T60 dies with BSD and very hot left-rear corner.

[John H]

After watching a little HDTV (with Volar USB stick ATSC receiver), for maybe an hour, the T60 dies with a BSD "IO check", and I have to pull the AC cord as well as the battery to shut it off. It's stinging hot at the left rear corner.

Do I have a fan plugged with dust, or something? I never have heard noticeable fan noise in the 4-5 years I've had this T60.

[Harryc]

Run tpfancontrol in BIOS mode and tell us how hot the GPU and CPU get while doing the same activity;

http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html

[wild_bill]

is your fan running? - if it is, then you almost surely have a dust-encrusted fan & heatsink (peer into the coils with a strong flashlight or headlamp from the vent areas on each side of the left corner (two venting areas) with the case intact.

you need a vacuum with a hose and a new, unused paint brush for helping to loosen the dust, I recommend a 2" trim paint brush. watch the online videos about disassembling your thinkpad, you might even get away with removing scarcely more than the keyboard if you are lucky.

if you are adventurous, remove heatsink and heatpipe, clean, and remove thermal pad/paste and reinstall with arctic silver 5 - I slightly bent my heatpipe carefully and inserted a dime under GPU heatsink (a dime is nearly all copper, a penny has very little copper)