Second-hand thinkpad x301 owner's thread.

Bronsky, would appreciate a pm for the color profile also please, thanks

 

Regarding the colour profile, is there a way of locking it up to avoid the system changing the profile to factory settings after restart or going to sleep ( I have the new profile set as default ).

 

GMA4500 machines need to disable all Intel startup services in msconfig.

 

Sent.

 

Hi,

I'm looking to buy (and actually have a candidate, just need to check the state of it) a X301. Gone through the thread and have couple of questions:
1. Bronsky, you still use stock SSD disk, right? I didn't see the performance figures anywhere for it, I would be really interested to compare them to the ones posted here for Adapter+mSATA setup.
2. Is there any benefit to use Adapter+mSATA III over Adapter+mSATA II as we know X301 has SATA II controller? If I remember correctly figures posted here were with Adapter+mSATA III.
3. Is the screen so horrible (even with that color profile you all are talking here about)? Loads of posts about changing the screen and bad viewing angles... :/
4. What about the cooling fan? Is there a way to replace/swap or any improvements can be made besides the software fan control? X301 is getting pretty old now and I believe it will be worn out... I like my gadgets silent

I'm going to use this notebook at home to do occasional SSH'ing, edit my car's ECU data tables as they won't fit into my netbook's 10" low resolution screen, maybe some day-to-day activities as excel/sketchup etc.
I have a monitor with digital only inputs so that DisplayPort will come in handy on X301.
I've read somewhere that X301 cannot handle dual monitors through it's DisplayPort?

Thanks.

 

ZyXel,

1) I'll let someone with a stock ssd try to get you that info.

2) I don't really know for sure, but I think that newer drives are faster and more power efficient (in general) and newer drives aregoing to tend to be SATA III anyway. So, you may shop around for a replacement ssd setup and see what makes sense. If you have a sata II vs III question on a specific drive, it may be easier for the community to answer at that point.

3) No, the screen is above average in my opinion. It's not like looking at the latest/best screens, but it is sufficiently bright for working anywhere except in direct sunlight and colors and video are not lacking. It's above average for laptops in general, especially for the year and price of this particular machine.

4) I bought mine new from the lenovo outlet (refurb) and my fan has no issues. It is inaudible. It does get warm though. OK, now you're making me wonder if it is actually broken. Someone else may want to chime in and help you/me on this question.

Based on my translation about what you're wanting this notebook for, I would say that you are looking for a machine that doesn't require a whole lot of processing power or disk speed, inexpensive, rugged enough to use in the garage, and can run for a whole ecu tuning session in your garage. Based on that, I would caution you that the X301 is designed to be light, but not necessarily that rugged (although with excellent build quality), and the 6 cell battery is only good for around 2 hours, depending on your usage. So you should consider those things.

With a price of the machine alone, you may or may not be able to find a better laptop for your usage. With the price of the machine plus hard drive upgrade, you'd be more likely to find some better options for your specific use. Maybe something not as light, more rugged, and with longer battery life, that doesn't necessarily have an SSD which brings the cost up. Don't get me wrong. I love my X301. At this age of this model, I would recommend this laptop to someone who wanted primarily excellent performance for the price-point, who does traveling and requires a very light laptop, maybe really wants an optical drive, but does not require more than 2 hours battery life.

 

Thanks for your answers. The point here is I will get this laptop for free, well there's a company that owes me so I will take it from them as they don't have anything better for the money at this time U9400, 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD.
I do have a T420 as my work laptop but it's really PITA to carry it around every day from work to home/garage if I need more screen space and I own a Samsung N140 as my logging device for in-car (motorway) tuning sessions (SSD disk, ~5 hours of battery life and 1.3kg) and it's fine as long as I don't need more in-depth editing as fuel map table which doesn't fit in the 10" screen >:| X301 would also be a good home pc for ssh sessions or whatever which requires way more than than that 1024x600 my N140 has so netbook will stay in the car
I was looking for small <14" notebook with as less weight as possible and as more LCD resolution as possible and cheap, of course (and you can't beat the "free" part of it, as I don't know when I would get the money out of that company). Battery life is not important as I will only need ~1-2h of light usage of it so I believe this laptop will suit me well.

