How to silence and cool down T43p

[Cola]

Hi all


As I've just sold my former main laptop, I'm reverting to my trusty T43p again. But, I want to know if any of you have got an idea to, how I can make the fan run quieter, and cooler, as it is very noisy as it is right now.

I have got an entire T61p fan assembly available, so I could do some modding if required.

If you've got a tip on how to get the palmrest cooler in general, I'd love to know, as It's really running hot!



Thanks in advance
Regards, Frederik

[Tasurinchi]

I'm not aware of many fan mods like with the T6x series. I would say get a new long fan and make sure to apply a good thermal paste for the CPU.

I was of the opinion that T43p fans were generally louder, but months ago I replaced one in my 15" T43p and it was very quiet (for T43p standards)

My 2 cents...

[dr_st]

You can use a long T42/p M10 fan (41W5204). These are generally said to be quieter.

[ajkula66]

You can use a long T42/p M10 fan (41W5204). These are generally said to be quieter.

^^^This. Even the old 13R2657 works great - I have it in my signature machine.

TPFC and IBM ECW are freewares that can help quite a bit.

You may also want to look into swapping the wireless card. Which one do you have now?

[Cola]

You may also want to look into swapping the wireless card. Which one do you have now?

God, I'm so sorry for never answering here, I completely forgot about this thread.

Anyway, I'm currently looking back into this.
I've got several dead T40-series laptops just laying around, so I'ma have a look through them, to see if there's a nice silent fan among them; if not, I'ma cut some depth off of my T61p fan so it'll fit in the T43p.

My wireless card is:
Intel FRU 27K9938


And I have got the following ones available:
Intel FRU: 39T0079
2x Intel FRU: 91P7266
AMBIT Microsystems FRU: 93P3477 (Has got some plastic stuff around it, maybe it's heat insulationing?

[Adda]

The biggest problem in the T43p's is the heatspreader on the GPU, on most models it doesn't have proper contact with the GPU core, there is a gap, it sound terrible right.
This and the pink thermal pad on the cooler, is the only reason why the GPU gets hot in these ThinkPads.

Removing the heatspreader, you can use dental floss for this, and making a aluminum or copper square, that covers the GPU core and evens out the height difference between GPU core and memory, and then bending the cooler to fit the lower profile of the GPU chip, and sticking it all together with cooler paste, will make the GPU run at least 20C cooler under load.
When idle, the GPU should stay around the same temp as the CPU, well actually it pretty much always follows the CPU temps fairly closely.

So undervolt that CPU, with a bit of luck you can get idle temps as low as 43C assuming you don't shut off the fan before it cools the system that low (takes a while).
You will want to make the fan run fairly frequently, or use IBM_ECW and let SB temps trigger the fan, I recommend keeping the SB under 50C at all times.

Oh and why not undervolt the GPU as well, IBM_ECW can do that too, try putting the GPU in to 'Balanced' mode, at 300/200MHz.

[Cola]

Oh okay, that sounds great, but I've got one of the bigger Pentium M 770 CPU's in my machine, and to be honest, I'm not really into that field.

But, the things I have been looking forward to do, is maybe cooling both the NB and the SB down, using some copper and thermal paste.

[Adda]

I got a PM770 too, and it runs HOT if it's not undervolted.

Adding cooling to the NB is very difficult, not a lot of space as the trackpoint circuit board is right above it, and I doubt it would make a difference.

As for the SB, you got a wifi card just above it, you can add a cooler, but if it is has to be mounted firmly to something else then the chip, if the chip carries it all, the mass of the heatsink + vibrations, could shorten the life of the chip.
Of cause a conventional heatsink made for something like a SB, wouldn't do this, but such a heatsink can't be used, there simply isn't enough room, you have to use some sort of copper plate or something.

I have spent a LOT of time solving the heat problems of T43p's and what I wrote is what I came up with, you will not have a cool running T43p unless you fix the heatspreader flaw and undervolt the CPU or use a slower CPU like a PM750.

