x300 fan problem

[volodar]

Hi all,

Just got a brand new x300 last week. It's running xp, and am reasonably satisfied with it - love the weight/durability/form factor/ssd/speakers, am underwhelmed with the screen (I returned a Sony Z), but what I'm really disappointed about is the fan noise -

I came home, booted directly into BIOS, and as I was going through my BIOS settings, (3-4 minutes) the fan kicked in (level 3/5000 rpm) When I booted into XP, the first thing I did was run TPFancontrol, and the processor was already up to 50C! I'm fine with trading speed for a quiet computing experience, so I've lowered the Thinkpad power scheme to "lowest" Maximum CPU speed, "balance all parameters" and enabled "CPU deeper sleep" for battery as well as AC settings. With these settings, "My Computer" tells me that my processor is running at 789 MHz, but even just browsing the web, and with an avg. CPU usage of 10%, the temperature creeps up to 49 and fan kicks up to level 2 at around every 5 minutes! Is this normal?

According to TPFancontrol, it looks like fan level 1 is always on - is this true of everybody's X300? Is there any way I can underclock the processor even more? Is Lenovo developing a BIOS that will set an intermediary RPM of 3500? It seems odd that the speed jumps from 2000 to 5000 RPM (I know others have mentioned this before, but I just wanted to second the motion).

The only other thing I have done is installed an additional 2Gig of RAM. Could that be contributing this much to the heat? According to TPFancontrol, all other temperatures are under 40C. I'm concerned because my 5 year old X41 ran much, much cooler, (between 35-40c when running at slowest settings) and that was without any fan on at all! I'm concerned that the fan on my X300 will be the first thing to go after a few years if it is on 100% of the time. Or is this the norm, being that this is such a thin machine? The crazy thing is that I was able to get the Sony Z running quieter, and that had a 2.6 ghz processor in a machine almost the same size!

Thanks for any comments / ideas!

[mattbiernat]

my x300 fan is always on. usually at the speed of ~1600-1900rpm. it is really quite and I usually don't hear it. i've tried installing tpfancontrol but it seems to be unsupported for x300 because the bios does much better job in keeping the laptop cool. i played several times with different values for the tpfancontrol but whenever i swithced to bios that laptop just stayed cooler at lower fan speeds.

[Thecla]

I don't think it should be that way --- the fan on my X300 is basically inaudible, and I also added 2GB RAM for a total of 4GB.

However, it does seem like this is an issue on some units: maybe something here will be useful:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... +fan+noise

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... ge.id=1908

[volodar]

Thanks for your input thecla and for the links! I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm having the same exact experience as the main poster in those two threads (script). I'm trying to figure out is my fan/temps are normal for all X300s or if the machine is defective - it's within the 30 days, so I would be able to send it back / have more leverage for replacement. Is there any way that you could run a temp monitoring program to check your CPU temp?

When my fan is on level 1 (2000rpm) I can't hear it as well, but when it goes up to level 2 (around 5000 rpm), it is clearly evident. My issue lies with the fact that even when I set my maximum CPU speed to "lowest" in my power manager (CPU running at 789 mhz, according to "general" tab in "my computer", and I'm only running google chrome with 3 tabs (5% cpu usage) it goes up from cold boot to 49C in about 20 minutes, and then the high fan kicks in. When I'm running the processor at normal speed (1.2 ghz), it spins up in less than 10 minutes. When you say that your fan is silent, is it silent at levels 2,3,4,5,and 6?

Thanks again!

[mattbiernat]

2000rpm it silent
5000rpm is loud

[Thecla]

I guess these somewhat subjective questions like noise (or screen colors) are tough to compare without experiencing both computers. I tried out TPFan, and here's what I'd say:

Normal use: cpu temp was around 45-46 C; fan was around 5000-5200RPM. It was audible if I listened carefully for it, or if I put my ear a foot or so from the vent, but I would say my fan is really quiet even at that level.

High cpu usage: after running wprime155 for a while, cpu temp stabilized around 54C, fan around 5700-5800 RPM. Definitely audible, but still not what I'd call loud.

Manual TPFan settings: 1-2 are quiet, 3-4 audible, 6-7 loud.

In every day use, I never notice the fan noise; my subjective description would be that the X300 runs quietly and doesn't produce any excessive heat.

At any rate, it sounds like my cpu temps and fan rpm are similar to yours. Whether or not some fans are noisier than others I don't know.