T60 fan at high speed when running on battery

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aragorn002 · #1 Post by **aragorn002** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 12:32 pm

Hello,

I got my new T60 (2007-62F) yesterday, and the fan is
is kind of strange. When running with the AC adapter
plugged-in, the fan will run at around 3000 rpm, pretty
quiet.

However when I unplug the the AC adapter and run
from the battery then the fan will get to ±3900 rpm
within a few secs and stay there, even if the system is
idling. As soon as I plug the AC adapter back, the fan
rev go down again to ±3000 rpm.

I installed tpfancontrol to check the fan speed and the
temperatures seem all normal.

I called Lenovo support, and they told me to upgrade
to the latest BIOS, and if it didn't solve the issue to
bring it in for repair. I did the BIOS upgrade (from 1.05a
to 1.07) but it made no difference. Any suggestions
before I return the T60 for repair ?

P.S. I have a standard config (T2500, X1400, SXGA+ 14.1",
100GB drive), save for memory : 2X 1GByte

aragorn002

#2 Post by **RonS** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 1:02 pm

Did you go into the Thinkpad's Power Manager (double-click on the battery gauge on the bottom-right corner of the desktop) and verify the current scheme is valid?

I had fan-always-on problems until I went into my brand-new T60p and "tickled" (changed the scheme to anything and back again) the scheme. Since that time on, the fan has behaved correctly.

aragorn002 · #3 Post by **aragorn002** » Fri Jun 30, 2006 1:11 pm

RonS,

The current scheme is "Thinkpad default" and can't be modified.
However I can make a copy of that scheme and then tweak it.
If I do a simple copy of "Thinkpad default" without any mods
and then apply it, I get the very same behavior.

I now have to leave. I'll be back online tomorrow morning.

Aragorn002

Aszu · #4 Post by **Aszu** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 4:54 am

The fan doesn't cool only the CPU but also the video chip and other components. I think the heated ATI video chip will take more time to be cooled than the Intel processor.

Usually the battery mode get less power from ThinkPad battery, those chips will NOT heat like AC mode. So, I believe the fan control make equalize every thermal events to the mode switched to.

aragorn002 · #5 Post by **aragorn002** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 1:13 pm

I'll leave the T60 at the local depot for repair. I tried to
tinker with the thinkpad power management, but it just
doesn't make any sense. The profiles in there seem
logical, but the laptop behaves the opposite way it
should.

Also, the bluetooth transmitter is either missing or
defective.

Hopefully everything will get fixed with a single trip to
the repair shop.

own6volvos · #6 Post by **own6volvos** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 4:14 pm

One thing I noticed from my t60 back in march, was the power profiles in the bios differed for both battery and AC, and as such somewhat changed the bios's cooling profile for each. I too noticed the increased fan usage on mine, and after changing the profiles to match eachother both AC and battery had the same style. Fan speeds went down, didn't throttle up as much, and was more pleasant using it in school.

This doesn't prevent the thing from any cpu frequency scaling, jsut changes its cooling profile. All the battery saving stuff can still be played with in the ibm utility in windows.

filter · #7 Post by **filter** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 3:30 am

As a tip: Just try to uninstall the Powermanager and let Windows take over control. It completly solved the problem for me. Its running whispersilent at around 2800 RPM now and its cool. Also see other thread further down.l

squashball · #8 Post by **squashball** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 4:46 am

That is a known BIOS bug!
I had a call with a service center and they told me that that shoul be fixed with the next BIOS version.

#9 Post by **Kyocera** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:36 pm

Squashball, what version are you referring to?

squashball · #10 Post by **squashball** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 12:45 pm

Kyocera wrote:Squashball, what version are you referring to?

Originally, I had version 1.04.
I had a call with the service center because of an other problem and they mentioned that I should upgrade to fix my problem (noise from fan, wich was has nothing to do with the BIOS) and that an upgrade would fix the problem with high fan speed on battery mode.
I sent my thinkpad back (for an other fan) and now I have BIOS v1.07.
But I just found out, that the fan speed is still very high when running on battery - so my hint doesn't work, sorry!
I have the feeling, ibm/lenovo do not even now what abbreviation "BIOS" is

So you still have to switch the battery BIOS setting from "max battery" to "max performance". At least that solved the problem form me in version 1.04

christopher_wolf · #11 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:39 pm

squashball wrote:
Kyocera wrote:Squashball, what version are you referring to?
Originally, I had version 1.04.
I had a call with the service center because of an other problem and they mentioned that I should upgrade to fix my problem (noise from fan, wich was has nothing to do with the BIOS) and that an upgrade would fix the problem with high fan speed on battery mode.
I sent my thinkpad back (for an other fan) and now I have BIOS v1.07.
But I just found out, that the fan speed is still very high when running on battery - so my hint doesn't work, sorry!
I have the feeling, ibm/lenovo do not even now what abbreviation "BIOS" is
So you still have to switch the battery BIOS setting from "max battery" to "max performance". At least that solved the problem form me in version 1.04

The EC handles direct fan control, not the BIOS although it helps to have the right version to go along with the EC control program.

aragorn002 · #12 Post by **aragorn002** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 10:08 pm

the trip to the repair shop is cancelled for now.

On the bluetooth issue I mentionned above, when
I called Lenovo support, they had me check a few things
in the Win hardware config and concluded the T60
needed repair. I kept exploring (this is my first Thinkpad
and also my first real experience with XP, I'm still using
w2k at the office) and found out in Fn+F5 that the
bluetooth device was disabled ! I turned it on an Windows
discovered the new hardware and installed the drivers.
I could then upgrade the firmware and the software.

I also noticed that if I changed the fan control parameter
on battery to macth the value configured while on AC
(from balance all parameters to maximize performance),
the fan speed would stay the same at ±3000 rpm.
It just doesn't seem logical to me.

There are many threads that I have to read about Thinkpad's
fans. After reading a few, I think my laptop is on the average.
I'll do some more testing the next few days and report
my findings.

young guy · #13 Post by **young guy** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:29 am

Is it safe to say then it is "normal" for the fan to be constantly running even when my T60 is idle?

squashball · #14 Post by **squashball** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:34 am

aragorn002 wrote:I also noticed that if I changed the fan control parameter
on battery to macth the value configured while on AC
(from balance all parameters to maximize performance),
the fan speed would stay the same at ±3000 rpm.
It just doesn't seem logical to me

I was reffering to that when I said that they (service center hotline) told me, that there is a bug in the BIOS (or if you want EC)

T60 fan at high speed when running on battery

T60 fan at high speed when running on battery

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