R60 - high frequency fan noise like T60?

[SlyD]

Hi!

Referring to this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=26346
I'd like to know if anyone has heard such high pitch noises from the fan of the R60?

Like in this MP3 recording posted in the other thread by squashball:
http://www.flob.de/pitch.mp3
(just listen to the high pitch noise, not the typical fan noise!)

I had this problem with two T60s, and it was very annoying! I returned them both and now I am searching for a Thinkpad quality notebook again...

Many users also report that the GPU Temperatures on the R60 stays around 55°C when idle and only reaches 70° under heavy load and thus the fan stays of most of the time?
One of my T60s X1400 had about 72°C (91°C peak under load) when idle and the fan was always on at over 3200 RPM...


Thanks in advance for any infos on this!

[SlyD]

OK - seems like anybody has this noise on a R60?

You can also write that you can not hear anything from the machine of course
This would also be interesting for me

[NS]

Emm... seemed that i am the right person for you huh...

I have not heard any high pitched sound from my T60 other than the Samsung Hdd random clicking sound which irritated me the most. As for the R60, sorry and sad to say.. after using it for a few days, i am very irritated with it's noisy keyboard & it's AC adapter. It's AC adapter is very hot and feel almost like burning your fingers when you touch it. <--The R60 is idle

When the R60 is running full load, worse still. The AC adapter feel so hot and the computer base is also very hot. Why i am so [censored] off with this R60 is because i am experimenting it in a very cold air- con room and i don't see the reason why the AC adapter & the computer still can get so hot when i am actually shivering in the room because the air- con temperature is 16 degree celcius (lowest air con temp in Singapore).

I wonder why...!:?

As for the R60 & T60 high pitched sound, i don't hear it coming out from both of my computers yet...

[SlyD]

Hi!

Thanks for your reply!

Hmmm. The AC Adaptor that came with the T60 I had first got rahter hot, too... but only under load. It got extremely hot while the Thinkpad was on and the Battery was charging...

What AC Adaptor is shipped with the R60? Maybe a less powerful version than with the T60?

Noisy Keyboard? Really? I thought it is the same as on T60...
Did you lookup your Manufacturer in IBM Partslookup? Maybe you have a Chicony and not Alps/NMB - there seem to be some differences between those Keyboards that Lenovo/IBM is using.
The Alps I had on the T60 was not the most silent Keyboard I ever had on a Laptop, but it was quite nice.


Your R60 gets hot and your T60 not?
That is weird. As far as I have heard it, the R60 keeps a lot cooler than the T60.
Is this maybe because of the higher humidity in Singapore? I have been to Singapore once (nice City uhm Country ! )
and I remember that it was rather wet climate there

Does your fan run or is it off most of the time?

[NS]

T60 fan is always on when idling. R60 fan is always off; only turn itself on when it is running full load.

[SlyD]

OK now I have a R60 9462 - 77G with T2500, X1400, 1.5GB RAM, 100GB 7K2 HDD!



and it does NOT make any noise like the T60!
It is a very silent and cool machine!

The GPU idles as low as 39° to 45°C when I _manually_ turn on the fan - it runs on the lowest speed, 2700 RPM. It is very silent in this mode!

If I let the BIOS take care of it, it starts running _only_ when the GPU Temperature hits 55 to 56°C after about 2h of surfing, but turns off very fast again...

--> Very silent and cool running machine! If I remember the T60s' 70°C GPU...

Just the Display is not as good as the FlexView - well that was obvious of course, but it is OK for me.

Regards,
SlyD

[NS]

Enjoy using your R60? Well, no matter how noisy is the fan or HDD, i still prefer thinkpads than my Travelmate.

Travelmate: HDD and fan noise still can be accepted but you will get very sick and irritated when the key caps start to pop out one by one.

[SlyD]

Yes I enjoy my R60 very much! (but I only have it a few days now)

So far I can not reproduce your heat problems at all!
(I have asked several other R60 users before I bought mine and you were the only one who reported heat problems...)

Here are my temps after more than one hour of normal working (surfing, burning a CD, some other things and typing this message):
CPU 34°C (0x78)
APS 29°C (0x79)
PCM 33°C (0x7a)
GPU 39°C (0x7b)
BAT 24°C (0x7c)
BAT 22°C (0x7e)
BUS 33°C (0xc0)
PCI 33°C (0xc1)
PWR 39°C (0xc2)

Fan is manually set to run at 2700RPM.
GPU is @ 128/135 MHz and the CPU @1GHz.
About 18 to 19°C room temperature.


I'd guess you have a unit with bad assembled heatsink OR it is really the climate in Singapore and the rather high humidity...? I don't know.

Even my AC Adaptor does not get *that* hot. It gets warm, yes, but it does not feel uncomfortable to touch!
Maybe you should ask Lenovo for a replacement?