At this point I just need to figure it out whether I need or want to upgrade the SSD (I can live with just OS/programs space and docs can stay on NAS device) just for speed purposes, whether I can live with the noise it makes when working at home (I believe I will hear it when I get it) and the screen (I guess I just have to get used to it)

 

Hi Bronsky. I would be interested to try out 600x's color profile as well. I have tinkered with the color profile through the Intel's management and so far (without being able to compare it to any other profile) it looks ok. Thanks!

 

ZyXELIs,

I confirmed my fan IS working. It's silent. When I put my ear up to it, all I hear/feel is air flow.
I would check out the specific X301 visually if you can and check for dead pixels, especially since you're going to be editing ECU tables. If there's a few dead pixels you may not be able to read some of the cells in your tables and that could get annoying. I have ONE dead pixel and it's been that way since purchase, not a huge deal but I see a single red dot if I have a black background. You can probably use something like this to check for it: LCD Dead Pixel Test Backgrounds. Also, put your ear up to the vents on the back left side and hear/feel for air flow, so you can check the fan. Happy X301'ing.

Good luck.

P.S...
Also check for bluetooth and if important to you, the 3G GSM Wi-MAX card that was an option. You'll see a slot for SIM card in the battery compartment if the wimax card is there.

Also, if you are a linux guy, which sounds like you might be (ssh'ing), LINUX mint cinnamon is pretty awesome for the price (free) and detected ALL my devices with no fuss. My 2 printers even work flawlessly. i was able to copy my Thunderbird email profile over and email was all setup too. Chrome and all my extensions work just like Windows. The only thing about Mint that I haven't been able to figure out yet is the CPU throttling for battery saving. I'm sure I will figure that out, just haven't yet.

 

Good to hear yours x301 fan is silent, hope mine is too. I've contacted the guy who's testing the notebook and he says it's mint. Case is good, no damage or anything, tests of the SSD/CPU/RAM etc. passed. He's in a different side of the country, I hope I will get it till the weekend and go though all the steps by myself (as I am a bit picky) but an "ok working and good looking" from a trustworthy technician is enough for me to take and start using it.

I doubt there will be a Wi-MAX card as it's a 64GB SSD version so probably initial buyer was cheap-a$$ (if you can call a >3000$ shelf price laptop cheap) )) not that I need one- I can always set-up a wifi hotspot with my Android phone.
The problem with Linux in this case (as much I love to use this OS) is that EcuFlash is Windows only application I could run a VM for it though... We'll see I saw people running 8GB of RAM in these notebooks O_O how crazy is that?!

 

Yeah, I never used my wimax card. Who wants 3G speeds and a monthly bill, right?

Sounds like you shouldn't even bother with Linux in your case. I'm just doing it for the money savings. Dealing with EcuFlash (I used to tune my WRX STI), inside a VM is not worth the hassle. There are enough ECU connection issues without also having to worry about VM issues in addition.

I hope you enjoy your new laptop.

 

I am connecting to an EVO ECU with an openport 1.3 cable so I know all the pain getting it to work properly, especially to flash the ECU. So I know what you're saying about the hassles inside the VM I'm happy I've got all this figured out with my netbook and WinXP

Searching for additional 2GB dimm now, I hope 4GB in total will be plenty for my needs- no VMs, 4-6 background apps, no photoshop or cad 8GB would be a drag having in mind the battery/electricity/heat/dimm cost...

 

4GB will be fine.

 

Can I get all the related files to make my notebook better?
I'm talking about the BIOS (whitelist removal), Color Profile (the best one floating around).

Thanks.

 

Query for all:

Is there a way to output both audio and video through the displayport of our X301 via displayport to hdmi adapter?

I'm praying there's a workaround as snooping around the lenovo forums, someone there says audio through the displayport on the x301 is disabled

 

Success!

