Reliable source for replacement M10/M24 long fan?

[Orclas]

Executive summary for the get-to-the-point-before-I-fall-asleep-people:
Does anyone know of a reliable source for good quality M10/M24 long fans (FRU 13R2657 and 41W5204 respectively)?

Greetings,

First post here, have used this forum as a source of quality information for a while now, but only as guest.

Short background:
A year ago or so I picked up (as in was given, not stealing...) a T40 which was just gathering dust at work. Being a guy who has leaned home PC purchases towards gaming rigs the last few years (silent/quiet such) it was mostly thought to be used for the odd trip, watching movies on planes/trains, and for some casual surfing in front of the TV.

Then I fell in love. Or more specifically I fell in love again, connecting back to that good old feeling of "what a great piece of equipment" and "why is there not a trackpoint on all keyboards" which I had when working on a Thinkpad daily some 10 years ago.

One thing bothered me though - system noise. I was used to my gaming rig being virtually inaudible at user distance, the T40 did however produce quite a bit of humming and whirring, with particularly the HD annoying me since it was always producing noise.

Tinkering
So I got into tinker mode, closed my eyes to any thoughts in the direction of "why spend money on an eight year old computer" and bought a Kingspec PATA SSD. First experience was disheartening, but after having found Flashfire (thanks to folks on this forum of course), my love affair with the T40 is now serious stuff

I still find that the fan goes on more often than I want though, also on low power settings and when using tpfancontrol. One part remedy seems to be replacing my original short fan with a long fan, M10 or M24 (of which at least some claim the M10 to be the quieter), so here I am in tinker mode part II.

Seeing that most fans available from ebay, or other sources, has a strong smell of new and not-quite-original, and knowing that a heatpipe is a bit more than just a piece of copper, I wonder if anyone here can recommend a reliable source for an as-good-as original M10 or M24 fan?

[Johan]

Welcome to the Forum!

As to your new love affair it's nice to hear that you seem to have taken the well-known ThinkPad-path: "Once you go black, you never go back!"

With respect to quieting down your ThinkPad, installing a SSD is of course one thing which will help, but another hint is to try further reduce system power dissipatoin which will obviously let the fan go "on" less often. To reduce system heat dissipation, I'd like to point your attention to the thread NHC 2 is out! - you may perhaps get a quick start by e.g. reading from this post. You may also try underclock the GPU; search this forum for e.g. "ATI Tool"... you'll find it here. Many threads on this forum are discussing NHC and optimal setting of the various parameters; see e.g. T42 howto Fan Control in NHC, POWERPLAY AC plugged, Cat 6.11,

A new "long M10" fan is another good thing to get (it's a very low noise fan, take my word!), and I'd suggest to simly buy a new one directly from IBM Spare parts/Sweden - according to System service parts - ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p the part you'll need is FRU=41W5204 which is available from stock. Installation instructions? See e.g. T42p fan long m10 installation : pink sheet or not...? and/or the links in this post.

Good luck!

Johan

[Orclas]

A new "long M10" fan is another good thing to get (it's a very low noise fan, take my word!), and I'd suggest to simly buy a new one directly from IBM Spare parts/Sweden.

Wow! SEK520/€55 with shipping is in a way a tad much money for such an old computer, but on the other hand I'm positively surprised about the price. From experience with other PC manufacturers I expected it to cost at least twice that, but I guess IBM has had another approach to service and replacement parts than some others

I already use the ATI Tool for underclocking the GPU, but thanks for pointing out NHC, will dig into that when I have enough spare time to go through the finding-the-right-parameter process. I have also, by the way, turned of peripheral ports that I dont use, as well as setting WLAN-adapter to low-power mode (hoping to lower power usage and heat a tad).

Johan, I have already seen and read some of your other well structured and friendly posts, thanks for taking your time to guide me on this one.

Mange tak!

[Orclas]

Oh, right, in case you happen to know right off the bat: my T40 has the ATI 7500 GPU, will I have to deal with any distance between GPU and heatpipe issue or does it fit snugly as is?

[ajkula66]

It will not fit snugly in most cases.

I would advise against using the long fan on ATi 7500, especially on an old T40. Changing the cooling properties on a 7-8 old unit is not the route I'd take.

If the machine runs well, leave it as-is. Undervolt the CPU, or simply get a PM715/725/735 Dothan - all of them run cooler than the original Banias one, while offering better performance, and shouldn't cost you more than $10.

My $0.02 only...

Good luck.

[Orclas]

Thanks ajkula, interesting two pennies

Since I like understanding and learning about stuff (particularly about useless things with little practical value if you ask my girlfriend): Care to elaborate on the "dont change the cooling properties" part?

Dothan suggestion is a very interesting idea and yes indeed, looks like I can get one from Ebay for €8-10 ($12-15) including shipping.

[ajkula66]

To answer your question in a very simplistic manner:

The machine in question has been working properly for the past 7-8 years. Being a T40, there's a good chance that it contains pre-RoHS solder (leaded). If there's nothing wrong with the system - which appears to be the case - changing the temperature range may affect the RGB solder joints adversely. In other words, leave the sleeping dogs alone...

This whole scenario may sound like a stretch, but I wouldn't do it on any of my ThinkPads.

Once again, my opinion only.

Good luck.

[Orclas]

Which is what I asked for and I definitely hear you. "If it aint broken don't fix it" is often a very sound rule of thumb, which I have broken and been made to regret more than once

Am I right in my assumption that it's primarily changing the temperature difference within for example the GPU itself (core vs heatpipe interface so to say) that is the actual danger?

[ajkula66]

Yes.

As well as the airflow condition that the machine is "used to", so to say...

[Orclas]

A PM715 Dothan is ordered and should arrive today or tomorrow, thanks for the tip ajkula , and I installed NHC on the machine yesterday, thanks Johan .

Didn't have the time to fiddle around with it much, but can happily conclude that there were no errors, readings seem to work, fan control seems to work, I can scrap ATI Tool for GPU downclocking and all seems generally stable (which is a thing never to be taken for granted...).

One question does arise with regards to NHC and changing to a Dothan CPU: I know and understand pretty much nothing at all with regards to how NHC and ACPI works, even after having browsed through the .cs file, but obviously the settings are somehow machine specific since the first thing you need to do is to tap in your machine number in the .xml file. Are those specifics only relating to temperature sensors and fan control (which will not be changed), or is the actual CPU involved somewhere? Further to that, is there not actually some built in sensor reporting CPU temperature (built into CPU I mean)?

I would hate to have installed a new CPU and only end up with NHC acting up...

[Orclas]

After a weekend's use, I can now answer my own question with a short "no problem".

I may add that dang!, NHC is a sweet utility. I don't quite understand how I managed to overlook it the first time around, when I found ATI tool for GPU downclocking and TPFancontrol for the fan. Maybe I did find it and thought it to be too techy for me...

My T40 is now dead silent and all the features of NHC has so far worked flawlessly (undervolting CPU, dynamic CPU, downclocking GPU as well as fan control). It's cooler than ever and normal use (in my case mostly surfing the web) just about never triggers the fan, with the exception of longer visits to youtube. Having installed the Dothan probably helped a bit too and any remaining thoughts I had about replacing the, slightly noisy, fan/fan assembly is now definitely gone since the fan basically never runs.

Johan and Ajkula, thanks again