T61 nVidia thinkpads being repaired N/C [until March 2011]

[BitEngineer]

Well, much to my disappointment, I opened up my T61 to upgrade the memory to 8GB (Mushkin, snagged for $41 shipped), and saw the part number sticker for the motherboard... it's 42W7649/42W3809. The manufacture date is 711. So looks like I not only got a Meron board but it's a 2007 board. I guess those IBM parts lists can't be trusted. The label however looks like it's been pulled up and re-applied. The serial number is 11S42X6838ZVF1A67BL28W.

Is the thermal sensing shortfall the only difference between the Meron and Penryn boards?

I've installed RightMark CPU Clock Utility; it's showing SuperLFM and IDA options available.

[TuuS]

Your board was probably replaced, there is no way that board would have been originally shipped in a laptop built in mid 2008, as there were no new merom boards then.

The primary difference in the board is the thermal sensors for penryn cpu chips. There may be some minor differences, but nothing of consequence.

[Virgi44]

Hello Guys,

My T61p (2008/03, 8891-CTO, 14.1 4/3, 128MB Quattro FX570) does not start.
It gives 1 long and 2 short beeps, blank display. I removed HDD and DVD, also try replacing the RAM from other TP, but still dead.
Should it be the famous Nvidia GPU problem?

I did not have any problem before (blank and freezing screens, BSOD’s, pixilation)
Thanks in advance.

[RealBlackStuff]

Join the club!
Yet another dead nVidia board...

[Bánh mì]

The "Z" is the power light.

If you're machine turns on, and remains on, but the screen is totally dead and POST never proceeds further, then you very likely have that GPU issue (that is the problem that my T61p) had. Note that I did not have the beeps, and in some cases when the GPU fails you won't get beeps.

If you want, you could buy a PCIex or Parallel port POST card. Then you can see do some basic investigation such as checking if the CPU is alive and if so, where the BIOS initialisation is stopping. When I used this on my machine, I could see where it was happening (GPU related).

When Lenovo replaced my motherboard there was no new part number! It is a mistake to assume that "fixed" chips have a different part number. The only thing that might matter is the date code of the GPU.

Take a look at this picture of my fixed motherboard from Lenovo:

http://members.optusnet.com.au/rossv1/nVidia_T61p.jpg

The part number is the same that I used to have in my broken board but the date code is very recent (2011).

Do you have any photos on how exactly to view this? Want to check my T61. Is this under the heat sink and requires removal of the heat sink? Scared to mess with that if that is the case.

[TuuS]

Do you have any photos on how exactly to view this? Want to check my T61. Is this under the heat sink and requires removal of the heat sink? Scared to mess with that if that is the case.

Yes, it's under the heatsink, you need to remove it and remove the thermal paste from the chip and reapply new paste when reassembling. Here is the procedure...

remove palmrest (4 screws, one cable)
remove keyboard (1 screw, one cable)
remove keyboard bezel (several screws, varies depending on the model)
remove cpu screws (4)
remove gpu retainer bracket/s
remove heatsink assembly (carefully), making sure not to allow gpu heatpipe to bend

Clean cpu and gpu and heatsink of thermal paste and prep surface with medical grade alcohol (no dyes or oils, just alcohol)
Apply good thermal paste (recommend Arctic Silver #5 brand) onto CPU and GPU, use enough so it "flows" to fill all the airgap, but with as little overspread as possible.
Reassemble and monitor temps of cpu and gpu compared to readings prior to the work being done. Any raise in temps after this work will indicate a poor fitting of the heatsink, or improper application of thermal paste.

note: when applied properly, the arctic silver #5 will generally result in a machine running a few degrees cooler then before the work began assuming you had the factory paste which is ceramic based. Arctic Silver blend number 5 is made from 99.9% pure silver particles where the ceramic blend is basically ground up dinner plates. A small tube of AS5 cost about $7 including shipping from amazon.com and is enough to do several laptops, or you can get a large tube for less then $30 that will do about 40-50 laptops (more or less).

