W520: Cool system!

[davidhbrown]

I just noticed something surprising-to-me about the W520. It's blowing cool air out the exhaust... just under 28C at about 0% CPU usage (mostly just been installing software; do have IE9 open). Room temp is around 21C-22C.

Maybe this is no surprise to anyone with a more recent machine, but my T61p's exhaust is about 45C-50C right now at just 1%-15% CPU usage... when I'm rendering video, it can get to around 90C.

When running the FutureMark 3D benchmark, I can get the W520 exhaust temp up to T61p levels. (Says the score is P1430 3DMarks; I think the "P" means provisional or something... it complained about an unapproved driver. Oh, and it does say that was the Intel graphics. Hmm. Something for another thread.)

Anyway, some people have been wondering whether Lenovo figured out the cooling on this system. Initial impression sure suggests they did!

[commander]

and what are the RPM of fan when idle and load? How noisy is when the fan is on? Thanks

[davidhbrown]

Good question; not entirely sure how to figure that out. TPFanControl 0.62 is reporting only one CPU temperature so I'm not sure I trust it (there should be 4 temps for the 4 cores, plus GPU, battery, ??), but at idle in BIOS mode, it's reporting a fan speed of a bit over 2700 RPM (docked). When I set it to manual fan speed 7, it reports just under 4000RPM.

My SPL meter doesn't register below 60dB. I can hear the fan in a quiet room, but at idle it's quieter than typing on a keyboard. At full speed, it's definitely noticeable, but not objectionable. In "Smart" mode, it drops it to Fan 0, 1800 RPM (less?) and I'm not sure I can distinguish it from the hard drive. Oh, okay... now it's saying 0 RPM which would certainly be hard to hear. Manual speed 1 is about 2050 RPM and still close to silent.

SpeedFan reports lots of temps, but no fan speeds. (Odd, considering its name. I did reboot.)

I tried to make a recording of the full-speed fan, but the noise canceling on the internal microphone is too good. Even after normalizing the file (the loudest signal is me speaking quietly), the fan is imperceptible and I have to turn the volume way up to hear my typing.

[commander]

Thanks for info. So it can be said that W520 is noticeably more silent than your T61 right?

[davidhbrown]

Regarding acoustic comparisons to the T61p, I'm not sure about total noise. It probably depends on your use of the system. My initial thought with this thread had more to do with the system cooling as evidenced by the exhaust air temperature.

Doing just casual web browsing and software installations on the W520, TPFC.62 was reporting a temperature (presumably some average CPU temp) of 38C and fan speed around 2700RPM -- pretty darned quiet. Doing the same sort of thing here on the T61p, I've got a CPU temp of 70C and the fan is running slightly louder at 3290RPM.

If I use TPFC.62 to set the speed of each fan to "7" (max), the T61p gets only to about 3350RPM which still isn't too loud. Doing the same on the W520 goes to 4000RPM and that's definitely more noticeable acoustically. I expect that when I get around to rendering video on the W520 next week it will probably be louder than the T61p. Especially considering the T61p had to shut itself off once or twice Gets very quiet then.

[Volker]

Running some computation on 8 threads for 15 minutes, I get a CPU temperature of 81C and 3351 RPM:

Code: Select all

[user@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM0/temperature 
temperature:             81 C
[user@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan 
status:		enabled
speed:		3351
level:		auto

I can hear the fan, but its still pretty quiet.

[johnt7225]

I have a noob question. I have had my w520 for a week now and the fan is always running.

Is the fan supposed to run all the time, even when the system is idle?

This is my first Lenovo and I don't know what is the norm.

[davidhbrown]

Pretty much, yeah, but it also depends on the power settings.

If you go to the Power Options control panel, edit plan settings, click the advanced settings link, scroll to "Processor power management," open that group, then open the "System cooling policy" group you'll find you have two options: "active" (fan on pretty much all the time; the default for many plans) or "passive" where the CPU will slow down to reduce heat before the fan will come on (the default for some battery/energy-saving plans).

You can find a third-party program called Thinkpad Fan Control that allows you much more control over the cooling fan. It hasn't been updated specifically for the W520 logic board -- when I tried it, it couldn't show more than an single system temp -- but in theory it would allow a more carefully modulated response to temperature than the system BIOS. I'm not sure I'd want to use it unless I knew it could respond to, say, a hot GPU while the CPU was somehow still relatively cool. There are probably better threads on this board for discussing that program.

Edit: There are also some thermal management settings in the BIOS ("Balanced" vs. "Performance" for both battery and A/C), but it looks like they'd just the fan run more (more often and/or faster) -- I'm pretty sure "Balanced" is the default; that's where mine is for both.