My X301 is now running stable at 2.13GHz:

 

I've red that DP in this laptop is too old (generation wise) to output audio: X301 Display port audio - Lenovo Community

 

As for the stock disk speed I've ask earlier- answering my own question:

Stock SAMSUNG MMCRE28G8MXP-0VBL1 VBM19C1Q 128 GB SSD:
Sequential Read 221 MB/s
Sequential Write 30 MB/s

I believe it degraded over time as the original poster said ( forum.thinkpads.com • View topic - X301 vs Initial X1 Carbon) it was delivering write speed at > 100 MB/s.

And Adapter+mSATA III posted here before:
Sequential Read 260.6 MB/s
Sequential Write 245.4 MB/s

So an upgrade, in my opinion, is necessary...

 

Congrats and then some.

Now I have to hide this thread from my daughter's view...

 

So you don't need a benchmark for my unit. That was easy. BTW, the difference looks significant.

@600x awesome result. Taking any hit on battery life at that frequency? Stable?

 

Battery life seems to have dropped by 15 to 30 minutes on average but honestly, I don't really care. The X301 never had the best battery life to begin with (at least for today's standards) and my machine never really lasted more than 2h anyway and since I don't use it away from the desk that often either I can live with it.

It might also just be my imagination though. I wouldn't consider it a reason to not overclock, because the performance boost is just tremendous. It's one thing if you get better scores on a benchmark, but this overclock really pushes the X301 forward in terms of everyday usage speed. Everything just feels so much snappier. I now barely even notice the slow CPU.

And so far it runs very stable, even Prime95 doesn't affect stability. Depending on the fan the temps reach about 70°C. When surfing, watching videos and listening to music the temps are around 50°C.

So my conclusion is that I can absolutely recommend this mod. While the switch doesn't seem to be necessary, I still highly recommend it as there might still be some stability issues with some programs that I haven't tested. After all 2,13GHz at less than 1V or something like that is really low and usually avoided for a good reason. Also some people might prefer battery life over speed, so it's always good to have the option to switch back, especially since results may vary from machine to machine.

The RAM of an overclocked X301 will run at about 1400MHz, so you can forget using the stock RAM. I recommend 1600MHz RAM for the best results or at least 1333MHz (which I am using).

In theory the GMA4500 is also overclocked, but I doubt that it will make any noticeable difference.

 

X600, good info! Thanks.

So just to summarize:
1. Complete the pin mod based on Google Translate
it's a bit confusing as it's translated but from what I could understand- we need to de-solder one resistor and solder it to a different connectors (one being the same- so just flip it 180 degrees)? Might be a good idea to add a switch (3 positions, I believe?) to switch back to stock.
2. Complete the bios mod to unlock additional 200MHz
3. Purchase 1600MHz RAM instead of 1066 stock
4. And enjoy the fast notebook?

I believe it wouldn't hurt (or maybe is mandatory?) to replace thermal paste on the cpu heatsink. Did I miss something?

 

That pretty much sums things up. I will upload a picture of the switch when I have time. It might be interesting to increase the voltage with RMClock. This should boost the performance even further by a considerable amount, perhaps even getting close to the X200/T400 models.

I always replace the thermal paste on my machines anyway. BTW, most of us X301 owners will have noticed that the fan likes to run constantly at 5000 rpm. I have found a way to make the fan run at 4500 rpm mostly and even at 2000 rpm sometimes without using a fan controlling software.

I flashed a modified version of the MDL Forums BIOS (based on 3.16), installed Win 8 and installed the newest power management driver and the power manager software 6.38. Then I set the following parameters:



Now the fan behaves the way it should have to begin with.

 

Any links on that?

 

The stock MDL BIOS can be found here:

Code:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/5866-LENOVO-(IBM)-Bioses-especially-Thinkpad?p=866152&viewfull=1#post866152

The modified version was a special request by me, I will upload it when I have time. (it is currently on my T61)

From now on anyone who wants this "new" BIOS will have to specifically ask for it. Otherwise I will continue to send the link with the "normal" dual IDA BIOS. Also I have 2 color profiles now. One was calibrated with an X-Rite device, the other with a Spyder3. Please specify which version you want, otherwise I will send the link to Spyder3 version.