Regarding the dates on the chip, any date after 08/29 should be treated as suspect, if it didn't come from Lenovo then it's probably an old chip that has been re-etched with new numbers. Asian part stripping factories have been doing this and have flooded the markets with these fake chips and although nVidia does produce new chips in very small quantities, they do so ONLY for oem customers and only as needed. Since they don't have any factories currently tooled to produce these chips, they need to be made one at a time and at a great loss, so you can't just buy one from them and pretty much all 3rd party refurb boards have the fake chips on them.

[crashnburn]

So my NVS 140M had issues sometime in 2013 and I let the machine rest in cold. Then in 2014 it started working and then was gone again.

I will be connecting with some BGA reball/ reflow folks for some other work.. Do you think doing a reball/ reflow might be better?

Do you think changing the CHIP / possible to find a replacement GPU chip might be possible?

[RealBlackStuff]

Reballing an nVidia chip is useless and a waste of money.
The problem lies INSIDE the chip, not in its connection to the motherboard.
Virtually all "replacement" chips are Chinese fakes, stay away.
Either find a new motherboard (from e.g. forum member TuuS) or buy another laptop.
'Nuff said, as this subject has been discussed up the gazoo...

[Amigaman]

Regarding the dates on the chip, any date after 08/29 should be treated as suspect, if it didn't come from Lenovo then it's probably an old chip that has been re-etched with new numbers.

No argument with that, although some genuine ones do exist (see http://members.optusnet.com.au/rossv1/nVidia_T61p.jpg)

This is my own T61p after it was repaired by Lenovo (IBM service was still doing repairs here at the time). I was told by a person close to Lenovo that NVidia did provide a number of re-worked chips directly to Lenovo which have a newer date code.

I should mention that after two years the device failed again, but the failure was different (had the BIOS beeps to indicate video failure). My machine was running very hot prior to the failure and it had performed a thermal shutdown a couple of times. I re-flowed the GPU with a re-flow machine from work, replaced my fan/heatsink with a new one, applied AS5, operate it with the lid open (it sits in a dock most of the time) and it has worked fine since then (fingers crossed).

[crashnburn]

Thanks for the interesting insights. I figured once its fixed I could donate it somewhere in some time.

[jcvjcvjcvjcv]

Regarding the dates on the chip, any date after 08/29 should be treated as suspect, if it didn't come from Lenovo then it's probably an old chip that has been re-etched with new numbers.

No argument with that, although some genuine ones do exist (see http://members.optusnet.com.au/rossv1/nVidia_T61p.jpg)

This is my own T61p after it was repaired by Lenovo (IBM service was still doing repairs here at the time). I was told by a person close to Lenovo that NVidia did provide a number of re-worked chips directly to Lenovo which have a newer date code.

I should mention that after two years the device failed again, but the failure was different (had the BIOS beeps to indicate video failure). My machine was running very hot prior to the failure and it had performed a thermal shutdown a couple of times. I re-flowed the GPU with a re-flow machine from work, replaced my fan/heatsink with a new one, applied AS5, operate it with the lid open (it sits in a dock most of the time) and it has worked fine since then (fingers crossed).

Interesting. Mine failed too after official Lenovo repair. At least the Intel GMA mobo dropped in price by 60% by that time..

[crashnburn]

Reballing an nVidia chip is useless and a waste of money.
The problem lies INSIDE the chip, not in its connection to the motherboard.
Virtually all "replacement" chips are Chinese fakes, stay away.
Either find a new motherboard (from e.g. forum member TuuS) or buy another laptop.
'Nuff said, as this subject has been discussed up the gazoo...

I bet RBS that you are right. I am wondering if the following information has been observed or shared here so far?

A - My T61 w NVS 140M goes poof, but when I let it rest for a long period of time (a month or so) it comes back up for a month or so. If something goes bust internally that should not happen.

This is what is really guilty?

1. Binder (without lead)
2. Nvidia chipset
3. Soldering points on the board
4. Cooling

If the chip is to blame if you can replace the 570M chip to another? which works with the T61p motherboard?

B - I know I asked before but what if its merely a Reflow/ Cooling fix? Did anyone try to Reflow/ Reball this one?

I have not seen a post mentioning A behavior or B posted online.

If someone did, I cant seem to find any post/ link that says so. Please point me to those.