The quest for low temperatures: T410

[Navck]

Disclaimer: Don't do this unless you know what you're doing! Heck, don't do this unless you're willing to void your warranty if you screw up.

A while back the bearings in the fan for my T43 were going out so I had an onsite guy come over while the warranty was still there to replace the fan. Right, well I happened to intercept him before he applied the thermal compound on and gave him my personal tube of Arctic Silver 5 (No I do not endorse this thermal compound specifically, use whatever you personally like.) instead of the generic white stuff. Lo and behold, combined with undervolting my T43 could idle at 36C and the fan wasn't as obnoxious.

Two and a half years later, 75C does not sound like a fun temperature for my i7-620m to be at when fully loaded... So with the help of the hardware maintance manuals and my own background...
Hey, did someone say idling at 40C with the fan turned off? Much better, I only reach 65C after encoding a few files and the i7-620m cools off faster. I don't want to hit 80C in sustained multithreaded loading again...

Warning, images exceeding 50kb but less than 200kb individually! Click at your own risk:
FRUs, barcodes and other indentifiers removed because I don't want my warranty to get vaporized.
http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/7799/imag0131n.jpg
Eeww, too much thermal compound. Remember when Apple had issues with globs of thermal compound? (Not my image: http://paulstamatiou.com/wp-content/upl ... _21_06.jpg ) Yeah. Lenovo had some pretty decent gray colored stuff on... Except for the fact it balled/dried out. Now the original stuff was pretty good, but I'm one of those crazy types who can't deal with my i7-920 (My desktop) idling at more than 40C. (32C right now)
http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/6937/imag0135n.jpg
Much better. Lenovo seems to have opted to have the i7-620m + Northbridge as well as the NVS3100m "mystery meat" packaged in that weird black plastic that they placed in other places of the T410, including the motherboard. Short protection?
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/7852/imag0136n.jpg
For comparison, my thermal compound is the blob in the middle, the corner is the original stuff with rubbing alcohol. Dunno who Lenovo sourced this from but it seems to of had decent properties except for "using too much" and "funky gumming/balling up when wiped" property.
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/1254/imag0137n.jpg
NVS3100m/Quadro FX880m/GT218/Mystery Meat! Also cleaned up. I'm surprised Lenovo did not use a thermal pad on this. My life became infintely easier right there. (No having to source a better thermal pad.)
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/7803/imag0139n.jpg
Heatsink-Fan assembly for T410 with discrete graphics. Toshiba makes the fan.
http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/8402/imag0140n.jpg
I did not immedately reassemble my machine after I applied a few blots on, instead I put the heatsink back on and torqued the screws to the specifications in the HMM and waited for 15 minutes. After that I removed the heatsink again to check if the compound spread to the very corners. It didn't so I added a few more dots to the edges so that they'll be covered. Now in a desktop processor you wouldn't do this because the retention pressure on the heatsink is much higher. (I mean we're only talking about 1 newton meter for the screw torque specs. Desktops have people hamfisting screw mounted heatsinks on, or they use spring mounted things that will make your thumb suffer.)

Lessons learned:
1. Screws will come back and... Metaphorically, screw you over.
You so do not want a screw falling into the chassis of your T410. Find a piece of microfiber or a plastic bin and seperate your screws. Have a ruler or some sort of measuring insturment on hand, MILIMETERS! If you screw up (Pardon the pun) and lose track of which screw goes where, the HMM lists which screw goes where and you just have to measure them to check if you got the right one.
2. This thing is a Thinkpad, period. Don't believe any of the silly rumors people spread.
I had the chance to stare at the guts of my T410. I didn't have to remove 80 screws like other machines to get access to this thing. Heck I didn't even have to remove the LCD assembly to remove the heatsink like the HMM implied. Nor did I have to remove the keyboard bezel fully. The bezel snaps into place and is retained by several screws for strength. The screws are few and are used only in vital places, not excessively. The bezel plastic is amazing in quality. There are all sorts of metal plates that act as spring loaded clips to prevent the LCD connectors from falling out. I can't even begin on how awesome the T410 is from an engineering viewpoint or an logistical-maintaince viewpoint or from many other viewpoints.
3. HMM is awesome. If you happen to try this, don't sue me or blame me, but if anything goes wrong, go look at the HMM to see what goes where and which screws are needed.
Dell, HP, Apple, etc. I don't see them giving little pieces of info on how to take their laptops apart.
4. TORQUE SPECS TORQUE SPECS TORQUE SPECS
DO NOT MESS WITH THE SCREWS! They are very important for your T410, too little torque means you don't have them tightened properly, they may pop out or provide inadequate structural support. Too much torque means you're stressing that part excessively, you can crush your processor, GPU and Northbridge as well as crack parts of your bezel, chassis or anything else! DO NOT SCREW UP ON THIS. If you don't know how to torque the screws down, get a torque driver that is calibrated and follow the specs. If you do know how to torque screws down and haven't stripped any threads or killed anything... Best of luck if you don't have a torque driver.

