Very high temperatures

[gpvillamil]

I am using a T41p, mostly to run a powerful 3D visuals program.

I have used the program for a couple of years, and it has run fine. Recently I updated the BIOS, and found that temperatures shot up, and I started getting severe glitches in the graphics.

The system idles at about 45C - 51C, however when the graphics program starts running, CPU and GPU temperatures climb rapidly, reaching 77-78 degrees.

When NOT running TPFancontrol, temperatures stay in that range (or gradually climb even higher sometimes to 85C). At this point graphics start to glitch. The fan never runs at anything like the maximum speed, it stays around 3800 RPM even as the temp goes up.

When running TPFancontrol, the default configuration turns control over to the BIOS (speed setting 128) which ironically REDUCES the fan speed, from the 7 setting. So the fan runs at 4500 for a bit, then when the temperature tops 70C it goes over to the BIOS, which reduces the fan to 3800 RPM, at which point temperatures resume climbing.

Manually setting speed = 7 in TPFancontrol keeps the temperatures under control (fan at 4500 RPM), setting speed = 64 does lead to a reduction as the fan hits more than 5000 RPM.

I am thinking of modifying fancontrol.ini to hit higher speeds earlier, using 7 as the value for 60C, and maybe 64 for 70C.

Two questions:

Is anyone aware of the latest BIOS update implementing more conservative fan management (ie it allows temperatures to get higher in order to be quieter) or could this be a bug, that at the highest temperatures it actually drops to a slower fan speed?

Are these temperatures excessive (51C at idle, 77C+ under load)? Should I be thinking about reapplying thermal grease, etc?

[gearguy]

Why don't you just downgrade the bios?

[gpvillamil]

Well, I opened it up, cleaned the fan and heatsink assembly, applied Arctic Silver.

Now the CPU rarely goes over 60C even under heavy load. The GPU does not go over 74C.

Would it make sense to apply thermal grease to the pad that goes over the CPU, or use it as-is?

[Torque]

My T41p always ran at the temperatures you mention there. Especially when running with a constant load on both the CPU and GPU side.