T500 turns itself off during heavy processing

[Arf the Lab]

Hello, all.

My T500 is showing strange behavior: when there's a lot of heavy processing going on (i.e. large video conversion, a particularly resource-hungry game is being played, etc.), the machine will often just shut itself off with no warning whatsoever. I'm running Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows XP (32-bit) on a dual boot, and the problem manifests itself under both operating systems. I've never had a computer shut itself off so often like this, so it's really mind boggling. Sometimes when I turn the computer back on, it turns itself off AGAIN at least once, while trying to load Windows. A second or third try, it finally starts up OK. Note this doesn't happen to me every day, just when I really throw a particularly intensive task at the machine.

The computer's fan is working, and I've also got it connected to the ThinkPad Advanced dock. None of the fans / ports / etc. are being blocked, and I don't have anything connected to the computer or dock that would be frantically sucking its power.

I rely on this machine for day to day use, so any help finding + solving the problem is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[theterminator93]

Sounds like overheating. I'd put some thermal monitoring software on it to see how hot things are getting. Mid-upper 70s into the low-mid 80s is typical (though I prefer mid-low 70s as a peak personally), if it gets into the 90s there's something wrong somewhere. Even if the fans etc. aren't blocked, time causes dust to build up on the fan and on the fins of the heat sink, reducing thermal dissipation efficiency. I clean my fans/heatsinks at least once a year, usually every six months.

My personal favorite monitoring tool is TPFanControl; I use it to ramp up the fan speed faster to keep things cooler. It means more dust to clean out, but that's a cheap price to pay for the extra peace of mind for a cooler system.

[precip9]

Let's see some temps. I use http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

[Arf the Lab]

Thanks for the quick replies, gents.

Yeah, it's getting pretty darn hot so I guess that must be it.

[Fahrenheit temps image removed]

Any quick 'n easy guide(s) to properly cleaning the fan? I need to get this thing working at optimum efficiency ASAP.

[Cigarguy]

Switch the temps setting to Celsius. Most folks who talks about such things deal in Celsius, even US overclockers. Also, idle temp don't mean too much, it's the stress temp that you are after. Prime95 is a good program to stress the cores. As said already, anything in the 90+ deg C and you can expect thermal shutdown.

Lenovo's maintenance manual is fantastic for work of this type. It pretty much have step by step instructions on disassembly/assembly. Google instructions on how to properly apply new thermal paste (TIM). Recommend Arctic Silver 5 or MX4. While you are at it, now is a good time to blow out all the dust bunnies. A can of compress air is good for that.