[Cola]

Hi

I found this, which is probably one of the things I'll end up doing. I'll also put the 14'' mobo in a 15'' T43p I've got lying around, so I finally try one of the admired UXGA IPS displays.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_bu ... dge_cooler

Also, waiting a reply from ajkula66 on this:

You may also want to look into swapping the wireless card. Which one do you have now?

[Adda]

Please let us know how it turns out.

And while you are at it, why not fix the GPU problem too

[Adda]

Here is a pic of a the cooler in my 14" T43p, included in the pic is the plier I used to bend it.
Clamp it in the coerner where you see marks, don't clamp the heatpipe, then twist the plier.
When satisfied, twist and adjust the GPU pad till it looks ok, mount the cooler to check the fit.
Repeat until it fits, it sounds harder then it is, just make sure there is good contact with the CPU, and all four memory chips.

I cut out a piece of copper, not unlike the one shown in the pic of that SB cooler, and sanded it till it had the right thickness.
You can use the old heatspreader to test the fit, just put the copper piece on the GPU and put the heatspreader on top, facing upside down, it should have good contact with all four memory chips, no wobbling.

Then mount everything and enjoy a much much cooler GPU, it'll run cooler in 'Max Performance' mode, while overclocked, then it did before in the default 'Max Battery' mode.

The pic:
http://cdn.head-fi.org/2/26/26cb88f7_AUT_6501.jpeg

[Cola]

Wow that sounds amazing, but I'm not completely sure about what you did.

Is there another piece of copper between the standard cooling and the graphics chip, or has it just been bent to fit snug?

[Adda]

The GPU looks like this without the heatspreader:
http://img.helpix.ru/upgrade/20051014/x600_xhipshot.jpg

The video memory has a slightly higher profile then the GPU core in the middle, so a small square of copper/aluminum of the right thickness has to be put on the GPU to even out the height difference.

Of cause you should remove the pink pad and black goo, and use some cooler paste in stead.

[ajkula66]

I have spent a LOT of time solving the heat problems of T43p's and what I wrote is what I came up with, you will not have a cool running T43p unless you fix the heatspreader flaw and undervolt the CPU or use a slower CPU like a PM750.

I don't know...

Undervolting is *THE* key. No questions asked in my experience.

Using a T42p M10 long fan (13R2657) and running IBM ECW with some modest (IMO) undervolting carries my T43p with PM780 to the point that it doesn't go over 50 degrees C in normal use, and I do have the TP-Link "N" card which runs hotter than 2200BG that OP has. No mods to the heatspreader.

[Adda]

I don't know...

Undervolting is *THE* key. No questions asked in my experience.

Using a T42p M10 long fan (13R2657) and running IBM ECW with some modest (IMO) undervolting carries my T43p with PM780 to the point that it doesn't go over 50 degrees C in normal use, and I do have the TP-Link "N" card which runs hotter than 2200BG that OP has. No mods to the heatspreader.

Sure keeping an undervolted PM cool is easy, even if the GPU cooler isn't modded.
But keeping the GPU cool isn't, put it under load it it will jump to over 80C in seconds (usually as high as 90C within a few minutes), (Max Performance mode).
Sure you could put it in to 'Max Battery' mode and keep it cool that way, but the GPU is slow at this speed, even on the desktop, and especially when browsing.
Put it in to 'Max Performance' mode without the mod, and the GPU will stay around 60C during normal desktop use.
Do the mod and it will stay around the same temp as the CPU, in my case, the fan shuts off at 47C, so the GPU doens't go much lower then that.
The CPU will run a bit hotter after this mod, but the GPU will run MUCH cooler.

During normal usage (browsing, flash video and so on) with the GPU in 'Balanced' mode clocked to 300/200MHz, temps vary from 47-57C.
The CPU and GPU may go as low as 43C, since the SB keeps the fan running a minimum speed fairly often, it doesn't want to go below 47 once the system has heated up.
I use the T43p cooler, with the fan from an intel long cooler, a very weak and quiet fan.

