dilemma: t41p fan replaced; now shuts down when cpu is taxed

[ohnchoe]

machine in question - t41p, 1.7mhz, 512mb, ati fire gl 128mb...

A few weeks ago, some mysterious goblin of a background process caused my fan to run overnight / through the day and I came home to the smell of burning plastic, and a fan failure.

I replaced the fan (from ebay) and it works fine for the most part. However, if i run any programs that push the processor's capacity for an extended period of time (and by extended i mean more than a minute), the fan begins to whir, and then the machine shuts down. I do a lot of photo post processing, and even pulling up the RAW file in photoshop seems to tax the processor, let alone doing anything to the file...

My question is - has anyone else had similar experiences after replacing the fan? has my processor been irreparably damaged? do i now have an excuse to buy a new machine or should i just get a new processor?

any input is helpful =)

[skitty4gzus]

best thing you can do is hold your horses and dont do anything drastic. There are some awesome mods here that are crazy smart especially folks like ChristopherWolf. Just dont do anything crazy and attempt to "fix" it yourself unless you know EXACTLY what your doing. They will get to you probably tonight!

[tfflivemb2]

When you replaced the fan, did you replace the thermal compound with Arctic Silver 5, or the like?

It sounds like the overheating could be cured with just a little AC5.

[ohnchoe]

I used the thermal compound included in the package sent by the ebayer.

Where could I procure some of the Arctic Silver compound? is there a significant difference among thermal compounds?


edit: found arctic silver. still worried about any possible damage to cpu during the initial overheat. can anyone speak to this?

[christopher_wolf]

edit: found arctic silver. still worried about any possible damage to cpu during the initial overheat. can anyone speak to this?

I am pretty sure there is no damage to the CPU. Both the OS and the hardware on the CPU itself will shutdown at the first sign of an overheat. So the CPU shut itself down to prevent any damage, this usually occurs in the high 90's to 100 celsius temperature range. Before that, however, it will try to reduce its heat output by clocking/throttling down even under load. I have seen systems running Pentiums where, once the heatsink is pulled, the CPU will throttle down, or simply shutdown due to heat...but no damage will be affected upon the CPU itself as it has inbuilt preventive mechanisms to counter the damage before it even occurs. Much like HDAPS.

[ohnchoe]

Thanks for the input. will try with the arctic silver.

[agarza]

Be sure to completely remove the remnants of the old thermal compound on the CPU/Heatsink

Refer to this guide:
thinkpad and silver 5...........(56K be aware)

Use high purity isopropyl alcohol and use coffee filters.

You're good to go.

[ohnchoe]

thanks much for the tutorial. arctic silver should be here in a day or two.

[ohnchoe]

artic silver applied. fan doesn't even seem to start up when processing raws. all's back to how it was before the fan blew. thanks guys