I took apart my thinkpad, and I didn't like what I saw

I'm sorry I didn't take any pics but I'll try to summarize my little adventure today. Every time I turn on my T410 the speakers make a somewhat loud "pop" noise. It's been bugging me so I decided to disconnect the speakers internally. After a quick read of the manual, I took off the keyboard and palmrest, and disconnected the speakers.
I didn't really look around much, but I noticed the heatsink seems kind of dinky. After putting everything back together I've been monitoring my temps very closely. I notice with the fan on low, my idle temps and with light browsing hover in the lower to mid 40's C. With the fan turned off (passive cooling only), my temps varied from around 52 to 55C.
The temps were really bugging me, so I decided to take off the keyboard so the fan/heatsink can sit in the open air. WIth light web browsing, temps hung around in the mid to upper 40's. So I decided to take off the palmrest once again and have a look at the heat sink.
There is NO thermal paste whatsoever between the CPU and heatsink! NONE! I also noticed the screws that hold the heatsink in place were loose. After pulling it off, there's literally nothing between the CPU and heatsink. Literally not a single drop of thermal paste, no thermal pad, nothing.
Not to mention, the entire inner rollcage is plastic (I thought it was supposed to be a magnesium alloy). Since I have no thermal paste handy I just screwed the heatsink back on and made sure to tighten it down, I could see no play this time. After putting it all back together, my light browsing temps with the fan OFF are in the upper 30's to low 40's. Temperatures have dropped dramatically just by tightening down the screws. I really wish I hadn't taken it apart in the first place because I'm disappointed by what I saw. I just don't know what to say. My machine itself has been very reliable thankfully, but I wish they would have taken more care in putting it together.

 

Here's a screenshot of my temps. I've been browsing NBR and the fan has stayed off the whole time, hovering around 41/42C. This is using "sensors" in Ubuntu.

 

Did you get the T410 used?
Are you sure the roll cage was plastic? Alloy and carbon graphite mixes can look and feel like cheap materials. Although anyone can say magnesium is in there as long as it has 1%.

BTW, is that a Formosan Mt Dog?

 

I bought it new from Lenovo.com. I checked to make sure, I felt it, tapped it with my fingers, pushed on it, it definitely felt plastic.
The avatar is my dog, there's still some debate on what breed she really is. Possibly basenji + fox terrier or whippet.

 

That's interesting.

I'll check mine.

 

I think for good measure I would add some thermal paste to the CPU if there wasn't any to begin with (not sure why Lenovo would overlook this). Thermal paste aids contact between the CPU die and the heatsink by filling microscopic gaps so it allows heat to be drawn away more efficiently (air is a poor conductor of heat, so a gap of sorts will make cooling less efficient which is what you experienced when you didn't tighten the heatsink enough).

 

I thought thermal pads were designed for certain notebooks where there is some height between the heatsink surface and the CPU, where normal TIM would not suffice as it wouldn't make contact with the heatsink.

See if you can repaste yours, because I went from CM Thermal Fusion 400 and repasted with AS5, before the cure time dropped 5-6C on both idle and load.

 

I can sympathize with your "discovery". In recent years, I've noticed random deviations in Lenovo construction. Untightened screws are fairly common, as well as various cases of misalignment. Of course, one can always snap things into their proper positions, or tighten the screws (which may eliminate palmrest squeaking). On two systems, my guys had to wipe greasy fingerprints off the display panel after opening the lid for the first time! One can argue that these are minor issues that do not affect the performance of the system. But, why do the customers have to do such things at all?

I've learned not to bring up such "minor issues" in this forum because the reactions tend to be dismissive.

 

I just reviewed the service videos and maintenance manual for the T410. You only need add thermal paste and you temps should be lower. I recommend the Shin-etsu X23-7738D. I found it to be better than Arctic Silver 5 and you don't have the 200 hour cure time to deal with.

 

there is internal magnesium rollcage in the bottom part of the laptop.

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So it is magnesium? That's exactly what it looks like in the picture you provided lead_org. Since I've never felt it or seen it before, I thought it felt just like plastic.

I'm going to be ordering some thermal paste this weekend and apply it when it comes though just to be on the safe side, but I'm getting some pretty good temps now.

 

yeap that is magnesium, there should be 'Mg' embossed on the magnesium chassis.

 

i love how you said it wasnt magnesium when its clear you have no idea what magnesium is.

 

You're right, I didn't know. Now I do. Does that throw out the window everything else I've said? No.

 

Hey, maybe that's what happened at Lenovo. They may not have had any handy either =)

 

This issue is disturbing.

As a T410i user, should i disassemble the laptop and put thermal paste on the heatsink? I mean, the least thing i want to do is open the laptop which is still relatively new!

 

I would monitor the temps closely; when it starts to get consistently higher I would blow the vents and see what happens. If the temps don't drop from blowing dust out and get worse, then I would take it apart and inspect/replace the thermal paste.

 

I am. So far it's keeping itself passively cooled in the 40's. Last night I ran some flash video and google earth, it got up to 59C, then as soon as I stopped it started to cool down to around 50C, all with the fan off. That's not bad.

 

Those are remarkably good temperatures considering the fact that it doesn't have thermal paste. What CPU do you have (which Arrandale to be more specific)? Even in my M15x, my i7-620M (Also an Arrandale) can still reach over 70 Celsius when doing renders, and this is after applying MX-3, which I've been happy with and have found to be better than AS5.

 

It's the Core i5 540 (2.53GHz), however I've been forcing it to the lowest clock speed, 1.2GHz. That's probably why the temps are so good. Since I'm running Ubuntu exclusively now, that's all the power I need. In fact it runs google earth perfectly, but I don't know if Ubuntu uses graphics turbo or not with Intel HD graphics. I've been using Thinkfan and have it set to only engage the fan at 60C and above. So far it's been staying below that. I'm surprised at how quickly it cools down once the system goes into idle with passive cooling. I've noticed though that once it goes above 50C, it stays at 50C.

 

I take back what I said about how good the temperatures are. I thought you meant it was running at stock speeds and still staying that low, which would be amazing.

At idle or light usage, my i7-620M stays around 35 Celsius (fan spinning slow enough to not be noticeable). I look forward to seeing what a good thermal paste will do for you.

 

You should requote me, I edited my post with additional info. It would be great if it were at stock speeds, but it's not. For me it's good enough, but I can tell with any heavy work it would heat up fast. Just flash based web and google earth is enough to bring up the temps really quick. I also noticed that the heatsink/fan assembly is pretty dinky. Lenovo could have easily included a larger, beefier one, which I'm sure would help even more with temps.

 

A good data point regarding Linux.