During extreme loads on GPU and CPU, running the GPU in 'Max Performance' mode, overclocked to 500/250, temps stay around 70C.
The SB can climb as high as 60C during extended loads, so I underclock the CPU to keep it below 50C if I'm gaming or whatever.

As I have said, the video memory is too tall on some V3200/X600 GPU's, so the center part of the heatspreader does not touch the GPU, the gap is filled with thermal compound.
On some late generation T43p's, different video memory is used, and the heatspreader does touch the GPU, but the thermal compound is rubbish, so is the pink pad and black goo.
It's a bad design, and most V3200/X600 GPU's have a design flaw, I'm pretty convinced the high temps we get from 9600/T2 GPU's are caused by the very same problems.

Edit: by the way, running the GPU in 'Max Performance' mode clocked at 500/250, increases temps by 1-2C compared to Balanced mode at 300/200MHz, during normal use, putting the GPU in to 'Max Battery' mode, doesn't seem to lower the temps compared to 'Balanced' mode, well maybe it makes the system cool down slightly faster.

Edit2: just to avoid confusion, the fan I use come from a 26R8197 cooler, while the heatsink is a 26R9074.

[Cola]

My T43p is from 01/07, so it's one of the newest ones afaik of. I had another fan assembly just like the one in my T43p lying around, which I removed the cooling pad and black crap from, so I'm gonna try to make it fit nicely to the graphics chip.

[Adda]

Ah it should fit then, is it a 216YDJAGA23FHG GPU? if it is, then the heatspreader fits.

You could remove the heatspreader (with dental floss you can slice it off as if it where cheese), clean off the old thermal compound, replace it with AC5 or similar, and put the heatspreader back on.
You'll have to bend the cooler, if the pink stuff and black goo is removed, if you mount it without doing that you can see just how bad the fit is and how much space the thermal pad has to fill out.
Also the fit is uneven, which is why the black stuff is there I think, also remember that the two types of V3200 GPU's have different heights, but the coolers are the same.

It's tricky to fit the cooler to a heatspreader that isn't glued down though, it'll want to stick more to the cooler then the GPU, so you have to make sure it's nice and level and putting gentle pressure evenly on the GPU, without compromising contact with the CPU.

If you fit it all together without thermal compound, you can check the fit more easily, the heatspreader should be kept in place by the cooler.

It's important that you check if the heatspreader fits, even if you have the 216YDJAGA23FHG GPU, just put a very thin layer of thermal compound on the GPU and put the heatspreader on and take if off again, did it make contact?

[systemBuilder]

I remember when the T43 was first released, people always hated the noisy fan. Some claimed it didn't even merit being named a T4x Thinkpad. So you are dealing with a design defect / engineering tradeoff, those machines simply generate more heat, especially the ones that run at higher than 1.83 Ghz. You may not find a workable solution, sorry to say, other than to trade down to a T42... I own 7.

[Adda]

The T41/42 and R50p with Radeon 9600 and FireGL T2 GPU's have the same problems as T43p, the CPU runs a bit cooler though, so does the southbridge.

But they have much slower busses, no expresscard, no SATA mod capability, no PAE and no 'Balanced' PowerPlay mode.

The T43 series are definitely and upgrade over earlier T4x's, in spite of the noisy fan, which can be replaced, they are more reliable too as they are less likely to get GPU problems.

Edit: oh almost forgot, the T43p is noticeably faster then T42's as well.

T43's with X300 GPU's run pretty cool without any mods.

I had an R50p once, with a T42p long cooler, the GPU ran at about 90C at full load, same as a T43p.

[ajkula66]

So you are dealing with a design defect / engineering tradeoff, those machines simply generate more heat, especially the ones that run at higher than 1.83 Ghz.

Hogwash. There's no design defect or engineering trade-off anywhere to be found. Please stop spreading FUD - you dislike the T43/p generation - all of us have understood that fact at this point in time.

The only part of T42/p design that is arguably better than what is to be found on the T43/p is the long fan itself.

Meanwhile T43/p has improved planar design by default and is hence a lot more reliable than older T4x machines, by a significant margin.

You may not find a workable solution, sorry to say, other than to trade down to a T42... I own 7.

