Cooler for Lenovo T400?

My Lenovo T400 will sometimes shut down while I'm running a game and I'm not sure why. One the reasons I thought of was that it could due to overheating.

The cpu temperature of my lenovo T400 goes up to 90°C with an average of around 75°C. The gpu temperature stays around 65°C.

I've just finished cleaning out the dust in the laptop, so it's not due to that. It used to work fine, I'm not sure why it started to overheat a couple of months ago.

Do you think that this could be a reason why the laptop is shutting down?

If so, do you think a laptop cooler would help me with my problem? I'm considering the notepal u2, notepal x2 or the zalman-nc1000. Any recommendations for one of these or other coolers?

 

What sorts of games are you running on your T400? This might sound like noobish advice, but make sure you're running your processor at the maximum performance setting in Power Manager, just to make sure you're not running your CPU on full-tilt at a slower clock speed.

As far as a notebook cooler, I purchased a portable one for my T500 from Radio Shack a few months ago: Gigaware® Foldable Laptop Cooling Fan - RadioShack.com

I'd say the form factor would be more suited to your T400, but it is quite portable and really helped keep the T500 from scorching itself whilst gaming. I remember playing MW2 for a couple of hours on my wooden coffee table and could feel the bottom of the table heat up significantly.

If you're still experiencing shutdowns, you may want to consider opening your machine up and thoroughly cleaning your fan assembly as well as reapplying thermal paste on your CPU/GPU. If you're under warranty, you might want to give Lenovo a service call.

 

I appreciate the nooby advice as I'm a pretty big noob to this. How do I make sure that I'm running at maximum performance setting in Power Manager? Or make sure that I'm not running my CPU on full-tilt at a slower clock speed?

 

If you have all the stock Lenovo utilities installed, the easiest way to check your power settings is to press Fn+F3. That will get you to a little menu where you can change settings on the fly.

As far as the coolers you listed(I'm not sure why I just noticed this) I used to have a Zalman NC2000, the bigger variant of the NC1000. It worked great for my old 17" gaming beast, so I can definitely recommend the NC1000. However if your overheating problems continue you might want to look into opening up and recleaning your notebook or getting a warranty service done on it(if you still have warranty).

Another thing I just thought of: Are you using TPFanControl to monitor your temps? If you do you might have it set on the default(Smart) mode, which changes the temperatures at which your T400's fans will come on. I typically change it to use the stock BIOS settings. It's a bit louder but the fans come on earlier and help cool the system down a little better, IMHO.

 

If you're feeling adventurous you can remove the heatsink and see if there is any dust clogging it up as well as reapplying a good thermal paste on the CPU and GPU.

Make sure all your fans are working too and if you're overclocking, stop.

 

Zalman is good choice otherwise search for another cooler that has 220mm big fan (the bigger than fan is the better). I personally use Zalman NC3000U and it cools my 100C HP pavilion tx2690 a bit. it almost cools it with 10C. I also see that my HP response faster since I use NC3000U.

You will hardly hear NC3000U. it costs a bit more than the average maybe but that's worth it.

Regards,
Valentin N

 

I have my T420 on a Cooler Master U2 that comes with 2 fans that you can move underneath it to fit exactly where your air intake slots are underneath the laptop.
Very cool design, I like it. Except the T420 runs so cool even under load I don't even both with the fans anymore...