[johnt7225]

davidhbrown, thanks for the reply and the education.

[thinkstone]

I am also wondering about the W520 Power Manager settings and fan noise.

When I am on battery, there is almost no fan and the system performance is plenty.
When I am on AC, the fan is running quite a lot, and makes a noise that is more than I like.

Before I started playing with Power Manager settings, it seems there was a time when the fan was still ok when on AC. It looked like it was not on any plan, because the little green dots in advanced view that show you how the system is configured were all empty.
After playing with setting up some power plans, I have not been able to get back the beginning functionality. I can't remove the plans, and I have not been able to find a plan where AC works the way I would like it.
Basically I would like to run on AC the same way it does on battery. But even if the green dots show the same for battery and AC, AC still uses the fan a lot more and louder than battery.

Any ideas?

[davidhbrown]

Any ideas?

I create a plan called "Dave" that works the way I like it, particularly with regards to fan noise. Then I will switch to some other plan like "Maximum Performance" or "Maximum Battery Life" as appropriate for particular situations.

[davidhbrown]

One more place to look: under "Processor power management" check that "Minimum processor state" is reasonably low. I found that some defaults are 100% for "Plugged in" which seems fairly pointless for general work when the computer is spending the vast majority of its time waiting for you to press the next key already. I would imagine that forcing the processor to run full out will make it run hotter.

[thinkstone]

Thank you!

It took me a while to realize that you can set the power plans both through the Lenovo Power Manager that shows up in the Task Bar and through Power Options in Device Control. I only found the Processor Power Management option you talk about in the second place.
Strange...

[thinkstone]

Another question about this:
Have you been able to set up a plan that keeps the fan as quiet on AC as it is on battery?
Even with making sure Processor Power Management has a low minimum setting the fan is still switching on and off periodically (in 10-20 sec intervals), while on battery it is almost constantly off (or so low that I don't hear it).

If so, could you post the settings?

Thanks!

[commander]

you should install TPfancontrol at a first place, to be sure when the fan is ON and when not. Then you can figure this out.

[kb3edk]

Doing some burn-in on my W520 and things are pretty toasty....

My preferred burn-in programs of choice are the various scientific research projects at BOINC in Berkeley - SETI, Milky Way, PrimeGrid, and the like. Since some of the science apps are also compatible with nVidia Fermi GPUs like our Quadro 1000M/2000Ms I can get a good idea what this box runs like at full tilt.

After about 5 minutes of 8 threads running and my GPU maxed out, temps were at 95C on the CPU and about 75C on the Quadro. Fan noise was negligible but the exhaust was HOT.

Then I reinstalled my favorite old program from my T61p... TPFanControl. As davidhbrown mentions it is not optimized for the W520 but at least it kicks the fan into overdrive. TPFanControl immediately spun up the fan to 4500 RPM and the CPU is down to 85C and the Quadro is down to 70C. However there is noticeable fan noise now... sounds like a dentist's drill

So now the $2,000 question... how long do you think I can blast the hell out of my W520 at these temps before either the CPU, GPU, or fan bearing burns up? If the rest of you don't get temps like these I'm thinking I might have to crack the chassis open and re-goop everything. I hear Lenovo is a bit generous with their thermal paste use... this tends to be a "less is more" type substance in my experience.

-Adam

[davidhbrown]

FWIW, I was getting similar temperatures on my T61p to what you're reporting. After cleaning off enough thermal paste that it oozed out onto the ceramic package and applying Silver 7 myself, I was able to loose about 10C. (That was, I think, after the 3rd on-site motherboard replacement for SATA port issues and what turned out to be a bad Turbo Memory module.)

Do you regularly run your machine at that rate?

[kb3edk]

Do you regularly run your machine at that rate?

Hi David,

No I generally don't thrash my W520 too much, I was just doing some "burn in" when the box was brand new to see what its limits were.

But yeah I had it pegged up in the low 90s when running 8 threads of Heavy Duty Science, my 2820QM was Turbo Boosted up to just a shade below 2.7GHz. Very nice results overall aside from the thermals.

I am a little bit torn on doing a teardown/regoop on the W520 later this summer, after all, I did spring for the 3 year warranty. But it might just be worth it down the road in the name of better performance

In any case, to keep me busy for a while I have a fried T61P with the infamous "1 long 2 short beeps" from the nVidia defect that I need to overhaul first (it died earlier this month just 6 weeks after Lenovo stopped doing the repair for free).