A warning to those wanting to cheaply silence their T43

[FrankL]

Hi,

I own a T43 model 2668 with longfan, and have ever since I acquired this notebook been annoyed with the noise level of the fan.

After reading that the M10 longfan for the T41/T42 also fits the T43 and offers lower noise levels, I decided to find the cheapest seller on Ebay and buy it off them. Bad decision!

This is the one I bought

The fan is an unlabeled imitation of the M24 longfan that already is in my thinkpad. It doesn't fit as well as the old fan: the part where the fan is located protrudes from the bottom of the heatsink assembly a lot more than my original fan, and it prevents an easy fit. The screw notch located at the GPU heatsink (to fit on a screw for the keyboard), is off by its position by about a millimetre.

I can't see if it's a M10, as it doesn't have any part numbers and looks pretty much the same to me as the M24. The worst part is however, that it makes a horrible noise, much worse than my old M24 ever did. Like something is blocking the fan. I'm returning this one and keeping my old fan till I find a proper and silent M10 replacement for my T43.

[Orclas]

Sorry to hear, how very annoying

Don't know if it's already part of your solution, but mine was to use NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) to speedstep and undervolt the CPU (for lower heat production) as well as using a better/more quiet fan schedule (also NHC).

I do indeed only do light work on the T40, but above (plus more energy efficient CPU and a PATA SSD) has made it absolutely silent about 90% of active use time.

[ujav]

Speaking of software solutions, TPFanControl by troubadix also can help

[FrankL]

Sorry to hear, how very annoying

Don't know if it's already part of your solution, but mine was to use NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) to speedstep and undervolt the CPU (for lower heat production) as well as using a better/more quiet fan schedule (also NHC).

I do indeed only do light work on the T40, but above (plus more energy efficient CPU and a PATA SSD) has made it absolutely silent about 90% of active use time.

I use RMClock to undervolt and TPFancontrol to reduce fan speed. Unfortunately, even at speed 1 I find the longfan in my T43 very annoying (as well as the intermittent up-spin every 10 seconds or so). I'll keep looking for a more quiet solution (a genuine thinkpad M10 longfan?)

[fefrie]

What's the lowest you can underclock the processor?

I've got a t42 with 1.7 processor, and I think that it can get underclocked to 600mhz by the stock speedstep program when not 'processing'

If a cpu is running at zero load, is there any more benefit for battery and heat performance to underclock to even less than 600mhz?

[Orclas]

It's not underclocking that's the real beauty, it's undervolting.

So, I have a 1,5 Ghz Dothan CPU, which I've set to "Dynamic Switching" in NHC. As far as I know, that does however not have anything to do with NHC, but is simply a switch for Intel's speedstep technology (although you can use various schedules in NHC).

Then you undervolt the CPU, i.e. set a lower voltage for each CPU multiplier, which makes my machine run at something like 20-25% lower CPU voltage than standard => less heat => less cooling needed => profit.

It's quite interesting to watch the stepping and related voltage change all the time, sometimes several times per second as system load changes.

Right, setting voltage too low will lead to instability. Best way is to google the setting for your CPU, there's always some enthusiast who has spent a day trial-and-erroring the safe low voltages

I can also mention that I have had zero crashes with my settings. Fact is I can't remember this machine ever properly crashing since my last upgrades (SSD and the Dothan CPU, which was same clock, but less heat compared to original CPU).