Any longtime T61p users?

I know that many T61p users, as of late, have been experiencing motherboard failures due to the faulty Nvidia 570m video cards. I recently had mine repaired for a little over 600 dollars, unfortunately. I read an article that was referred to me through a Lenovo forums member, claiming that all the g84 and g86 gpus were defective. In short, I don't want to spend another ridiculous 600+ for a repair, so I am very worried that this computer may give me the same problem.

Can any T61p users, who have owned the computer since mid to late 2007, tell me whether or not they have experienced this problem?

Thanks

Here is the article for reference:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1028703/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

 

Sorry to hear about the repair. If you're still under warranty, the best thing to do would be to extend it. I think it's a bit of a lottery. Some will will never need a repair while others like yours will.

 

I've had my t61p for a bout a year and half. Haven't had any problems with mine as to date

 

Before I spent $600 for a repair I would probably just buy a T500, I'd even go for a refurb from the outlet first instead of dropping that kind of money into an older laptop. I loved my T61p, but had more problems with it than any other thinkpad I've owned. Mostly heat and fan going out, but they just keep recurring.

 

I have that problem with a Compaq HP using the geforce go 6150. All those video cards using that core are defective, but that doesn't mean that every one will fail on you. I have a T61 with the Quadro NVS 140M who's based on the M86 core and after a year is doing good. Temps are in the order of 58*C idle, which is high but if you keep to manage the heat the video card will not fail, or at least I hope so.

 

Mine is a bit older than 2 years and still running. Got some hiss from the board/GPU though (there is a thread on that) and I might ask them to fix that under warranty.

 

What are the symptoms of this issue? I sometimes get weird little red screen corruption spots that go away quickly. The main thing is that every few days, when I leave my laptop turned on unattended, I come back Windows completely crapping itself. Garbled text, tonnes of errors about exe and dll files not being valid, out of memory errors, utorrent saying not enough resources are available to process anything, etc. I have a new laptop on the way, but this T61 is still under extended warranty, and I'd like to have it repaired. I'm just not sure what to tell them to get a proper repair done, since it's is so intermittent.

 

T61 (non P) with the NV 140 card. 2 years + no problems. Seems to run at 136F which is a bit alarming but no problems.

 

I have big problems with heat. My T61 is basically permanently set to the "maximum battery life" profile so the CPU stays throttled down to 800mHz. I'm watching a medium resolution divx video, and the GPU is at 70C (158F), with CPU at 65C (149F). GPU rarely goes much lower than this.

 

Bob, whats your idle temp on the GPU? Im about 53 to 58 maybe 55 as avg. the thing about my T61 is since its been out of the box I have left it on max bat life so maybe never ran the machine through the rigors. Dont play games at all except tried NeedforSpeed once and I think the game stopped but thought nothing of it.

 

If I force the fan to the high mode, I can get it to around 62C. Idle with regular BIOS fan control it's about 66C.

 

what GPU are you using? Is could be that the heat sink needs to be cleaned.

 

Bob, that's too hit. I just went out to the store and came back and the temp reads 58% on mine consitent. AC is on in the room.

 

140M, and I cleaned it thoroughly recently without any impact on temperatures. I think anything more would void my warranty, so I'm going to send it in whenever my T400s shows up. I dread the thought of describing intermittent issues to phone service, though...

 

66C?? holy crap, i bought mine about a couple months ago, it was manufactured in February 2008 on the 19th, it has the same GPU whine one guy was talking about and it changes it's tone when gaming or quiets down but makes a high pitched whine whenever i use a pointing device like the Trackpoint or Touchpad, i find it goes away once the temp in gaming climbs to the low-mid 70's which is a fine temperature to me, mine runs at about 43-46 at idle, using TPfancontrol as my indicator, i always turn the fan to maximum while gaming but even the BIOS turns it up to high, so there would be no difference between human controlled fan and AHCI controlled fan, it peaks at around 72-75 which to me is a cool enough temp for this GPU, it stutters very rarely, i get no corruption, running 195.62 Quadro drivers with no modded .inf, i also can get 20-30FPS playing the Dirt 2 Demo.

 

Over two years here, and no video/MB problems to date. I got a 4 year on-site warranty though, so I'm good for the foreseeable future.

 

I think most of the folks who have problems are gamers. I dont see how one can blow out a video card using the Internet or typing reports in Office.

 

This problem is not one of simply heat or how hot or cool your GPU gets. It more complicated than that. Believe me, I have read a lot of articles on this and owned a T61p till recently. The issue is what the material that Nvidia choose for the GPU. It is the heating and cooling(heat cycling) that a machine gets when it is used and turned off, that causes the GPU to fail. The material is not, for a lack of a better term, pliable enough, so after repeated heating and cooling(from normal use), it cracks and then the GPU fails.

