Overheating Issue (T60)

[Prosercunus]

I have a 14.1" T60 ThinkPad. I was watching an HD video earlier and my laptop shut off... no doubt I downloaded a program and my temps were insane 90C+ before shutdown.

Ok, so my question mainly is, how do I tell if the fan is working or not? I cannot really hear anything and the two vents (side and back) I can't really tell if it is blowing out. My BIOS does not show any sort of fans or fan options... I downloaded speedfan, no fan shown, I downloaded everest, no fan, speccy program, no fan.

Is the fan dead inside? I can't really say for sure. I can replace it if need be, just wondering how I could determine that or is the fact no software programs are showing an RPM speed pretty much confirms it or if I can just put some new thermal paste and call it a day.

I should note I did upgrade the T60 with new RAM (modules are different brands and timings) and a new 500GB HDD i had lying around. No idea if that is the problem though since I did not monitor temps pre upgrade since I bought it used and upgraded it almost instantly.

Thanks for any help.

[rumbero]

Is the fan dead inside?

I would open up the machine and clean the fan from dust. Your questions make me believe that this has never been done since the machine is in your possession.

Just make sure to block the fan wheel from spinning with a tooth pick or similar before blowing it out with some canned air or air pump. If the fan wheel is not prevented from spinnning it would create high currencies which might damage some electronic circuits on the mainboard.

[Prosercunus]

Alright, will do. I have to go get some canned air anyway. Is it not strange that no software program detects the fan?

I should also note. I just brought my ThinkPad into a very quiet room and put my ear right next to the vents. I do hear a fan, but it is extremely faint. Temps idle in the 60-70C range which is pretty awful.

[Prosercunus]

I took the T60 apart... took off the heatsink, applied some thermal paste on the CPU, not the chipset or GPU because it seems they have thermal pads. I cleaned out the fan.

I put everything back together, and it seems my temps are the same. Motherboard and CPU temps are high as heck still. I think the fan may be faulty or I need to wait until the thermal paste sets, although I don't know why the motherboard temp would be so high unless the fan is super idle for some reason.

[ajkula66]

What's the 7-character model number of your T60, should be something like 2007-66U (not necessarily these characters, but in that format) located on the sticker that also shows the serial (don't post that) and the production date. It's located on the bottom of the machine...

[rumbero]

I think the fan may be faulty or I need to wait until the thermal paste sets, although I don't know why the motherboard temp would be so high unless the fan is super idle for some reason.

Did you try to turn on the machine for testing purposes before putting back the keyboard? It might be a good idea to check if the fan wheel is actually moving.

Other than that, i'd recommend buying a new fan and replace the old one. You might consider a new T61 fan instead of an original T60 one. They are *much* more silent and fully compatible. You don't need to purchase the complete fan assembly, but just the fan unit. Search eBay for FRU 42W2821 and don't buy the cheapest chinese stuff, but try to get an original Lenovo part.

[J888www]

This may or may not work for you, but it helped with lowering the temperature of my T60p with a FireGL V5200.

Cleaned the fan, pulled out and oiled the fan spindle with a drop of machine oil (sewing machine oil will be fine). If your thermal compound needs to be set, maybe you should use another product, I used Shin-Etsu X23-7783D Thermal Compound (TIM).
I removed all thermal material from the Thinkpad, even the Chipset and GPU. Used a Copper Shim (2mm x 2mm x 0.8mm) on the Chipset die (thermal paste on both sides of the Copper Shim). The CPU and GPU were applied with a small rice grain of thermal paste then the whole Thermal Transfer Unit was reassembled with slight pressure on the areas where thermal paste were applied to help spread the TIM.

I found the temperature of the expelled air to be significantly hotter, which is good as this mean the heat was transferred out of the system. Present idle temperature fluctuates between 43-45.

It took three attempted applications to get it just right, maybe the previous attempts had too much TIM or bubbles/gaps.

[Rossano]

J888www: Thank you for valuable advice. But only for assurance:

Have you completely removed thermal pad from heatsink, even from GPU part WITHOUT placing here a copper shim? I'm not sure, if only a thermal paste helps lowering GPU temperature, because especially the GPU is getting extremely hot (talking about ATI-FireGL). What about keeping thermal pad on GPU-heatsink-part and at the same time using a thermal paste on the GPU die? I still think, that thermal pad has its specific purpose...