead me to believe that the fans were likely added as the Thinkpads crossed the Pentium threshold.

christopher_wolf · #6 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 2:18 pm

tfflivemb2 wrote:I am not sure about the specifics, especially for laptops, but fans started popping up after the problems that Intel and AMD faced when they went from 486 level processors to pentium level processors.

This would lead me to believe that the fans were likely added as the Thinkpads crossed the Pentium threshold.

Exactly, more power used means more heat produced. So they needed fans in there to cool it.

What would be *awesome* for Thinkpads today would be a fully-contained chipset (plus cooling maybe) that you could slip into the Ultrabay.

#7 Post by **AlphaKilo470** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 2:29 pm

I know that any 760 with an E in it's name had no fan and those things would get hot enough to burn you if you weren't careful. I remember once actually getitng a small and minor first degree burn once when I used a 760ED on a hot day while wearing shorts. With the wireless card, internal MPEG decoder, fanless Pentium 133 and whatever else I had in that machine, cooling was a huge issue.

Things got a little cooler with some of the later Pentiums it seems. My 560X which has a 233mhz Pentium MMX has no fan in it and a very tiny heatsink and it can run for hours and still be nothing more than warm to the touch. With this in mind, I don't think it's the CPU power that causes the heat so much as it is the product maturity.

christopher_wolf · #8 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 2:32 pm

AlphaKilo470 wrote:I know that any 760 with an E in it's name had no fan and those things would get hot enough to burn you if you weren't careful. I remember once actually getitng a small and minor first degree burn once when I used a 760ED on a hot day while wearing shorts. With the wireless card, internal MPEG decoder, fanless Pentium 133 and whatever else I had in that machine, cooling was a huge issue.

Things got a little cooler with some of the later Pentiums it seems. My 560X which has a 233mhz Pentium MMX has no fan in it and a very tiny heatsink and it can run for hours and still be nothing more than warm to the touch. With this in mind, I don't think it's the CPU power that causes the heat so much as it is the product maturity.

Quite true in that case, although I still probably wouldn't clock a modern CPU to full without some form of active cooling.

leoblob · #9 Post by **leoblob** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 8:08 pm

In addition to the later generations of process technology having lower power consumption and heat generation than earlier generations, the total "heat load" is also due to other components inside the case. For example, my 365X runs quite cool... no danger of burns... but that may also be due to its lack of "high performance" stuff that might generate more heat... it has zero L2 cache and a rather slow video system.

#10 Post by **AlphaKilo470** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 8:53 pm

That's also a factor. I'm sure that a 760CD with the same 120mhz cpu as your 365X would run much hotter.

Bgradid · #11 Post by **Bgradid** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:00 pm

560x has no fan
560z does

560x -- pentium 233
560z -- pentium 2 300

Though the only time my 560z ever uses its fan is when its turning on.. and the one time I overclocked it to 390 mhz

When did they start putting fans in Thinkpads?

When did they start putting fans in Thinkpads?

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