Will i7-2860QM too hot for W520's cooling system?

[twnrsworld]

I am wondering if I should upgrade CPU of W520.
The current CPU is 2720QM.
Will i7-2860QM too hot for W520's cooling system?

[jcvjcvjcvjcv]

No, it's not. Some W520's are even sold new with 2860QM's, like mine

It runs cooler than my T61 with T7300 and 140m Quadro.

[davidhbrown]

I have found that with the 2820QM in my W520, the "TurboBoost" will engage for extended periods of time, say when rendering video, and the fan cannot keep the CPU at safe levels in a ~75F/~25C room. This is even after reducing temps a bit by replacing the factory thermal goop.

My solution was to set up a power scheme that limited the CPU to 99% -- the bottleneck was disk I/O anyway, so even though the CPU was running at 108% speed, it was only about 60% utilized. And I bought a room A/C.

That doesn't necessarily mean you don't want the faster CPU :)

I managed to essentially burn up my T61p doing similar tasks (the old no-longer-relevant NVIDIA defect probably had something to do with it), so I would entirely agree that the W520 runs cooler than that.

Per Intel, the 2820QM I have shows a TDP of 45W; your 2720QM is 45W, the 2860QM is 45W. So the thermal load "should be" equivalent and handled by Lenovo's cooler design.

[wolfman]

I have the 2860QM in my W520 from work as well and haven't noticed any issues with heat. To the OP - you're considering swapping a 2.2ghz quad core for a 2.5ghz quad core. I'd replace the hard drive with an SSD (if you haven't already) before I'd make that CPU swap.

[twnrsworld]

I have the 2860QM in my W520 from work as well and haven't noticed any issues with heat. To the OP - you're considering swapping a 2.2ghz quad core for a 2.5ghz quad core. I'd replace the hard drive with an SSD (if you haven't already) before I'd make that CPU swap.

My W520 came with 2720QM. I am considering upgrade to 2860QM, if heating is not an issue.

[ThinkRob]

My W520 came with 2720QM. I am considering upgrade to 2860QM, if heating is not an issue.

I agree with wolfman; an SSD would almost certainly be a *much* better investment.

[visitor]

davidhbrown,

I'm interested in your experience with the 2820QM cpu as I'm about to buy the same W520 model. When rendering video, have you tried to switch to the integrated graphics instead of the discrete NVidea ? Would that reduce heat so as to allow for more CPU power ?

I understand that if replacing your HD with an SSD, the i/o bottleneck would be much less perceived, am I correct ?
Thanks.



Visitor
(X201s, X60s, previously: X31, T42, T23)

[davidhbrown]

This is a bit of a thread hijack, but...

davidhbrown,

I'm interested in your experience with the 2820QM cpu as I'm about to buy the same W520 model. When rendering video, have you tried to switch to the integrated graphics instead of the discrete NVidea ?

No, because I use Adobe Premiere / Adobe Media Encoder which use the NVIDIA Cuda GPU accelerations to dramatically accelerate rendering.

Would that reduce heat so as to allow for more CPU power ?

I don't think it would reduce heat. I think it would make the CPU temps worse because then the CPU wouldn't get any help from the GPU and it would have to do everything itself. The temps SpeedFan was showing for the GPU were consistently ~15C less than the CPU anyway. I don't quite remember myself from the last time I looked at it, but the Hardware Maintenance Manual shows that in the "Workstation" models (W520), there are independent heat pipes from the CPU and GPU over to the fins and fan. So I really don't think GPU heat is making things worse for the CPU.

CPU power was not limiting. But I suppose that if heat were not an issue, I would never have bothered to restrict the CPU speed. But if the CPU were running at 110% instead of 90%, that would just mean that it was idle a greater percentage of its time while waiting for the disk!

I understand that if replacing your HD with an SSD, the i/o bottleneck would be much less perceived, am I correct ?

Already done for apps and OS, but if I were to replace the video storage/work drive with SSD, yes, that would probably reduce the i/o bottleneck... but I can't afford 2TB of SSD! Well, *won't* anyway as I only do video work about two months out of the year. I might consider an external RAID 0 box. But I can always do something else while rendering. Like try to find my desk!