Options to reduce T410 fan noise?

Hi, I have got my T410 laptop with i540, 6 cell and integrated graphics. I liked the laptop, it stays cool in normal use, but seems, the fan keeps running, it's audible and annoying.

I had t400 few months before it stayed very quiet. I am aware that lot of discussions were going on net about high pitch fan in T410. I am sure that folks would have tried to couple of options to reduce the fan noise.

If could people share the ideas/tips to reduce the fan noise, I would also give a try in my laptop. Thanks

 

Hi Sarppan,

I have exactly the same config as you. I run tpfancontrol as a service with a profile that brings the fan on slowly at 60 Centigrade and increases the fan speed in steps up to 68 C, at which point tpfancontrol passes control to the BIOS (i.e. aggressive fan!):

Temp --- Fan Speed
58 ------ 0
60 ------ 1
62 ------ 2
64 ------ 4
66 ------ 5
68 ------ BIOS takes over

I find that for simultaneous (multi-tab) Internet Explorer and MS Office use, the temp generally stays between 47 and 57 C, so the fan is never on, i.e. I have a silent T410!

Btw, I removed the Offsets on tpfancontrol, meaning that the control temp is the actual one reported by the Thermal Censor on the processor. There are also sensors in the processor Cores but tpfancontrol doesn't seem able to pick them up.

From what I've read, it seems that having the processor mostly in mid-50s (centigrade), with occasional leaps to mid-60s is perfectly safe (the default Lenovo setup seems to try to keep the processor 8 C less, but this appears to be unnecessarily cautious). If in doubt, see this intel spec sheet (section 5) which describes how the processor will anyway slow itself down and lower the voltage if it gets close to its max. safe temperature.

I am also thinking of putting some fancy thermal paste on between the heat sink and the processor - this will probably drop the temp a bit even without the fan coming on.

Hope that info is helpful - would be interested to hear what others think.

 

I have the same problem with my T410. Hope Lenovo will tweak the BIOS or PowerManager. The fan is too aggressive right now. I feel it's running at the max speed all the time. I think the T410 is too new. There is no fingerprint software yet. The one they released does not work well.

 

I would only stick to this setting on battery mode. If you push that CPU into the high 50s low 60s even with AC connected, I doubt you will ever see Turbo Boost kick in except once in a blue moon.

 

Thanks guys.

Hi Pejx, I'm new to tpfancontrol, I have just downloaded the files from http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmitzr/donate.html and installed it.

What changes shall I make in tpfancontrol.ini file for T410 to make it quiet ?. If you never mind, can you please share me your tpfancontrol.ini file.

I understand this is a work around, Hope, lenovo would tweak the BIOS or PowerManager for permanent solution.

Please let us know, by putting fancy thermal paste on between the heat sink and the processor if worked..

 

Sure, here it is. You will have to rename it as ".ini" instead of ".txt" (to do this I think you must first set Windows to "show file extensions" or something like that in the control panel)

Hope that works for others.

By the way, I wrote my earlier post from work and now I am home using my laptop I realised it is slightly cooler than I remembered - seems to be 47-54 Centigrade running 3 tabs in IE8 and MS Word (my room temp. here is around 22 C). Also, in Lenovo PowerManager I have CPU speed set to adaptive.

PS. Something I'll never understand is why a notebook company has not yet realised that there is a massive untapped demand for notebooks specifically designed to be SILENT during normal use, and marketed as such? Personally I don't mind in the slightest if a webpage takes a second more to display if the computer is silent!

 

Thanks for bringing this to light. I’m a happy T400 owner—and kind of happy I didn’t make the jump to the T410 because of this. The super quiet fan in the T400 is a real pleasure.

 

I am surprised with the issue of fan noise on the new t410. Is it also for T510? My W500 runs almost silent; if fan is on it is almost inaudible; at high revs, just hearable (but not a high pitch). of course if you still have HDD you will hear that. pitch is an underestimated factor, IMHO, in assessing computer noise - HDD pitch differences, for example.

 

I don't own T510. Probably, it would exist in t510 as well.