The only T42s that run really cool are the 1.6/1.7 Dothan ones. Higher-end machines with PM 755/765 and advanced graphics (ATi 9600/Fire GL T2) are neither cool nor quiet when pressed hard, just like their T43/p siblings.

[dr_st]

The T42-vs-T43 argument is quite interesting in a historical perspective, and in a layman-vs-enthusiast perspective.

If you were to compare them back in 2005, when the T43 just came out you would come to different conclusions that the enthusiast community such as this have converged to over the years.

Back in the day, T43 offered very little advantage over the T42. The high-end units would be marginally faster than the high-end T42s, but the intersection was so great that it was hardly noticeable. If you had a 1.8-2GHz T42, a 1.73-2GHz T43 would not give you much more at all. And in the GPU department, the X300 was not at all faster than the 9600. Only the really high-end T43p with P-M 770/780 and FireGL T3200 would show any noticeable improvement over a well-specked T42.

None of the things that we know now (such as improved reliability of the T43 planars, and the ability to override the SATA-PATA bridge to unlock the potential of a T43) was known at the time of the launch. Even the ExpressCard, which today makes the T43 a much more modern machine, was next to useless back then.

The only things that were clearly evident were the annoying hard drive whitelist and the louder fan. Can you really blame people who back in the day preferred the T42?

Some people may still have memories of that period and so subconsciously think that the T42 remains the better machine. But this is a marvelous example of how time changes things. The T43 series aged so much better than the T42.

[Adda]

I think there is a design defect in T43p's, and other T4x's too, but I can't confirm it before I get my hands on some T2/9600 boards.

It's not IBM's fault though it's ATi who forgot to measure the height of the memory chips they used, or was too lazy to make different heatspreaders for different memory chips.

If you remove the heatspreader from a 216YDDAGA23FH GPU, apply thermal paste on the GPU core, and reapply the heatspreader, it will not make contact with the GPU at all, a thick layer is needed to get any thermal paste to touch the heatspreader.

But this is not a problem with T4x's, this is a problem with ATi GPU's of the era, and it's not limited to mobile GPU's either, a bit of a pity, they are some of the best GPU's of their time, but at least there is a fix.

The desktop Radeon 9700 Pro, had a thermal pad between the GPU and cooler, rather then proper paste, making this card run much hotter then it needed to.
On top of that, they put a aluminum frame around the GPU, which was taller then the core, so mounting a different cooler, or even replacing the pad with paste, required you to remove the frame, which was not as easy as removing the heatspreader from a mobile GPU.

ATi was not used to making high performance video cards just yet, it was still something new to them, and they made some mistakes along the way, but the GPU's them selves, where excellent.

[massits]

I am really interested abot heatspreader installattion in my T43..
why do you suggest to NOT cover totally the gpu with thermal paste ? or I have misunderstanded that the heatspreader has to NOT touch the GPU without paste ..

if anybody has applied a heatspreader on the GPU can please tell about its height, becouse in the laptop there is not so much space and relative probability about a good, ventilation..
but gpu with heatspreader is better a gpu without it.

is something to do to keep the heatspreader in place ?

thanks

here is a topic and relative pics album ( second link) about this :

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=423635
http://s53.photobucket.com/user/adasch/ ... y.jpg.html

from pics comment I desume that there is too space between thermal pad and heatspreader, and that is the cause of overheating.

what do you suggest to do ?
apply a fatter thermal pad ?
apply a layer of copper and thermal paste under the heatspreader ?
what ?

[Adda]

~massits

I feel I have explained the issue and solution as good as I can, several times, in this very thread, I just don't know what else to say.
Read through this thread carefully, it's all there, and take a look at this thread too:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=107720

[massits]

I have dismantle a very hold HP laptop ( all died, Mobo etc ) and on the bottom case I have found a very thin layer of copper ( 0,77 mm - 0, 0280") were probably applied to protect the plastic from heat.

about that : http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_bu ... dge_cooler

Can I use this layer to cool down the southbridge how suggested in the upper link ?

thanks