 

Which do you prefer? I have the spyder right.

 

Hi Bronsky, would you be able to send me the color profile as well? Thanks!

 

Personally I prefer the X-Rite which I sent you as well if I remember correctly. The problem is: I have seen many X300 screens, and they all look slightly different. I was aware that no screen is identical to the other, but I was quite shocked to see how colors appear completely different on seemingly identical screens. Some screens are better than others, luckily I have one of the better ones, which is why the X-Rite profile fits better. However, I have often heard how the X-Rite profile is supposed to look "strange" on some screens, which is why I created a profile with my Spyder3 and usually hand that one out instead because it is slightly more "neutral", so it fits a wider variety of X300 screens.

If you wish I can send you both for comparison. But beware, they both have identical file names and identical imprinted names. To change the imprinted name I recommend "ICC Profile Toolkit".

 

The profile you sent me looks perfect on my unit. The color splash on the IBM logo I use as background is vibrant and the colors look perfect. I'll stick with what I have.



Sinhere ... dropbox link is in your message folder.

600x ... the work you've done on your X301 is nothing short of amazing.

 

Thanks Bronsky! Tried the color profile and my first impression it's on the warm side but I am willing to give this a shot though as yours may be more accurate. If I may ask, what did you use to get this calibration?

 

Thank you for your kind words. I have often talked about modifying the X301, so it feels great to finally be able to show some results after all those theories. BTW, Skype seems to be running slightly unstable with the overclocking, sometimes it just freezes. Just keep this in mind if you want to overclock your X301. There might be many more programs that don't run 100% stable. Increasing the voltages with RMClock should make things run more stable again. Perhaps I will try this one day if I feel the need to.

Also, my overclocked X301 is running cooler than my stock X301. Why is that so you may ask? Well, first of all, even though both units had their thermal paste renewed, the stock X301 only got a "standard treatment" while the overclocked the X301 got a "special treatment", meaning it was fully cleaned with isopropanol and ensured to be completely dust-free. Additionally, I only applied an extremely thin layer of Arctic Cooling and spread it evenly over the entire CPU. I did this with extreme care, I really tried to use as little thermal paste as possible, just enough to cover the entire CPU. I also made sure there were no bumps or anything, it had to be 100% even.

Of course I also extensively cleaned the CPU before applying the new thermal paste. The fan and heat sink were also cleaned extensively with alcohol. After putting everything back together and letting the thermal paste "set in" (I have discovered that Arctic needs a few days to work as efficiently as possible), I am happy to announce that my CPU temps are around 40-45°C with the fan set to BIOS, despite summer temperatures in my room. I am even able to run my X301 silently most of the time with my TPFC profile:

Code:

Level=0 1
Level=46 1
Level=59 3
Level=69 7
Level=75 64

Granted, the CPU is about 50-55°C warm when surfing and the bottom does get quite warm on the left side, albeit not hot, but I'm quite surprised to see that it is possible to run the X301 with the fan set to the inaudible stage one setting without it getting too hot.

So if you ask me, the biggest secret is the razor thin layer of evenly spread thermal paste that really makes the difference and even allows my overclocked X301 to run with no fan noise whatsoever. I'm pretty sure that the clean install of Win 8 plays a major role as well. (Win 7 consumes more resources) You should also have the same power settings as me (for example, CPU deeper sleep enabled):



Please note that this changes after prolonged watching of YouTube videos, though my TPFC profile compensates for that as well and temporarily increases the fan speed to cool down the CPU until it is cold enough again to allow the fan to run silently again. The same may be true after a few hours of usage but like I said, TPFC will kick in and cool down the CPU within a matter of minutes and keep the machine silent again afterwards for a quite some time. Currently I've been using my X301 for about an hour and still haven't heard the fan. So my guess would be, depending on what you are doing, you'll have a silent machine for something like one or two hours before hearing the fan for a few minutes. Please keep in mind that this is just the initial interval, you will probably be hearing your fan every 15-30 minutes if you've already been using your X301 for quite some time. Making small standby breaks should increase the length of the intervals again.