The keyboard (mine is a NMB) is not that noisy - I like it.
Display and noisy HDD are the only things I can complain about.
The 7K2 Seagate HDD is nearly ad loud as the fan...



Acer Travelmate? Hehe - no way I would never buy something like this
For my current work I need a rock solid workhorse like the Thinkpad!
If I want a multimedia machine, I would go for Samsung once more as their quality is rather good!

[abvc]

wow
you brought back my trust in R series.. i own R52 and like it very much

might reconsider buying a desktop when dual 2 core is coming out...

[bill_duoduo]

I have a R60(model type:9455 2VC), T2300e 1.66G, 945GM chipset.
I bought it last month, and I have not experienced any fan noise problems yet.

The temperature in the room is about 20 degrees(centigrade), and the cpu is running at 1G most of the time(it has been stuck there for a few days now), and cpu fan does not spin, most of the time. When it spins, it's very quiet, can't even compare to the spin noise from HDD, which is a little bit annoying(at night). Once I played Civilization III for several hours, and I didn't even notice anything about the cpu fan. So I am pretty satisfied with its temperature control.(though I am not happy about its cpu stuck problem)

About the AC adapter, it's......cool(temperature), in fact. Maybe it's because I put it on the ground? It only gets a little bit warm on one side, which does not touch the ground.

[NS]

I checked with IBM/Lenovo support and they ask me to bring down my R60 and the AC adapter and they swapped and change the AC adapter for me. That AC Adapter is a bit faulty and silly me still don\'t know about this problem. *sigh!*

[ThinkPad R]

I think that this has to do with adware/spyware.

They tend to overwork your computer.

[jkat]

Hey all,

I have really appreciated all the posts under this topic: Bought a T60 several months back, but returned it as the fan would run a whole lot, even when the machine was just idling on my desk. (I prefer a very quiet machine, which is getting hard to find these days.) I tried thinkpad fan control, which worked well, but the machine was just getting too hot to keep the fan off most of the time. This T60 episode was after I quickly returned a T43, which had the weird pulsating fan noise you may have heard about in the Thinkpad Forum.

I am an extreme Thinkpad fan, though, since (if you'll believe it) my 1999 i series is still going strong, with no major problems all these years except two power cord replacements. And, am still holding out hope that my next and urgently needed machine will be a thinkpad.

So, I'm extremely encouraged by the indications in this thread that the R60 fan spends most of its time off (especially when the machine is idling) and tends to go on only at full load. Still, before I go for it, I'd love to get a little more input. Here are my questions and any and all feedback is appreciated:

1) Do you think the low R60 fan action observed by SlyD is related to the machine being a 15 inch and therefore more spacious for natural cooling. I'd love to get a 14 inch, but wonder if any one has heard whether their fans tend to stay mostly off as well. (If the 14-inch fan really goes on a lot more than the 15-inch, I might have to go for the 15-inch even though it's not my preference.)

2) Have others, besides SlyD, NS, and Bill_duoduo also noticed the low level of fan activity on the R60 -- or has anyone had contrary results? Also, SlyD, NS, and Bill_duoduo, have your R60's fans remained mostly off as you've had your machines a bit longer now?

3)What about options to reduce the R60 hard drive noise? Has anyone tried switching their hard drive to a quieter one? (Which hard drives are known to be quieter?) Or, does anyone know if the 5400 rpm one is much quieter than the 7200 rpm one?

4) Do you think it's worthwhile to go for a low-end R60 to minimize heat creation if my goal is to have a quiet (fan mostly off) machine? By this I mean going for a lower Gig CPU and going for integrated graphics.

5) Last, does anyone know if the new windows (windows vista) would tend to heat things up more and raise R60 fan activity significantly, so that I should consider going for the old windows?

Thanks in advance for any feedback/advice!

[SlyD]

Just very quick response as I don't have that much time right now - no guarantee for well verbalized sentences
( Hey - at last I am using my Thinkpad what it is made for - WORKING )

I don't need a completely silent machine - of course it is nice to have a silent machine - but if the fan is only on at level 1 - this is just OK for me. My old Samsung P10 had two fans which made a lot more noise.
--> I have set the fan to run at level 1 ALL THE TIME. I have done this because I love to have such a cool running machine!

Yes, the fan can stay off for a long time when working normally! But this works only IF you manage to get the energy mangement working properly... The Lenovo Battery Manager is a bit - well - stupid / buggy / whatever and seems to forget my power settings after I resumed from Standby or Hibernation. When the perf setting is on low, I have to set it to another level once the machine is on again and then set it to low again. Otherwise it runs at maximum performance - I don't know why.

This is only true when on AC, on battery it works well.
And if I boot the machine normally - there are no issues, too.


