T420s Vs T430 Fan noise

[crominho]

I love Lenovo but some things from them make no sense :-\

I have other lenovo laptops, but on T420s and on T430 the screens are awful and make an horrible fan noise,
on the T430 I search the web and found out that I had to change the cooler for Delta Electronics 0B41087 or 0B41089, cause
the other ones have problems and thats why it makes so much noise.
I bought an 0B41087 and now its nice and quiet,

But on T420s I found nothing :-/ ... is there any cooler we could change to make less noise ? :-\

Thanks,

[louieman1]

crominho, I am interested to know if you solved your fan noise issue on the T430S.

I have 3 T430 which have the same fan noise issue. I will be replacing the fan with a Delta as you suggested.

1. Have you notice any heat difference between the T430 and T430S?

2. Do you have a three wire or four wire fan on the T430S?

I also seen 4 wire PWM fans on auction sites. FRU 04W3486 for integrated graphics and FRU 04W3488 for NVS graphics. I would assume this might be a quieter fan. The Delta has four wired too on the T430.

[crominho]

crominho, I am interested to know if you solved your fan noise issue on the T430S.

I have 3 T430 which have the same fan noise issue. I will be replacing the fan with a Delta as you suggested.

1. Have you notice any heat difference between the T430 and T430S?

2. Do you have a three wire or four wire fan on the T430S?

I also seen 4 wire PWM fans on auction sites. FRU 04W3486 for integrated graphics and FRU 04W3488 for NVS graphics. I would assume this might be a quieter fan. The Delta has four wired too on the T430.

Hello louieman1,

I dont have the T430s, I have a T430 and a T420s, but I think the Fan on the S versions are different.

The problem on the T430 is that the intake grills of the 0B41086 are very small compared to the 0B41087, so it makes a lot of noise and
could not fins to cool it properly. I change it and now its very quiet, I just cannot hear the fan, the Temps went down and the battery get more time.

I have an I7-3632QM Quad 35W and put it with MX-4 compound. I am a programmer and at a day work was terrible, at night was just impossible

you can check it herehttps://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T ... 15/page/37

Now I was trying to make the same on the S versions(T420s) but I just cant find anything about it :-\ ... the only thing that I found is that the T420 is different of the T420s in terms of the Fan :-\ thats why I made this topic to see if someone has the same problem.

You'll be suprised when you change yours

EDIT: sorry, I have four wire on the T430 Fan

[louieman1]

Did you notice any single core performance drop on the i7-3632QM?

I have also T530 with a i5-3320 and have been debating over a i7-3320M vs i7-3632QM. I want to stay as light as possible so I narrow the CPU down to a 35 Watt TDP.

I mostly use Office desktop apps, Visual Studio, text editors.

[crominho]

yep, but a very very small difference

on the other hand everything that runs with multi core runs much faster. I also use VS and Delphi with VMs.
I'm running win10 X64 as host, and Ubuntu, OSx and Android on VMs at same time without any problems
compiling and building projects its extremely fast

[ji2o0k]

I have to say, the fan noise on the T430 is ridiculous if you don't have the Delta Electronics fan.....the other non - Delta Electronics have such small air openings...why would Lenovo make it like that?

I ended up selling the T430 because I found it too chunky and wanted the T430s for the FHD mod..

I now have the T430s and T420s and I don't find the fan noise too bad..nowhere close to T430 non-Delta Electronics loud...

[crominho]

The other Fan I think it is toshiba.

But I also have a T420s and the noise is very bad compared to other laptops :-\ ... which fan do you have on T420s?

[marasm]

I have been trying to work though the loud fan issue on my T420s since I got it a little over a year ago.

I got the i7 version with nvidia graphics, so in a way my situation the loud fan was a little more noticeable.

About a week ago I was attempting to install a different style heatsink/fan into my laptop when I shorted out the motherboard. My stupid mistake, I forgot to unplug when I was lifting the palm bezel and one of the wifi cables contacted the motherboard. I smelled the smell we all hate, and I knew what had happened. Surprisingly the laptop still booted (and boots) fine, it just can't tell when the AC adapter is plugged in. It charges, but it has no idea it is plugged in. I don't trust it to not overcharge the battery, so I bought a new motherboard. Actually, I got two.

The first is the bog standard 2.50 GHz i5. It came with the heatsink attached, so I just slapped in the case and powered up. It seemed to work for a bit, then I noticed that the fan would ramp up to full speed and never back off. It would just sit there at 4k RPM, and only a complete shutdown would reset it.

So I bought a 2.60 GHz i5 board. I got it yesterday, and it didn't have a heatsink. I put the heatsink on it from the first i5 board, and it does the same thing. Full speed fan.

Then I tried one of the dedicated graphics heatsinks, but to get it to fit I had to cut the dedicated graphics part off. Same thing, full speed fan.

At that point I stepped back and looked at the situation. I noticed that all the heatsinks I had tried had fans with three wires. The original, original heatsink and fan from the i7 system had a four wire fan.

So at this point I am thinking that the three wire fans aren't compatible with all three boards I have, and they need the 4 wire PWM fans to work right. Is this correct? I was going to test this by mutilating my only remaining dedicated graphics heatsink with the four wires, but I don't really want to do that.

Is there a complete list somewhere with all the different FRU numbers for all the fans/heatsinks that are compatible with the T420s? I think I have found only one non-dedicated graphics heatsink on ebay that had four wires (04W3486), but I wanted to try to get two different styles of fans to see which is quieter.

[TankPad]

Wow. Don't cut up or damage anything else!

