T410 GPU overheating?

[krystian]

Hello,

I'm running into problems with my T410 with i7-620 and NV3100 gpu.
My laptop started to shut itself down suddenly, without any notice.
I've checked the cpu temp and it looks fine. I've uninstalled any think pad software responsible for throttling the cpu/fan and switched the fan to be always on the max rpm, but the problem didn't go away.
I've installed linux, just to make sure it's not windows related.
When I run 'sensors' app, I get a list of the temperatures of my system and... what's weird.. the GPU reads 90-96 degrees under no load at all.
By no load at all I mean the terminal running [without X windows].
It goes from 90 to 98 just like that... There's nothing going on on the system and it's that high!

Recently I had to replace the cooling unit because of the fan failure of the original one. I bought the exact same model and fan works fine. It's clean.

What's weird, is that the GPU is not that hot when I touch the radiator/cooler/heat pipe. If it was somewhere around 90 degrees I would not be able to touch it.
Maybe it's not the GPU reading?
the sensor name is: nouveau-pci-0100

What's wrong with it?

I thought I didn't put enough or too much thermal paste when replacing the cooling unit, but I've reapplied it today, and there's a nice thin layer of the ceramique paste from Arctic Cooling.

I'm wondering if the new cooling unit is ok, beucase under heavy load, the heat pipes are much hotter near the cpu/gpu then a bit further away. The whole heat pipe technology should not allow that [from what I read at least]. Anyway... the temperature under no load is still weird.


Any ideas?


Thanks,
Krystian

EDIT:
one more thing.
I haven't used it for quite some time due to the cooling unit replacement. Now that I've started it seemed to work just fine. It went through SuperPI & Prime95 tests without any issues. Then I started downloading missing updates and after that it started to shut down. I'm not sure these are related, especially that the behavior is observed under linux. Anyway... now when put under stress it shuts down within 2 minutes.

[krystian]

I've disassembled my thinkpad again, and to my surprise, I have found that the cooling plate, which is connected to the heat pipe and should nicely stick to the core is... bended.
Somehow I didn't notice it before

I did some bending and now it's more or less flat and sticks nicely to the gpu core.
The temps...
From 90C during boot and up to 120 after some time it now stays at quite safe 60 and gets to 64 when CPU is stressed.

Success
At least for now.

I have the fan set to level 7 for now, just to be safe and my script is monitoring the temp all the time.

Hopefully this will be the end of my problems with it.

Anyway... mini dock 3 is never going to be used again with this machine... waste of ~250usd

[emtee3511]

"Anyway... mini dock 3 is never going to be used again with this machine... waste of ~250usd "

What's the problem with the mini dock?

[wolfman]

What's the problem with the mini dock?

I'd be curious too, I use my Mini Dock Plus Series 3 for Mobile workstations every day with my T420 and previously with my T410... it seems to do exactly what it was supposed to do (I have an external wireless keyboard and mouse, external speakers and subwoofer, USB external drive for backups and a 24 inch HP ZR24W external display connected via display port).

[krystian]

I'd be curious too, I use my Mini Dock Plus Series 3 for Mobile workstations every day with my T420 and previously with my T410... it seems to do exactly what it was supposed to do (I have an external wireless keyboard and mouse, external speakers and subwoofer, USB external drive for backups and a 24 inch HP ZR24W external display connected via display port).

I used the same dock. I had 2 24" monitors connected to it, because T410 has only display port and the old vga port.
Anyway... my T410 with i7-620 and nvidia nv 3100 is overheating when connected to it. Hot air goes straight to the side of the dock and back to the laptop.
When used in the dock, it takes me around 30minutes for it to shut down because of the cpu temperature.

[wolfman]

Ah I see what you mean, it looks like on the left hand side the small "tower" that sticks up with the eject and power buttons, etc covers about 3/4 of the exhaust vents on that side. On the backside vent, there is a slider that is open to let heat evacuate that is largely unobstructed.

While I will push the machine with 4 VM's running and doing work between them with some heavy weight server software, I have the integrated GPU and the work I am doing does not stress the graphics card at all. I guess that's why I've never encountered the overheat and shutdown that you've mentioned.

[krystian]

Wolfman:

yes, that little tower is the cause of all my problems with the dock.
However, you've mentioned the backside vent. To be I've never felt any air going in that direction... hmm.. either I've missed it or it's blocked by something. When my t410 was disassembled, there were a lot of wires in there... maybe they block the air hmmm I will take a look into it when I get it back again [currently it serves as a backup server for a few applications while the other one is modernized :/ ].

On a side note... 4 VMs on it is a nice achievement. My t410 has a limit of 8GB of ram and that's more or less how much my dev environment takes, with a tiny bit left to run spotify in the background

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, as it gives me another thing to look at.

[wolfman]

Yes, I really liked my T410. The only reason I sold it was that I needed to have 16gb of RAM for VM's from time to time and one of the developers I work with was interested in buying the T410. So the swap from machine to machine was relatively low cost and clean.

A few years ago my megacorp drank the IBM Kool-aid, so I was testing out a distributed build of their Process Center infrastructure. So had a VM with DB2 9.7 fix pack 5, a VM with WebSphere Application Server 8.0.0.3 acting as a deployment manager, a VM with Process Center v8 managed node running and a VM with Windows 7 running that I tested downloading the Process Designer client from the Process Center server. It was a tight fit even with 16gb of RAM.

It's nice to know that the T420 can do that as I much prefer it's weight (and power adapter weight - 65 watt vs. 170 watt) and form factor to the W520 I have from work. The advantage that machine has is it's quad core and can go to 32gb of RAM...

[krystian]

I can see why you would switch to T420. 8GB is a huge issue for me now.

Anyway... today I was able to take a look at my T410 and I was able to confirm that no air is pushed through the back vent.
I am unable to determine why, as the machine is up and running, but in a week or two I will be able to shut it down and check it out.

Thanks again