My temps after some light browsing and listening to music (45 minutes usage time):



After exactly 1h my CPU temp is at 54°C so I might be due for some fan action soon. (probably in 15-30 minutes) Room temperature is probably around 27°C.



After 1h 20min my fan kicked in. It takes about 10-15 minutes for the CPU to cool down enough for the fan to become silent again if you keep CPU activity to a minimum during this time.

So my conclusion is, if you have to skills to optimize your cooling, have a slim install of Win 8 running and want a mostly silent X301, then go ahead and do what I did. However, if you feel that you don't have the patience or skills to do what I described in this post or don't meet the other requirements (i.e. you're running Win 7 or are a power user who frequently stresses the CPU), then I don't think it's worth going through all the trouble.

 

Hello there.

Today I received my "new" X301, just wanted to share some first impression thoughts.
It is SU9600 version. I got it in perfect condition for $200. One or two small spots on screen which I'm not able to get rid of; maybe bad pixels, maybe just stubborn dirt. Besides that, machine is like a new. Sadly, no SSD, just 160GB 5400 RPM Toshiba drive. And no bay battery, just CD drive.

I own classic IBM T42. Truly amazing machine. So this might look a lot like comparison.
What stroke me the most was the fact, that in spite of X301 being known for good build quality, T42 feels much better build. It just does. Another field where T42 eats X301 alive is screen display. SO much better screen for T42. I was aware of narrow viewing angles in X301, but seriously, after adjusting it bottom and top of the screen are already a bit dimmed in comparison to the center. And colors are just a bit.. strange.
Moving to the pros.
Very lightweight. Nice build quality. Really nice CPU speed, 1080p videos play with no sign of stutter (windows Vista installed). Excellent keyboard. Very nice overall first impression, maybe besides screen.

Unfortunelly, battery is worn out. I think it was already replaced and not for original one (not from lenovo).This one here has already about 300 cycles and holds only for about 1 and a half an hour. More than two times lees than my T42. I think I will have to replace it soon. Same thing goes for hard drive. Actually it makes quite 'to do' list already: replace battery, replace hdd, upgrade BIOS, clean cooling system and put new thermo paste, reinstall OS (probably windows 7 or 8, plus linux), adjust fan levels, etc, etc. A lot of fooling around. But I still think it was worth it for $200.

I will probably post some more specific updates/inquiries soon.

Cheers.

 

Ok, so I've got my X301 today (finally) type 4057... it has some scratches on the lid, a crack on the inner bezel (apparantly from prying the lid, maybe changing the panel) and one cracked hinge fastener and... 2 dead pixels in one place. I believe i can fix the hinge issue with some epoxy glue (liquid metal or whatever they call it in other countries) not that it's really loose, but as I've said I am a bit picky and I need to sort this. Dead pixels are near the bezel on the left- so no biggie, barely visible.
SSD 64GB disk test went good enough for day-to-day usage Read/Write Seq - 99/76(MB/s). I'm still considering to upgrade it to mSATA one day to get these 260/250 MB/s speeds but for now it will be ok.

I've installed Windows 8.1 and trying to fish-out several drivers (which is not working from the Lenovo site):
-Fingerprint scanner is not working
-HotKeys and OnScreen display
-3G/WWAN card (yes, it's there)
-Lenovo power management

Maybe 600X has some bundle? I believe you're running Win8.1 with all things in order.

apart from that- all seems OK, just need to tidy up color profiles, BIOSes etc. and I'll be set

 

The finger print scanner works with the latest driver from the matrix. Make sure to run it in Win 7 compatibility mode.

You can check if hotkeys work by pressing FN+FN5. If the wireless Window appears, it works. The reason why there is no on screen display for volume and brightness is because lenovo removed it from the driver. Since Win 8 has its own OSD lenovo no longer needed to supply a third party one. If you still want the lenovo OSD, then install a older driver version. Brightness display will still not be available though since you need the modified lenovo graphics driver. However, only a Win 7 version exists which can not be used under Win 8, making this "problem" unsolvable. Personally, I used the newest hotkey driver becaue I prefer the integrated windows OSD.