I would imagine the 3 vs 4 wire PWM fan is almost certainly the issue. The pulses are used to measure/adjust the speed of the fan. 4 wire fans work a little different to the 3 wire so its possible you're getting a weird signal that is causing the fan to run at high than intended speeds.

[axur-delmeria]

Wow. Don't cut up or damage anything else!

I would imagine the 3 vs 4 wire PWM fan is almost certainly the issue. The pulses are used to measure/adjust the speed of the fan. 4 wire fans work a little different to the 3 wire so its possible you're getting a weird signal that is causing the fan to run at high than intended speeds.

In a 3-wire fan, the 3rd wire is for RPM sense, and the speed is controlled by changing the voltage supplied to the fan.

In a 4-wire fan, the 4th wire is for the PWM signal, which is composed of timed pulses (or a square wave) which determine the speed of the fan. The voltage supplied to the fan is kept constant. IIRC the PWM signal is active low, which means that the absence of a PWM signal will cause the fan to run at full speed.

So if you put a 3-wire fan on a system that expects a 4-wire one, it will always run at full speed.

[TankPad]

Wow. Don't cut up or damage anything else!

I would imagine the 3 vs 4 wire PWM fan is almost certainly the issue. The pulses are used to measure/adjust the speed of the fan. 4 wire fans work a little different to the 3 wire so its possible you're getting a weird signal that is causing the fan to run at high than intended speeds.

In a 3-wire fan, the 3rd wire is for RPM sense, and the speed is controlled by changing the voltage supplied to the fan.

In a 4-wire fan, the 4th wire is for the PWM signal, which is composed of timed pulses (or a square wave) which determine the speed of the fan. The voltage supplied to the fan is kept constant. IIRC the PWM signal is active low, which means that the absence of a PWM signal will cause the fan to run at full speed.

So if you put a 3-wire fan on a system that expects a 4-wire one, it will always run at full speed.

Yeah, that's pretty much my point.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

About a week ago I was attempting to install a different style heatsink/fan into my laptop when I shorted out the motherboard. My stupid mistake, I forgot to unplug when I was lifting the palm bezel and one of the wifi cables contacted the motherboard. I smelled the smell we all hate, and I knew what had happened. Surprisingly the laptop still booted (and boots) fine, it just can't tell when the AC adapter is plugged in. It charges, but it has no idea it is plugged in. I don't trust it to not overcharge the battery, so I bought a new motherboard. Actually, I got two.

Wild. The exact same thing just happened to me, too, as described here viewtopic.php?f=45&t=123744

I didn't notice when it happened though and didn't get any smell of a burning component. Any chance you could take a picture of where on your board this happened so I can check the component on my board?

I'm not too worried about the battery over-charging. These batteries have built in charging circuits. Mine doesn't seem to get hot after reaching 99 or 100% and actually does even seem to cool down, so I'm pretty sure everything is working correctly there.

[marasm]

Wild. The exact same thing just happened to me, too, as described here viewtopic.php?f=45&t=123744

I didn't notice when it happened though and didn't get any smell of a burning component. Any chance you could take a picture of where on your board this happened so I can check the component on my board?

I'm not too worried about the battery over-charging. These batteries have built in charging circuits. Mine doesn't seem to get hot after reaching 99 or 100% and actually does even seem to cool down, so I'm pretty sure everything is working correctly there.

I actually have no idea where it contacted the motherboard. I can't see any burn marks or damage. My guess is around where the optical drive plugs in. It's weird that the damage would be so specific to whatever circuit senses when the AC adapter is attached and nothing else is affected. I may get parts to build another system with that board, just to have it around. Need basically everything but the motherboard.

I found the Hardware Maintenence Manual for the T420s (here) and it only lists two fan assemblies for integrated graphics laptops, both of which are three wire designs. I just purchased two 04W3486, as they were the only four wire design I could find for integrated graphics.

What really bugs me is that the 2.50 GHz motherboard I got came with a three wire fan, but it ramps to full speed like the others. Not sure what that means. If these four wire PWM fans go full speed too, I'm not sure what I'll do.

[RealBlackStuff]

Don't know where you get those fan P/N or FRU from, because the T420s HMM has only these:
18 Fan assembly, UMA Toshiba 04W0416
18 Fan assembly, UMA AVC 04W1712
18 Fan assembly, Optimus Toshiba 04W0417
18 Fan assembly, Optimus AVC 04W1713

Did you downloaded the wrong HMM?
Or get the frubom list from the T430s?

[marasm]

Yeah, when you search for T420s heatsink on ebay all sorts of different FRU numbers show up. After some research the one I got (04W3485) is for the T430s. It mounts perfectly to the T420s. The seller I bought from sent me the wrong ones though. I got the three wire fans (04W3485 instead of 86), and they want me to send them back to get the correct ones. Oh well. Maybe I'll get (or make) a T430s in the future. Not sending them back when I only paid $12 for two of them.

Anyway, I also got the actual, for real, honest to God, no kidding correct fans today. 043W1712, four wire PWM. And, of course, they shoot to 4k RPM too. At this point I have both original fans that came with T420s laptops, and they both peg at max RPM after running for a minute or two. Temps are fine (actually pretty cool, since the fan is going at max speed), none of the other sensors I can see are hot. I am using HWiNFO to monitor.

I just don't get it. What am I doing wrong? I am going to flash the BIOS in a bit, just to see what happens.

edit: no joy on the BIOS flash. I have no idea. I tried everything at defaults, everything at battery optimized, makes no difference.

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

If you haven't already, you should try TPFanControl to see if you can manually reduce the fan speed. If so, you can just set up a TPFC profile, which is guaranteed to be better than the BIOS fan control anyway.