My T500 is overheating -- novice needs help

My Thinkpad T500 is overheating.

Here are my specs:

Model: T500 (Type: 2055)
Processor: P8600 (2.40GHz)
GPU: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650

When I'm doing most regular activities (browsing,emailing, documents), laptop is fine. The unit gets warm underneath, but I've not had problems.

If I'm doing more intensive activities (watching local video,Netflix, or Skyping), laptop starts to heat up enough so that it's uncomfortable on my lap.

When I play games (Nothing crazy intensive: e.g. Minecraft, Civilization 4), and sometimes when I Skype, the unit gets extremely hot underneath and shuts off without warning.

The heat seems to be originating from the left-hand side of the laptop, near the back. Unless I'm mistaken, this is where the GPU is located. And this makes sense, since the overheating seems to be related to graphics-intensive activities.

So, my questions are:

1. How can I diagnose this problem further? What's a good utility to use to monitor heat of GPU and CPU? Anything else I can use ?

2. Are there any settings I can change on my laptop to prevent the automatic shut-downs and excessive heat?

3. I've seen some mention of people cleaning fans, replacing fans / cooling units, or adding thermal paste. Need some advice there too.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thank you!

 

Standard operating procedure for overheating on an older unit, is to remove all dust from the fan assembly and heat exchangers. To do it right, some disassembly is needed. Removing the keyboard for access to the fans and vents might suffice. The thermal paste would be the next step if step 1 does not bring temps down. That entails removing the heat sinks from the CPU and GPU, cleaning them and repasting. To do this, you need to disassemble the unit down to motherboard removal. Most times the Mobo needs to be flipped over to get access to the CPU/GPU. If you're mechanical and careful, you can DIY. If not, a local tech will do it for $50-75. I particularly like IC Diamond 7 as replacement paste. One caution: some units have a thermal pad between the CPU/GPU and the sink that need to be replaced (Acer 4820TG GPU for example). A copper shim works best.

 

If you need help with the disassemble. Save this PDF file and refer to it when needed.

T500 Hardware Maintenance Manual

There are videos on the Lenovo Support website as well. I do not have the URL handy right now but perhaps by using your search engine you might find them. Good luck

 

The T500 runs a lot cooler when it's on the integrated graphics mode, so I'd recommend keeping it on the Intel GMA 4500MHD unless you're actively playing games. In the ~4.5 years I've had my T500, I haven't once had to clean the cooling vents, and at idle, my T500 is still cool to the touch (ambient temperature around 72 F) when on integrated graphics mode.

Your issues could be software; perhaps some rogue process running in the background preventing your CPU/GPU from staying at the lowest power state.

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

I don't see any unusual processes when my system starts overheating.

Regarding putting the system into integrated graphics mode vs dedicated: How do I manually switch it? I just assumed that it switched automatically based on whether or not I was plugged in.

 

Device settings in the Bios can switch from integrated to switchable.

 

No, it does not automatically switch; the T500's switchable system predated all the automatic systems that later came to market (ie: Nvidia Optimus). If you have the Lenovo GPU driver package and Power Manager installed, you can right-click the Power Manager battery gauge and under the Switchable Graphics menu, select Energy Saving for integrated graphics.

If you do not have the drivers installed, or are running Windows XP (which does not support dynamic GPU switching), you can do as Bronsky recommended and switch GPUs in the BIOS.

 

I believe I have the Power Manager and Lenovo GPU driver package installed. When I right-click the power tray icon, I can switch between Balanced, High Performance, and Power Saver.

What's a good way to verify that it's actually using the integrated GPU? After switching to Power Saver mode, I ran dxdiag and it reports that the GPU is the ATI, and same for the Windows Device Manager.

Any thoughts?

 

Right click on the battery widget in the bottom bar, not the tray icon. It should have an option called switchable graphics. Change it to "power-saving" (or something similiar, the opposite of performance).

 

Yep, not the icon in the system tray, but the Power Manager battery bar. This is a screenshot I took a few years back, in Vista:

 

Hmm... I guess I didn't have those installed. I install a bunch of different utilities and drivers, rebooting a handful of times, but I'm still not seeing that option.

I see the Power Manager icon, but there's no option for Switchable Graphics:


What am I missing?

 

Do you have it set to dedicated in the BIOS?

 

No, I haven't. Is that required in order to get the option to soft switch between dedicated and integrated?


EDIT: Ok, I went into BIOS and set the display option to "Switchable Graphics", and rebooted. (I assumed there was only two options: Discrete mode and Integrated mode.) I got an error message about the ATI driver not functioning, or something like that. However, I still don't see the Switchable Graphics option in the Power Manager menu.

EDIT2: Aha! I got the error message, but then it eventually installed some new software, and when I rebooted again, the "Switchable Graphics" option was showing in the Power Manager menu, finally! Thanks.

 

I am the owner of two T500's, one with integrated graphics only and one with switchable. My experience is of course that with integrated the T500 runs much cooler. That being said I have found that my T500 with integrated graphics is still running cool after 5 years of daily usage, but the one with switchable graphics started to run really hot some last year, even when using integrated only.

My solution was to disamble the laptop and clean the heat sink and replace the factory thermal compound with Arctic silver.

I guess the reason might be that the ATI is running hotter that the intel and therefore the factory thermal compound won't last as long as on a unit that only runs on Intel graphics.