Really important notes for anyone trying this:
You do not have to remove the LCD assembly, the bezel/palmrest assembly should not be removed with force.
The LCD assembly only needs you to lift it slightly with the cables connected so you can pull the heatsink out. You only need to remove the left speaker. Remove the screws for the LCD assembly on both hinges, lift the left side slightly and hold it there so you can wiggle the heatsink off lightly. Place the LCD assembly down and tighten one screw on each hinge. I recommend the top screw if you removed the bezel, the bottom screw if you haven't removed the bezel. This is so your hinges don't pop off the chassis when you're cleaning the heatsink.
The bezel is held in place with clips after you remove the screws. Use your FINGER NAILS or those funky plastic tabs they use to open phones up to slowly wedge it up. Slip the fingernail of your thumb in, push inwards and upwards lightly on the edges. The front needs to be pulled outwards slightly while being lifted. There is ONE MORE tab hidden roughly between the area below the arrow keys and above the Thinkpad logo. You have to be very careful and slow on that last tab. You won't even notice that it is there until you notice the palmrest does not fully disengage.
There are tabs on the front of the bezel as well, you have to push those down when you reassemble your T410.

[Harryc]

Navck, thanks for the write-up, I am sure it will come in handy for my own T410 and others as well. Looking at your Pics I have learned that either you are a woman, or you are a dude with very effeminate hands and long finger nails. If you are a woman, I am fascinated by your technical prowess on Thinkpads. We don't see too many females here (with some notable exceptions - .e.g. Emeraldgirl08 and a few others) with your nerve or skill to tear open a laptop and to have at it. Do you have a repair background?

[zhenya]

Hey Navck - I too am particular about the temperature my Thinkpad runs at. I have performed similar steps as yourself on my z61t. I wonder if you have ever tried under-volting your processor? This is the trick that I have been using for years to reduce temperatures for longevity, and, even more importantly, to reduce my fan speed. I typically find that I am able to under-volt to a point where the computer is completely stable while reducing temperatures 10-20C, allowing me to have the fan off for all but the most processor intensive activities.

[Navck]

Harryc, I'm a male and I keep my nails slightly long for several, but strange reasons. One of the reasons (This will sound strange...) is that I actually use them to grab/pull screws out that fall into computer cases on the corners. No repair background, I just work on my own computers and anything else that people bring to me when they have a problem.

Zhenya, I don't think there is an utility to underclock or undervolt Arrandale yet. Nor is there anything to underclock the NVS3100m/Quadro FX880m/"Mystery Meat".

[Navck]

One step closer to 9 hour sustained battery life and 41C *load* temperatures with fan running at the lowest setting or off:
NVIDIA system tools
Install only the "performance" component
There should should be a new category called Performance, go to Device Settings after accepting the disclaimer and set your clocks to the lowest (151-202-367, Core-Mem-Shader). While this is still higher than the lowest clockspeeds, this forces the 3D Applications mode for the Powermizer to treat this as the clockspeeds as long as the NVIDIA control panel is up. However this means the NVS3100m will be making "hops" between the very low (135-270-135) idle clocks to the 2D desktop setting (405-810-405) when it decides it doesn't need to be running at full throttle.

[bradsh]

won't replacing the thermal paste void the warranty, even if it does result in lower temps? I'm unclear on how lenient the lenovo warranty is.

you seem to indicate that they do not use a thermal pad on the nvidia chip -- does this mean thermal paste is used on both heatsink attachments STOCK, and therefore there is no gap between the gpu heatsink and the gpu itself?

[Navck]

Lenovo's warranty is so lax that, as far as I can tell, if you're extremely competent, strip your machine down to the frame and planar and rebuild it they wouldn't care if everything was replaced back in the proper manner. I see no warranty stickers that indicate the voiding of the warranty if the machine were opened or "seal broken" so to say. (You will find those in other machines... Sometimes on the RAM slot)

And no more thermal pad. It uses a small spring loading clip as you can see in my Ultra T410 guide photos of the T410 stripped. Great move on Lenovo's end.

[bradsh]

Maybe I'm missing it in your original post, but what are the gains at idle, and the gains at full load?

[Navck]

An example from earlier winter weather:
42C vs 36C
70C vs 58C

Since I don't have the old thermal paste anymore and I've kept the heatsink very clean... I wouldn't be able to tell you what the gains are in this weather.

[irus]

very cool.