No one knows(at least not the consumer) how widespread this issue is. Nvidia has not come clean on this and did not disclose a full list of effected GPUs. They gave some money and tried/trying to push it under the rug, since a full recall would have sent them the way of the Dodo. As mentioned above, Dell and other companies have been lenient with this matter, but Lenovo not as much(maybe they were not reimbursed so well from Nvidia?). Some of the articles I have read have said that anything using the G8x core is effected. This includes the Geforce and Quadro series of cards and both the desktop and laptop cards. Some people go so far as to say that the G7 series and G9 series might be affected as well.

I used my T61p for 1.5 years with no problems, it was a beautiful machine but this problem can sneek up on you and with no notice. One day you will go to turn on your machine and then you discover the problem.

 

basically what firesnake is referring is that the GPU components are manufactuered with incompatible substrates that has different rate of expansion and contraction.... so after several cycles extreme heating and cooling or repeated cycle of small heat flactuations the material either cracks or bonding between the different substrates separates.

 

That's the reason I will not buy any other nVIDIA product ever. ATi will have my money from now on.

 

So true. My NVS 140m failed like that:
T61 was working fine, typing out a report.
Put it into sleep mode to grab some lunch.
Came back, tried to wake my T61 but with only a blank screen on it.

 

But it seems so simple that all they'd need to do was change to a different packaging material, simple as that... how is it that they never corrected the problem? Oh well, i'll be playing GTA 4 on my T61p soon

 

http://www.hplies.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=781

 

Damn, I didn't expect so many replies so quickly . Thank you to everyone who has replied. It's good to know that some people are still having a good experience.

Interesting read, sounds similar to the article I posted.

 

well that is how the computer industry works, if it was ATI, i don't think they would have done much different to what Nvidia have done. Nvidia still gets my pick for Quadro cards, but i would buy either the ATI or Nvidia depending on the price and feature offered.

 

If it's a T61P, it should be still in warranty (which is 3 years). That means you dont have to pay a penny (well, postal charge excluded) to fix the problem as long as it's caused by NV's crappy G8XM GPU. I'd suggest you call local service center before throwing 600 bucks to something you shouldn't pay. Anyway, if I were you, I'd put my T61P to the attic and go for a T500 if they really charge me that much.

 

nvidia, ATI/AMD don't have their own fab train like Intel does, so they contract out their fabrication to various companies like TSMC for fabrication.... and the usual timeline for the full production process takes quite a few months to complete. By the time they picked up the problem, they probably have already started to manufacture the next generation GPU at the contracted fab trains.

To stop production, redesign, retest and remanufacture the old GPU design, would cost lot more than the compensation they paid out, it would also take the design engineers off the task of designing the next generation GPU..... all of which would have meant that ATI would get a chance to release their next generation GPU earlier and take a larger slice of the graphics card market. Not something Nvidia would want...

 

nvda can have whatever they want but they crapped out in terms of reputation and that's hard to get back when they jerk customers they way they did. sames goes for lenovo.

any machine shipped back due to the nv card, the round trip shipping should be borne by lenovo.

 

Nice try, you almost got me

 

I used to know the exact status of my t61p but it was stolen about a year and one half ago by my roomates when I was knocked out. Upon retuning it the system failed and under warranty I had it repaired. For that repair they replaced the mother board so I don't know about it anymore other than it is fully packed and working.
Renee

 

In hindsight, I'm really glad Lenovo screwed up my order for a T61p and I ended up getting a W500 for my troubles. I'd hate to worry about this sort of thing.

Warning signs the vid card is pooping the bed: abnormally high heat or repeated artifacts on screen. Artifacts can included dots, circles, lines, smudges, multi color bands, or bullet holes. Yeah, I've seen a lot of weird screen caps...

If you have to junk your T61 or T61p, take the keyboard off . Either use it with a new T400, T500, or W500 or sell it to someone who wants the T61 keyboard. The T61 style is better than the T/W#00 style keyboard with the perforated back. I don't care if Lenovo added the bracing, I've tried a friends and it still flexes a little.

Oh if you're out of warrenty and really really don't want to give up the T61, try this Hail Mary solution... if you're technically inclined. Baking the motherboard http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=437683

 

Lenovo is currently offering out of warranty, warranty extension. So if your laptop is out of warranty, and you want to get warranty again, you still can. But it does cost slightly more than in warranty extension, but i guess it is worth it, if your laptop has hardware problems that would require 300 to 400 USD to fix (i.e. motherboard change).