For WWAN, follow these instructions: forum.thinkpads.com • View topic - Windows 8 drivers for x200t

I used the newest lenovo power management driver with no issues. If you are referring to the power manager software, I'm using the version 6.38. It presented no problems during installation.

BTW I use Win 8, not 8.1.

I might upload my "driver bundle" one day and make it available to everyone. That way one can easily install all drivers quickly and be assured that they have the correct versions and that everything works. I have driver bundles for most of my ThinkPads and OS's.

As for the color profile and BIOS, I'll send it to you when I have time. You requested the new BIOS which I still need to upload.

 

Thanks 600X, I've managed to install most of the drivers:
-Hotkeys was working (not the Lenovo OSD, but keyboard light and volume etc.) with normal driver install but Fn+F5 did not bring up anything. So I've reinstalled the driver with Win7 compatibility and it's now working as it should.
-Power Manager software- the same as Hotkeys, Win7 compatibility mode install and it's working now.
-Fingerprint scanner- also Win7 compatibility.
-WWAN card- the trick mentioned in your link has worked.

The only missing driver I have is "PCI Simple Communications Controller", scanning with Everest gives "PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2A44&SUBSYS_20E617AA&REV_07". I believe it's Intel AMT but the drivers from Lenovo site (installed normally and again with compatibility, went fine both times) did not resolve this. Will dig some more, maybe something will come up.

Other than that- CPU gets hot after some light browsing, up to 50-60C depending on the TPFC settings, BIOS was 1.08 version so I believe nothing was serviced on this laptop (including fan cleanup/thermal paste change). I will take it apart and give it a treatment it deserves
Battery is ~340 cycles, charges only up to 96%, holds ~2.5h with minimum usage- with my needs it will be ok for now.

 

Bronsky's color profile is such an improvement over the default profile. My eyes are now less tired than before. Thanks again Bronsky for sharing.

I am reading 600X's successful attempt in overclocking the machine and wondering if I can benefit from it. My work consists mostly of PowerPoint presentations and I do make them quite large, 20MB >. When the presentation gets a little big due to photos and videos (photos will have been compressed and excess cropped area deleted), there is a slight lag when opening and large presentations. Will overclocking help improve the speed when opening such large files?

The X301 is an almost perfect work laptop, esp for those who do sales and presentations for a living as it's light and the 14 inch and resolution is just perfect. My gripes are screen quality (the viewing angle becomes a problem when presenting without a projector to a group of 3 or more people) and the batteries are much more expensive than other Thinkpad series. I am going to keep this model as long as possible but these 2 factors might catch up soon or later.

 

I've had my X301 for nearly two years now and the tight viewing angles on the display is my only real gripe. If you shift in your desk chair while working, you can move just outside of the ideal viewing angles and cause a bit of strain to the eyes. I tend to adjust the display quite a bit in the course of a day. The keyboard is so superior to anything else I've used in such a long time that I have not been tempted to move on.

It is great to see the performance bump that a pin mod can accomplish but a pin mod is a bit beyond my meager soldering skills. BTW, my 6 cell battery is aftermarket and it works fine.

 

I've noticed that there seem to be several different manufactures of the third-party batteries. Wondering if we can all compare notes to see which ones perform the best. I bought one and in less than 1 year, it will shut down when it reaching the 20% remaining mark. I did only paid about $30 for it from eBay.

 

Bronsky, could you please tell what brand made your battery and how many cycles it has? Mine just says "ML:X300" and on a sticker "BNX30012071000003". I'm looking for a new one for me.

Also, do you guys know what cells are in these batteries? Main battery looks far too smal for 18650 cells, also no idea about bay battery as I don't even have one yet. I'm considering buying new cells and replacing old ones.

 

Hello again, sorry for double post.

