Overheating X200 with SSD

[tendim]

Hi.

Been a long time since I've browsed the forum because the Thinkpad has been working wonderfully.

I recently dusted off my X200 and remembered why I stopped using it. I had installed a Crucial SSD in it many years ago, and the computer often overheats to the point where it shuts down because the SSD gets too hot. I am not sure if the SSD is the cause of the overheating, or it is a victim of overheating (i.e. the old mechanical drive could take the increase in temperature). The problem gets worse when I use the docking station, so I have managed to make things "work" by using the machine on its own without a dock.

I have taken the machine apart and sprayed it with air to clear vents, etc. But the problem persists.

Has anyone had success with an SSD in the X200?

Thanks.

[TPFanatic]

Maybe the SSD is defective if it is overheating. Anecdotal but I've only noticed 3.5" HDDs overheat on me.

[axur-delmeria]

Remove the SSD, boot from a Linux live CD/USB, and check the system temperature from there.

[Vopu]

You can try cloning your SSD to a spare one if you have and see how it performs. It is not common for SSd's to get so hot/overheat so the problem may be the SSd itself. To eleminate a possibility i would swap the SSD for another one or maybe a normal HDD.Or try the same SSd on another unit to see if the problem persists? Are your fans running normally? What system temp's are you getting, have you noticed anything unusual in task manager under load? I would also try safemode to see the temp's and a live linux usb/cd distro . Also check you Win power manager and reset it to defaults for each plan.

[mpcook]

The X200 tends to run hot in my memory. You might investigate cleaning the fan and interior of dust to start. You might try a search and find some posts on hot X200 as there were some other solutions. My memory is not good enough to quote more specifics.

[tendim]

Remove the SSD, boot from a Linux live CD/USB, and check the system temperature from there.

Any recommendations on software to monitor the temp?

[axur-delmeria]

Remove the SSD, boot from a Linux live CD/USB, and check the system temperature from there.

Any recommendations on software to monitor the temp?

On Linux, there's psensor.

On Windows, there's hwmonitor, open hardware monitor, etc.

[dr_st]

Maybe the SSD is defective if it is overheating. Anecdotal but I've only noticed 3.5" HDDs overheat on me.

Some more anecdotal evidence: I've recently done a round-up of all the storage devices in my PCs, and according to temperatures reported by CrystalDiskMark, SSD drives in mSATA/NVMe formats tend to run ~10-15C hotter than standard-format 2.5"/3.5" (SSD or mechanical). I wonder if it is due to the proximity to other hot-running components on the system board. But, in any case, none of the cases seemed threatening for NAND-based storage.

The life span of mechanical hard drives, on the other hand, seems to shorten significantly as temperatures rise. My Compaq Evo N610c had terrible thermal design with a hot pocket causing the hard drive to consistently run at 50C+. Back when the machine was used regularly, it would eat through a hard drive on average every 18-24 months.

Back to this topic, though, I agree that something must be wrong with the SSD if it consistently runs so hot as to cause thermal shutdowns. In any case, I second the suggestion to use the various temperature monitoring tools, so that you can pinpoint which components actually exhibit abnormally high temperatures.

[Agent_Dreutel]

I've installed loads of SSDs in older laptops, IME they generally run cooler or at most just as hot as a HDD in most laptops I've seen. An overheating 2.5" SSD is weird to me. NVMe drives tend to run very hot due to the higher density. I have both NVMe and 2.5" SSDs in my desktop, and there is a 15C difference between the two at idle. The fact that the NVMe drives sit on my motherboard right between the (very hot) AMD GPU and AMD CPU doesn't help.