 

I'm pretty surprised that the fan would actually get louder from the T400 to the T410, since I think Lenovo did really well with the Tx00 series' cooling system. Perhaps a different fan supplier? Different design? Or faster-spinning speeds to push air out the smaller fan exhausts?

Haven't seen any noise complaints about the T510/W510, but that's probably because fewer people have ordered those laptops. It'd be strange if they actually ran cooler.

 

Hope this is just a BIOS or PowerManager software problem for new model.
Because the temp is always 40 degree. Isn't it too low. And I fell the air flow is cold. But the fan keep running in high speed.

 

Thanks pejx. Tpfancontrol helps my laptop to stay quiet now. Please share us if any other solution is found.

 

The t510/w510 may deal with heat better than the t410 as the heatsink is much bigger in the t510/w510 than the t410. I watched the service instructional videos where the Lenovo tech takes apart the machines, and the t410's heatsink had about half the mass of the heatsink in the bigger chassis of the t510/w510.

The bigger heatsink in the t510/w510 is I'm sure designed to handle the bigger cpu's and gpu's of especially the w510. Notice also that the t510's graphics card is 512MB where the t410 is only 256MB, suggesting that the t510 is built to handle bigger graphics, ie handle more heat.

 

I agree with the above. If i wanted a 14inch format I would wait for the 410s. The 510 models given that the T and W share the exact same chassis obviously have a significantly improved cooling capacity. I am starting to think for a quiet, cool and capable machine a well specified T510 (FHD etc) is the way to go. The above combined with the fact you avoid the ABS materials used in the 410 makes a compelling argument unless of course the 15.6 inch form factor is too big.

 

I like the form factor of the t410 including the 16:10 screen, but last week I pulled the trigger on a t510 with FHD screen, 520M processor, and discreet graphics. The bigger heatsink in the t510 was a motivating reason to get it over the 410, but probably the biggest reason I chose the 510 was to get the higher quality screen.

As much as I despise the 16:9 ratio, I decided to go with a better looking screen with less than optimal shape, rather than a screen that has my preferred shape but doesn't look as good. The reviews of the t510 keyboard flex/feel have been very solid. Just wish Lenovo could offer blu-ray/DVD drive, intel ssd, 16:10 1920x1200 display and the t510 would have been perfect for me. I plan to swap out with intel ssd on my own; if I want to pony up $300 for a blu-ray special order from Lenovo accessories I could but i don't; only the 16:9 screen I can't fix.

I have noticed in the forums that the t410 seems to get more complaints about fan noise than the t510/w510 so far.

 

I have adjusted fan speed by using tpfancontrol in my thinkpad t410, now the fan is quiet. I noticed, though the fan is not running, lil noise comes from processor area, I am able to hear it though I stay 30cm away from my TP. Is it normal for new generation of processors or something is wrong in my TP?? Or Should I try change any processor settings?.

I had T400 last month, I didn't notice it. I think, I should T400 from my friend to compare the noise level.

 

the cross section of the T410 vent is smaller, which means the fan may have to spin faster to move the same amount of air. Also the bearing of the fan could also be slightly different, which could generate more noise as compared to the previous generations of the thinkpads.

 

Then Thinkpad T410 Lose it's biggest advantage as a Thinkpad.
No hope that Lenovo will fix this for current T410 owner?

 

any idea, Lenovo people aware of this fan noise issue?. Is there anyway to bring this into Lenovo's attention. Not sure whether I should contact technical support to convey this fan and noise issue..

 

I recently got a T510. I don't know how it compares noisewise to a T410 but I can say that it is definitely noisier than the T400. I don't know if this is due to a worse design or something to do with the latest generation of CPU's. Even though they are rated the same package TDP and should have a lower system power dissipation I have noticed a trend - the latest generation laptops (all makes) are noisier than the previous generation. Maybe that's because Intel's Turbo Boost makes it more important to keep the CPU temperature low? At least with TPFanControl you can have a fairly quiet laptop.