I think I will upgrade to SSD soon, currently I'm leaning towards A-Data SX300 128GB drive + micro sata adapter.
Other options are: Crucial M500 120 GB, Kingston SSDNow 120GB, Integral 128GB MO-300. A-Data is cheapest and pretty fast, Crucial m500 supposedly is slower, but many users had a succes with installing this drive in x301, which is nice. Can you recommend anything?
In case of adapter itself, I think I will buy this: Adapter mSATA - Allegro.pl and hope it will work. I'm unable to find popular Lycom ST-170m Adaptor in reasonable price and shipping.

Today I disassembled my x301 to pieces, cleaned everything of dust, cleaned electronics with isopropanol, extensively cleaned cooling system, applied new thermal paste. Currently I'm playing around with temps and TPFanControl.
I was quite surprised with GPU chip, as there are no screws to apply pressure between heatsing and chip, which results in about 2 mm gap. I applied loads of thermo paste there to connect two parts, after putting it together and tightening 3 screws around heatsing, about 2mm gap between heatsink and GPU chip is still present, but filled with paste (and still bothering me). It looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/tICgLlP.jpg. Here is old piece of thermo glue/paste that was here (also pretty thick): http://i.imgur.com/tICgLlP.jpg

Earlier I also encountered "Coil whine", which is high pitched, VERY annoying squeaking noise coming from CPU area only when CPU is iddle. It's caused by resonating power coils when processor is switched to energy saving modes. I disabled these by following solution in this topic: CPU Noise - Lenovo Community
Buzzing is gone, we will see about power consumption and battery life. I have also heard you can fix this with RMClock: CPU Noise for Intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo
Maybe it will be usefull for someone.

Anyone experienced similar problems?

One last thing: Bronsky or 600X, can you please share the color profile? I'm not sure if you can send me a PM, if not and if you don't mind the trouble, you can send me an email at [my_nick]@gmail.com. Thank you in advance.

 

The X301 has no GPU chip, the GPU is integrated in the chipset. Also that 2mm gap is supposed to be filled by a thermal pad which seems to be missing from your system.

I sent you the color profile via PM.

 

Yes, according to hardware maintenance manual it is GMCH (Integrated video chip), I couldn't remember this so just called it GPU.
I removed thermal pad as it was a bit dried out and dusty. Nonetheless, strange design. Currently temperatures in iddle are about 50°C with fan on level 1. Level 2 gets them down to about 43-45°C, I hope this will get a bit better, paste was Arctic Cooling MX-2, which always worked for me great.

Thank you for PM.

 

It's the chipset chip. And you should not have removed the thermal pad, that's just the way those things look like after a few years. The X301 is nearly 6 years old. The design is standard, all ThinkPads used to have thermal pads on the chipset back then.

Arctic Cooling might take up to 200h of usage time before it reaches maximum efficiency.

 

You can easily get a 2mm thick thermal pad to replace the one you removed. Amazon.com: 202mm x 202mm x 2mm Silicone Thermal Pad for CPU GPU Heatsink: Computers & Accessories My system is stock. It gets a cleaning once in a while. Here are my temps.

I don't have a brand on my battery. I got it from a US distributer on ebay, but I don't recall which. I know I posted it somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it yet. It seems to be a good one. I bought it in September, 2012, nearly two years ago and it has lost only 4% from wear. And, I don't take any special care of the battery.

 

I have kept original pad, so no problem here. I also have few spare pads, but mostly with low thermal conductivity. If temperaturees won't get any better in few days, I will probably buy new pad.

Yesterday I installed SIM card for mobile broandband and tested GPS. Got first fix in about 5 minutes in open field. Very nice maps by bing.

Thanks for your support.

 

Here's a shot of my battery.

 

48Wh? That's a considerable 5Wh above the original battery. (43Wh) Should provide about 30 minutes more battery life than the original.

 

IF it's not just a sticker

 

HW Monitor says it's a 38,880mwh. Don't know if the monitor is misreading it or if it is mislabeled. Add the 4% loss and your closer to the original WH. I think the HW monitor is off. So, I guess I shouldn't count on a 4% loss over 2 years.

 

I would bet on "inflated" label, especially if it came from e-bay