Heat Issue on my T61 Solved

[Fingaluna]

Hi All,

My T61 seemed to frequently run hot. Idle at ~65C and higher when doing any work. Much higher when gaming (no surprise there...). When I played CIV4, I needed to use FanControl to keep the fan running steady and use Rightmark to undervolt the CPU. Still, it would usually run at 90 - 95C. Without rightmark and FanControl, it would get up to 100C and shutdown, usually in about 20 to 30 minutes. Also, the machine always ran hotter in the docking station than on it's own...

Well, I figured that it was just the way the machine was designed, so I put up with it.

Then the fan started to rattle a little bit, so I called Lenovo for service. They sent an IBM tech out to work on my notebook, and when he removed the heatsink, fan, heatpipe combo thing, we noticed that the CPU only had heat transfer compound on about 40% of the surface. Not good. So, he installed a new cooling assembly, making sure to get a good even layer of heat transfer compound on the CPU.

Now my machine runs a little cooler at idle, ~53 - 55C, but there is a real difference when I am working. Instead of the fan running all the time, it just runs for short bursts and manages to keep the system at reasonable temp. Now, when I play CIV4, I can now run at Max Performance without using Rightmark or FanControl and the CPU only gets to ~75 - 80C. Nice. Downside is that I can play for hours. And hours.

So... Your mileage may vary, but in my case, the heat culprit was a poor coating of heat transfer compound...

Cheers,
Matt

[yak]

The reason of this is the automatic process of applying of the compound in the factory. This may be error prone.