Any longtime T61p users?

"Why? Are you seeing similar symptoms like the others?"

I've seen no symptoms period. I'm on the T61p because I'm traveling. The thing is that I spent time in the hospital and my notebook was stolen. I just got it back because I purchased lojack for it. When I got it back, I had a failure and sent it off to Lenovo under warranty. They replaced the mother board and where I used to know the exact history of the old one, I don't know know the history of this one at all.

I'm scared of the numbers of t61p's that are failing.

Renee

 

the T4x don't have any sort of rollcage, which is why the GPU solder crack occured when people miss handled it. But i have noticed that many people have a habit of holding the laptop in the corner with one hand, this habit is what lead to the motherboard on the T4x to bend and the subsequent GPU problem.

 

no problems here either. Avg. is 55C. My AC is always on due to tropical humidity and heat seeping into my home. Wow 41C? What is it without the Zalman cooler? Can you let us know which model?

 

Just test it without cooling pad, Tpfancontrol turns on the fan at ~2600 rpm. 36*C gpu and room temp 19*C. I guess cooling pad is useless then.

 

Dude, i'll open my T43 up, take a pic and show you, it has an internal rollcage, i seriously beg to differ, they do not have magnesium located within the monitor housing true, but they still have an internal rollcage, or do you refer to the rollcage as the screen honeycomb design. Be more clear.

 

I've never heard anyone report 36C. Are you sure tpfancontrol is accurate? How about GPUZ whichi is what most people use to measure? Or maybe you live in Alaska with Sarah Palin your main squeeze.

 

i have taken apart the T4x laptops and including the T43 a lot of times, what you are referring to as a magnesium rollcage, is nothing more than simple magnesium subframe for the left side and the battery frame, but not a real rollcage in any sense of word.



Here is the picture from thinkwiki.

A real rollcage is pictured below:

 

Quadron NVS 140m in my r61 idles at 65 C, and if im doing mild stuff it stays at 70 C, while CPU runs really cool (T9600). I wish i had chosen Integrated intel crap just for peace of mind.
I cleaned out heatsink and applied AS5, made no difference whatsoever.

 

I'm glad you said that. The people fooling with cooling pastes are showing their lack of knowledge of thermodynamics and of cooling CPU's.
Renee

 

70C is way too hot. What is your method of measurement?

 

Well, the theory behind thermal paste or pretty much anything that is between the CPU that is not a solid, fills the tiny microscopic voids, which increases surface area contact with the heatsink, rather than thermally insulating air pockets.

 

"70C is way too hot. What is your method of measurement?"
__________________

For a Laptop it's rather cool.

Renee

 

I use GPU-z and HWmonitor, both show same temps (70 C), however TPfancontrol shows 49C.

 

I've had mine since late 2007 and it had been a solid performer.

 

I'm on my 2nd Lenovo Thinkpad T61 now and is quite happy with it at the moment. Don't worry the first one hasn't gone to heaven, my colleague wanted a cheap Thinkpad for him to use in his migration to Singapore so I gave away my original T61 which still works fine to this day. I did miss it so I decided to buy another one, used but in very good condition.

I just spent my day putting fresh thermal paste and cleaning the vents out which tends to prolong the life of the notebook. As long you follow the Hardware Manual then it shouldn't be too tricky keeping it tip top regardless whether it's a T61 or T61p.

Piccies of my dismantled T61 for the curious:

​

 

this T61 is very well taken care off, it is used mainly indoor from the looks of it and in low humidity areas, since the magnesium rollcage have yet to show any sign of oxidation.

 

How do you clean the fan? Recently I took the palm rest and keyboard off for the first time and was surprised it was not too dirty at all with some little dust around the fan but not like it was clogged at all. Got intimidated by the complexity and tight fit of things so I just blew it out with my mouth and reassembled. Mine is not oxidized due to always working in a clean AC office.

My GPU has never run above high 50s on average on GPU-Z. The Nvidia issue gives me jitters but so far my TP is the most reliable NB I have used despite being a warhorse. But I dont play games or watch movies on it all day.

 

On my "longtime T61p" I'm now getting occasional crashes, while stressing the GPU. Not sure the g84m is on the fritz already, could be simple overheating since I reduced the fan speeds a bit.

 

I've had my T61p for almost 2 years now and it's been great. I even game a few times per week sending the GPU to a max of about 85C. It idles around 55C.
I'm also dual booting with CentOS (working towards RHCE). I haven't had any crashes in Linux and very rare in Vista. Computer has never shut down due to overheating.
I read the failure rates are higher but it doesn't mean that every chip will fail, just higher than normal %. It's the luck of the draw, hopefully it will be way obsolete when it fails. Also I've read more failures of the NVS140 than the FX570M.

 

I just bought a T400 (for backup) with P8700, switchable graphic, and install tpfancontrol for monitoring.
I noticed that around 40C the fan is ON at around 2000 rpm which is very quiet (less noisy than the hard drive). This is the same turning on the fan with tpfancontrol manually at fan speed 1.

Can we control T61p fan at 2000 rpm too since I am guessing it is similar with T400/T500? The lowest speed of fan 1 is around 2500 rpm and the temperature is 36 C. I thought if I can drive the fan at 2000 rpm the temperature will stay at around 40C.

Anyone compare with T500?

 

I was asking same question. Troubadix, the guy who wrote TPFancontrol, answered that question many times, the lowest fan setting on T61, R61's is 2500 rpm, the embedded firmware controls that and there is no way to reduce the speed to 2000 rpm. People over at thinkpad forums even tried cutting on the fan wire with no luck.

 

double post

 

I' ma t61p user who has been getting frequent blackscreen powerdowns when gaming or running a lot of video. It started happening infrequently last year but now, 30-60 mins into a game it just shuts down. I use cooling pads, cleaned out the inside a few weeks back with an air can, and it hasn't made much difference. Seems even if the gpu is kept a reasonable attempt, running a game for any amount of time makes it die .

 

download TPfancontrol and look at your CPU/GPU temp.

If you have warranty, you may wish to exercise them.