Thinkpads Forum

I have thinkpad edge 13, AMD processor, 3GB RAM, Win7 64bit. In last few months it takes too long to boot the sistem, everything is much slower, laptop and charger is warmer. The core temperature is around 80 degree celsius.

I reinstalled the OS, updated BIOS, cleaned the fan, changed the thermal paste on CPU and manage to decrease the temperature in the range 70-80 degree.

Laptop is still slow and I think that the only thing that could help is that fan should be faster. Now it is not noisy and it does not operate with maximum speed even when processor temperature is over 80 degrees.

How to decrease the CPU temperature to at least 50 degree?
Any advices?

Welcome to the forum.
That overheating is due to the cheap parts that were used in building such a low-quality consumer-grade machine.
If cleaning and replacing thermal paste (preferably Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic MX-2) does not help, you are almost SOL.
Mind you, too much or too little paste, and/or unprofessional application, is not helping either.
If you are technically inclined, try undervolting the CPU:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardwar ... guide.html
There are also some fan-control programs, check e.g. our sub-forum: ThinkPad Utility Work Area.

Thank you for the advices!
Regarding the thermal paste, I did it twice with different amount of the paste and the result is the same.

Now, I am starting with undervolting CPU. During the first test with 100% load, the CPU reached 99C and 96C.
After decreasing the voltage for 0.1V the temperature during the 100% load dropped to 94C and 91C.

I am not convinced that this procedure will bring back the old performances.
I agree that those are cheep parts, but they worked OK for first 3 years, and I do not know
why the temperature increased and stays so high even after repairing the heating system.

Is it possible to have some hardware damage on CPU which causes overheating regardless the cooling system?

The mystery is why the fan does not operate with maximum speed at 80C, and only over 90C I see that it increased the speed,
but maybe still it is not the maximal speed.

There's a flat tube going from CPU-part to fan-part in the cooler.
That may have lost its effectiveness over time, lost its air, or has oxidized, whatever, maybe replace the whole unit?
That cooler looks really crappy and ineffective to me!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-60Y5518- ... 0983554062

Yes, I also suspected on that. There is probably some fluid or gas inside,
and maybe it leaked and tho whole system lost its heat conducting performances.
But, still, fan controller should force it to try to cool it.

Is it possible that my problem is a communication problem with hard-disc? If the processor load is minor (up to 20%) and the laptop is still very slow (slow boot, slow opening of basic programs) it might be that CPU has problem with reading data from HDD.
Does anybody know a good diagnostic software (free of charge and viruses) that can detect this kind of problem?

Is it possible to detect HDD problem from BIOS? There is some diagnostic tool, but it might only detect bad sectors.

Any advices?

Thank you!