Comments on the T430 I just bought

I just bought two T430 for my company's wireless testing purpose during Cyber Monday door buster sale through Lenovo website. I used to have great impression on Thinkpad series, I have used 3 or 4 different Thinkpad in past 4 years. They all work great and I loved it. Comparing with all other brands, these were among the top ones, but not at all for this T430 model....

The biggest issue I have is fan noises, it is kind of annoying. Not one, but both T430 laptops make the same noise level, therefore this is probably not an individual incident. Maybe I have a sensitive hearing, I don't know. I have used 30+ different laptops (because of my job role), and this is by far the most annoying fan I have ever encountered. It is not like I am running some computation intensive programs, which of course the laptop needs fan power to get rid of the heat. This is a brand new, just opened box, and sit there doing nothing scenario.... I can now only hope the E430 I ordered for myself private usage is not like this.

The other thing is keyboard, which has been mentioned in the review article, I dislike the Chiclet style. The extra spacing between the keys.... looks cheap...

 

Exactly. This crappy issue can be observed on virtually all of this year's ThinkPad models.

The noise is terrible when the fan ramps up (when it is activated). The noise gets worse when the fan continues to spin. On top of all that, why is the fan activated so often and when the system is idle or lightly-loaded?

Lenovo must procure a much-better-quality fan (virtually silent) and re-program the BIOS fan-activity control logic.

(TPFanControl can help somewhat, but basically it delays the activation of the fan: ramping-up noise is bad, no matter when activation occurs.)

 

did you try tpfanControl as kaso mentioned? It works for me.

 

Thanks guys. It is better now, but like Kaso said: "TPFanControl can help somewhat, but basically it delays the activation of the fan: ramping-up noise is bad, no matter when activation occurs"

No software can fix a low-quality fan. Lenovo, you should be ashamed. I wonder how you can face those engineers who worked on the Thinkpad series in past?

 

so my T430 must have a high quality fan. haha.

There are some reports that some fan are not properly installed and will hit the hose/wire when spinning. It is certainly a possibility if your fan is really noisy.

 

Then there is no reason for you to use TPFanControl.

Fixing what?

 

TPFC can help depending on what you do. I have fan on at 60C and fan off at 55C and just by doing that the fan doesn't come on unless I'm doing something intensive... which is basically never save for the occasional Youtube video, etc. When the fan does come on, obnoxious spinup is still there, but at least for me TPFC lets me choose when, and I'm generally happy with how it's going.

 

The X230 I had earlier this year was whisper quiet unless pushed.

 

[update] I received the E430 I bought/customized for myself last night. Its fan is much quieter comparing to the two T430 I reported earlier. Therefore I am happy now.

 

If your System is new Windows might still be optimizing, updating etc. This can take days. I'd give it a bit of time if I were you.

If the problem persists, you can install ThinkPad Fan Control.

One reason why it might be annyoing is because the minimum RPM is 3000 and not 2000 like with the old models.

 

You may want to try going into the "power manager" program and reducing the performance of the cpu so it doesn't need so much cooling. My x61s could had this setting, not sure about T430. It helped quiet down my x61s. You can create power profiles in power manager, so you can switch between profile depending on how much you think you might need all of the cpus performance. Just a thought, I agree loud fans are very annoying.

In the near future, 2 years maybe, out laptops may have something much quieter than the current fans. Check out this video on Dual Piezoelectric Cooling Jets from GE. Used in the Aerospace industry, GE hopes to license them to PC oems. Hope they get to market soon.
Advanced Electronics Cooling Technology: GE's Dual Piezoelectric Cooling Jets (DCJ) - YouTube