I have been running TPFanControl but have noticed one problem.
I have a T510 with the Nvidia NVS 3100m GPU. TPFanControl does not seem to be able to read the temp sensor on the GPU. I've looked at a few other hardware monitoring programs, and none of them were able to read the temp sensor on the GPU either.

Does anyone know of a way to access the temp sensor on the Nvidia NVS 3100m?

Has anyone been able to get TPFanControl to read the GPU sensor?

 

Did you try HWMonitor? I've never seen it fail to read a GPU's temperature.

 

How fast (rpm) is level 1 according to tpfancontrol?

 

If it's anything to anyone, as I posted in another thread, I upgraded my T410's BIOS to 1.18, and the fan was *always on* at high speed. I've since reverted back to the factory 1.15 BIOS, and all is back to normal, it's super quiet with the fan rarely ever coming on.
Just FYI.

 

On my T510, level 1 is about 2400 rpm.

 

Thanks for the warning talin.

Has anybody with a T510 done the 1.18 BIOS update? Did you get the same results as talin?

 

Sorry for the slight delay in response, MidnightSun .

Yes, I have tried HWMonitor. It reports temperatures for core #0, core #2 (sic) and THM0, nothing for the GPU. It's possible that the ACPI THM0 includes the GPU temp but as far as I can tell it just seems to follow the CPU temp. One way to tell would be to stress the GPU and see if that does anything to THM0. Can anyone suggest a free program or game that I could use to do this?

 

I upgraded to 1.18 the day it came out, no issues at all. My fan remains barely audible. I have used CD ISO method for update since experiencing the SLIC problem with the Windows installer way back when. Who knows, maybe there is a difference (once again)? I have Win7 x64. Maybe PM settings changed?

@Talin, assuming you haven't already, are you willing to try a CD ISO update, to see if the fan behaves differently?

 

Yeah I just might try that.

 

Did you also update Power Manager to 3.20?

 

Ok, I updated with the bootable CD option. My fan is normal, I honestly don't understand how updating via CD or the windows executable could make any difference, but this time around my fan is quiet. *shrug*
@hceuterpe; yes I already have power manager 3.20.

 

Thanks for testing this.

The SLIC problem was isolated to the Windows x64 BIOS installer version only. Those who used the CD ISO method were unaffected. Apparently, Lenovo (or Pheonix) still have work to do on testing the Windows installer versions. I'll stick to the CD ISO moving forward.

 

Hey,

TPFC shows 62C but CPUID shows 55C on cores and 62C on ACPI THM0.

Is it ok?

 

The numbers you posted are within the normal range.

 

Will updating via the CD ISO option wipe my drive? What exactly does it upgrade?

I have been through a round of Lenovo support and haven't had any luck with a solution for my T410 with discrete gpu.

So far the TPFanControl solution is working well, my machine idles at 56C and 60C for the 2 cores, and 62C for the GPU, according to CPUID. But my main concern is longevity of my machine over 3-5 years as heat is a computer's enemy. Most computers and laptops I've owned previously idle around 40-45C, and MIGHT reach 60C under continued load...

 

pejx - how come your tpfancontrol.ini has no Fahrenheit entries in smart mode 1? Can I delete mine as well? How come fahrenheit entries exist in smart mode 2 then?

I like this program a lot but I was wondering if you guys could help me. If running tpfancontrol as a service, there's no way it could permanently crash then? (it would just restart itself I assume?) What happens if some random thing DOES cause it to crash? What worries me is that I can't see it running in service mode unless i look at task manager. I think tpfcicon.exe is supposed to solve this. But would tpfcicon.exe run without tpfancontrol(as a service) running?

Finally, I just can't figure out whether it's using the settings in smart mode 1 or smart mode 2 when running as a service. Thanks everyone - finally a good way to shut this damn fan up.

 

I upgraded to 1.18 as well and I haven't noticed the fan coming on excessively. Actually I have been waiting for the fan to turn on, I don't even think I've heard it whorl yet.

 

Thanks OP for the TPfancontrol fix. Had the same issue as you, and this resolved it for me.

Cheers!