Well, when running at maximum perf it reaches the 50°C range a lot faster than normal - and when hitting about 55°C the fan turns on, works for a few minutes, turns off for half an hour or up to an hour (depends on how much you work with the R60) and turns on again....



BUT: The fan is always silent - I never heard it running at level 3 (level 1 and 2 are the same!) since I have the machine! Only if I set this manually with TPFancontrol...

All in all it is very silent. I did not swap the harddrive yet, but I want to do this in a few weeks.
Maybe a Samsung HM160JI ? I don't know if it is silent, but it should be.


If you get a machine with integrated graphics - well - then I think the fan will stay off a long time even when running on maximum performance

[SlyD]

sorry double post.

[joshrob]

OK - seems like anybody has this noise on a R60?

hi,

i had something similar in my r60 (9461-54G). high pitch noise from the inside, more hearable from the bottom rather than form the keyboard-side, anyhow it WAS annoying. luckily only for a couple of hours after buying.

regards,

[jkat]

Thanks for the response SlyD -

It's good to know the fan at level 1 is not loud. However, I'm wondering if the R60 in terms of fan noise and function is about like the T60 (which did bother me -- maybe because I'm very picky! ; ). With the T60 I had lots of trouble trying to get the power settings to change the fan activity (which sounds a bit similar to your own experience).

It sounds like overall, your experience is that if you don't use your own fan control, the fan will still come on a lot (albeit at a low level) unless one is able to set and reset the power settings. Is this right?

Has anyone compared the fan activity of the R60 to the T60 -- If so, does the fan come on much, much less or similarly often? As I recall, for the T60 the fan was on about 1/2 the time and would often come on (and stay on for a good while) after the machine had been idling for a while with no activity.

Thanks, all!

[SlyD]

Uhm - hey I had two T60 before my R60 - I returned both of them because of the high pitch FAN noise you can read about in other threads (NOT the power regulation noise... this is something different)



Well, to compare: The fans on my T60 did not turn off once they were on and they did not get lower than level 3 if in BIOS control mode.
--> BAD

Well, I had the models with X1400 GPU and 1,8GHz CPU - so quite some heat to push out.


But the R60 handles this MUCH better with X1400 and 2,0GHz CPU!
It is very silent and it does not have the high pitch fan noise (often called "ping").

Yes it is a bit handwork to get the power management running, but I hope that lenovo will give us a update for this software - this is just a WINDOWS software/driver issue and not really hardware related - the power management setting is simply not refreshed after resuming from standby.

After a normal reboot it works OK and it also works OK when on Battery!


--> The R60 is a cool and silent machine. You don't get many silent notebooks with 2GHz CPU and X1400 - and the R60 is one of the most silent and cool running machines with such hardware out there, I think (heh - if I touch/hear the notebooks of some of my friends... lol )

[allan]

What do you use to get all the different temps?

Completely silent R60, Duo 2.0, 9456.
Allan

[jkat]

Hi all -still trying to finalize my purchase decision on an R60. I may be getting it in Hong Kong, where the only 14.1" option available may be with ATI (rather than less power consumptive integrated graphics I had hoped to get) and windows VISTA (which it also seems may be more power consumptive, so had been planning to stick with XP). So looking for a little more info on the issue of "how much the fan goes on and for how long". Sly D's experience that even at maximum power, it goes on only for a few minutes every 1/2 to 1 hour, seems a lot better than my T60 experience. And, he has ATI and 2 gig processor (though 15" screen) - I believe (?). Still, I wonder what others have experienced. Below I put a few specific queries for previous posters in this thread and then some more general questions at the bottom.

1. Allan, you indicate yours is a completely silent machine. Is it integrated graphics or ATI? 14.1" or 15"? Have you done something special to keep it silent? And by silient do you mean that the fan never goes on?

2. NS - What screen size and processor do you have? Also, is it ATI graphics? I noticed your R60 fan never goes on. Do you have vista or XP?

3. joshrob - How is your experience with the fan -- does it go on often or stay mostly off?

Also, does anyone have any idea:

4. How much windows vista might exacerbate/increase heat output/ lower battery life and thus increase the fan action.

5. How battery life compares between ATI and integrated graphics and between vista and xp (sorry, getting off the fan noise topic just a bit here..but i guess greater heat output could have these two related negative impacts)

6. If the 14 inch is going to have more fan action than you all are experiencing with the 15 inch.


many thanks to all!

[NS]

Hey, who says my R60 fan never turns on at all. It only turns itself on when my computer is running full load.

I have XP originally installed into my computer and i run Vista using VMware.

*I have read through your private message*

[jkat]

Thanks, NS! Need to work on my reading comprehension, but I see it now in your original post - "fan never on while idling." This is better than my experience with the T60 where the fan would frequently be on while idling.