 

For affected machines, they should just fix it. So they receive a sum from Nvida then charge customers too. Dell is the only one to take responsibility for the NV issues. That means something.

 

That's exactly what I did At least the desktop G9x isn't affected.

 

My T61p is almost two years old and has been perfect in every way. I haul it to and from work every day and it has traveled with me all over the World. If it craps out tomorrow I will still feel I received my money's worth. I am looking for something a little lighter though.

 

I have no complaints about the structure of the system as a whole, I just hate the faulty G84M chip, and crippled SATA interface.

 

I replaced my t61p with dell xps 16. I think hp envy 15 will be a better upgrade but also more expansive.

 

I seemed to have forgotten they did offer that warrenty extension, but I still believe Lenovo is whitewashing that issue. That said, Think Pads still have the best laptop cooling heat sinks, fans, and vents you can find. The T61 and T61p are better off than the others, but that only means it takes a longer length of time for the heat cycles to add up

 

I didn't say earlier that my T61p is still in good repair, but I am starting to get scared.
Renee

 

Why? Are you seeing similar symptoms like the others?

 

I've owned my t61p for a little over 2 years now, I've had the mainboard fail twice, both times related to the GPU. I'm a gamer and software developer so I do push the machine quite hard and for prolonged periods of time.

Typical temperatures for GPU is 85 degrees celcius and the CPU cores are at around 90 degrees. This is with TPFancontrol running on Windows 7. I use TPFanControl because on Windows 7, I'm not sure why but the fan never kicks into high speed, hence overheating the CPU's which leads to a automatic shutdown.

Number 1 preventative measure you can take is cleaning out the fan assembly with compressed air (the type in a can so you don't contaminate it!). I do this around every 3 months and it drops the amount of time the fan is on at max speed. The first time I did this before using fan control at all, it dropped 10 degrees!

 

I think I'm one of the few people here owning a T61 with Intel graphics, such a shame all those T61/p had that nasty error thanks to nVidia.
I wonder if this rate of failure on the GPU chips was similarly in quantity to the T4x series ATI FireGL (desoldering from the mobo) but fixable reballing it again.

I still think T4x were the pinnacle of design, but of course the lacking of rollcage makes me like my T61 more.

I'd like to get a W500 with a WUXGA screen though, it seems the days of 16:10 panels are coming to an end.

 

It still had a roll cage, just didn't have the honeycomb design idea to reinforce the lid, i can stand on my T43 (well, my mum's now).

 

I've had a T61p for a over 2 years now. No problems so far, fingers crossed.

 

I had it for about a year and a half.

First the HDD goes out in about 6 months. Got that fixed.
Then the monitor goes out, GPU and mother board problems. About 4 months after the first HDD failure. Got that fixed.
I go out of warranty.
Then second HDD goes out after 3 months. Got that fixed.
Finally GPU + Mother Board goes out and I ask for a estimate of repairs,
Lenovo says around 700 dollars.

Now I'm in second year of my college and without a lappy for now =(
Thinkpad disappointed me =(

 

After year and a half: touch pad broken and one two weeks ago my battery dead

 

I purchased the T61P and went through six repairs before I was finally given a full refund.

All for the identical problem, motherboard defect due to the GPU. Every time I would get it back and boot up Half Life 2 the GPU would hit 110C and the laptop would shutdown. LOL

Nvidia went from extremely well respected imo to downright horrendous. The rebranding and price hiking games they have been playing with graphic cards left a bad taste in my mouth too.

 

which one Thinkpad are you talking about here? I am assuming you are talking about the W510?

 

I am speaking of the T4x's.

Also i don't think the GPU problem on the T40-41 was a big problem... i've never heard of many cases, my previous T43 has an X300 GPU and never failed, pushed it to max clocks and heated er up playing CoD 2 using DX9 rendering many times.

 

I have T61p for almost 2 years, no problem. I have been using Zalman cooling pad since it was new. After I heard about Gpu failure I became paranoid and installled Tpfancontrol since a month ago. The temp stays around 35*C and max 41*C according to Tpfancontrol. No playing game.

Ironically, I wrote a thesis for my Master's in mechanical engineering about the solder joint reliability and the changes of the solder microstructure evolution. At that time we cycled Motorola PBGA (Printed Ball Grid Array) with tin-lead (SnPb) and tin-silver (SnAg) (lead free) solder balls. They can last tenth of thousands cycles from 0*C to 100*C.It seems, nVidia didn't do research and test their board design. I wish I could detach the gpu and replace the solder balls with SnAg and bigger diameter, and bake it again.

Right now this is my only computer and I really love it. I am looking for a replacement and debating T500 or T510, or even Ideapad to save some money.