T61 - high CPU Temperatures and Warranty Doubt?

Hi Friends,

I own a Thinkpad T61 7663 series laptop. Specs are mentioned at the bottom of the post (3 GB RAM in lieu of 1 GB RAM). I have 2 doubts.

a) Real Temp 3.00 is used to measure the core temperatures. Running Matlab, Weka (java program) and Firefox (around 15 open tabs) leads temperatures as high as 81 C. Is this safe for the laptop in the long run? The heat from the left heatsink vent is warm enough to melt the lip balm (Labello brand). The ambient temperatures are 23 +/- 2 C. Real Temp sounds off an alarm at these temperatures. The CPU T7500 runs at maximum performance ( I am not 100% sure '2194.5 MHz' - the power manager is set at "Power Source Optimized"). The T61 Fan noise is very annoying! It sounds stressed, as if there is some misalignment. I had already replaced the fan once in March 2008 (laptop bought on Oct 2007 - US). The Lenovo warranty in Germany informed me that they had replaced the fan, and could not guarantee system stability as there was an additional bank of non-Lenovo RAM (Samsung 2 GB module). My questions:

1) How high can the CPU temperatures for laptops rise w/o damage to laptop?
2) How can I ascertain if my fan is working correctly?
3)I have a nVidia graphics (128 MB) also. Would its malfunctioning affect CPU's temperature? Is the noise due to GPU fan?
4) How do I monitor fan speed?
5) Can members kindly post the idle/working/peak load temperatures of similar T61?
6) Does non-Lenovo RAM lead to loss of system stability as claimed by Lenovo Germany? I ran a memtest for 2 days, and it was clear.

b) These heat issues are compelling me to consider a warranty extension for my laptop. I shelled out $2000 for this machine, and I am not very happy with it. I am worried if any other component will fail in due course. I don't want to buy another laptop for the next 3 years. As a Masters student, I run Matlab, Gimp, and some ocassional Java programs. This would suffice for me hopefully. Now, my question is regarding the purchase of warranty. IWS coverage of my T61 is available in Germany also. I had registered my T61, and sent it once for fan replacement. This system has a 3 year limited warranty, on-site with next business day (this is what the lenovo site says!).
My warranty expires in August 2010.

1)What warranty pack can I buy ? 3 year / 4 year ? Please inform me if such an upgrade is possible?
2)Can I buy the warrranty from the US? My uncle stays at Michigan. Will this cover my laptop in Germany?
3)If I want to buy in Germany, which is the part number of the warranty pack? I am confused with the options available.
Please clarify this Bring-in, On-site warranty terms and other terms pertaining to warranty cover for thinkpads. There is also courier pick up option available! The prices vary accordingly!
4)When I search for dealers online, they present so many options with different part numbers, that I don't now which pack will suit my purpose of extending the warranty coverage for another 3/4/5 years? I ask this question as the packs vary from 25 Euros to 215 Euros. The explanations are not lucid enough for a novice like me. I cannot also buy the warranty directly from Lenovo Germany; I should approach other dealers. As a student, I search for online deals that are around 20-40% cheaper than those officially listed on the lenovo germany site.
I found a pdf document from the Lenovo Germany site which talks about the warranty upgrade options. The image link is shown below.

Code:

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/a2140f756d.png

Can I buy any pack from the 3 year option ( I have a 3 year base warranty) ? I am totally confused.

I request all the members to help me out of this predicament. I need to send my T61 for an urgent replacement, is what I think. Am I right?

Thanking all the members profusely in advance,
Gokul

P.S: I have Spybot's TeaTimer occupying lot of CPU load and around 150 MB RAM; this VeOH player also takes its share of CPU load. All this combined increases temp to 81 C. I have presently disabled these two programs.
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T61 7663 Laptop :: Core 2 Duo T7500 / 2.2 GHz -Centrino Duo - RAM : 1 GB - HD : 120 GB -DVD±RW (±R DL) / DVD-RAM -Gigabit Ethernet -WLAN : 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR -TPM -fingerprint, SmartCard - Windows XP SP2 -14.1" Widescreen
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Reading your post is bit of a chore, you should clearly delineate your question to your comments, also use bold for your question and use double line for space between your sentence if you can, and maybe split your long paragraph to something more manageable so people can read it more easily. This way people can help you easier and won't get confused in the process of reading your questions.

Well here is my response to some of your questions:

1) How high can the CPU temperatures for laptops rise w/o damage to laptop?

around 100 degrees Celsius, but anything above 80 degrees for prolonged period is probably not doing your laptop much good.

You should check your CPU and GPU temperature at different load, use something like Prime95... load that software and monitor the temperature and whether any sudden laptop shutdowns.

2) How can I ascertain if my fan is working correctly?

download TPfancontrol, it will tell your temp for your CPU and GPU, and the rpm of the fan, around 65 degrees and above, the fan should be running at 3500 rpm.

3) I have a nVidia graphics (128 MB) also. Would its malfunctioning affect CPU's temperature? Is the noise due to GPU fan?

it could since they are both using the same heatsink and fan connection.

4) How do I monitor fan speed?

follow what i said in answer 2)

5) Can members kindly post the idle/working/peak load temperatures of similar T61?

when i had a similar machine, it was running at 50 degrees at idle when in performance mode, working temperatures would depend on CPU load (around 63 degrees average) and peak load temperatures would never exceed 75 degrees when the ambient temperature is around 20 to 25 degrees and the heat vent is not blocked. I would imagine if i play GPU intensive game on it for a while, it could potentially hit the 80 degrees mark.

What you should be more worried about is the GPU temperature and not really the CPU temperature, there is a chance that your GPU is overheating way more than your CPU

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1)What warranty pack can I buy ? 3 year / 4 year ? Please inform me if such an upgrade is possible?

i suggest you call Lenovo in Germany, because every country has different policy, which is compounded by the fact that now Lenovo have changed their warranty policy to allow you to extend warranty after it expires.

So call Lenovo, usually in the old days, 5 years is the maximum amount of warranty coverage you can get for your Thinkpad, but now i have seen people reporting 5+ years is possible, however i personally can't confirm the validity of such statements.

My personal opinion is that get this laptop fixed, and then sell it, since the Nvidia GPU on that machine could be faulty and the last thing you want is a failing GPU (FYI i have sold all my Thinkpads with that particular GPU class)

2)Can I buy the warrranty from the US? My uncle stays at Michigan. Will this cover my laptop in Germany?

as long as your model is covered in Germany as per your model number, then this is possible.

3)If I want to buy in Germany, which is the part number of the warranty pack? I am confused with the options available.
Please clarify this Bring-in, On-site warranty terms and other terms pertaining to warranty cover for thinkpads. There is also courier pick up option available! The prices vary accordingly!

You should call Lenovo customer service in Germany.

Bring in = you bring the laptop into the depot or store where they fix it, or mail it into that store at your own expense.

On-site = they come to your house or work to fix it during 9 am to 5 pm and Monday to Friday

Courier pick up = Lenovo dispatch Courier (DHL most probably) to pick up the laptop, and deliver that to the depot and sends it back once fixed using courier at Lenovo's expense.

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And Finally you should really inquire about the warranty option yourself, because the last thing you want is to purchase something on what people tells you, and it turns to be wrong.... then this would waste more time, then you call up and inquire it about yourself.

 

First of all, i apologize for that messy write-up. I am basically new to forums, so kindly pardon me. I shall report back the temperatures this weekend.

Thanks for your patience and the wonderful answers.

BTW idling at adaptive CPU : core temps are 42+/- 4 with GPU 46
(TPFancontrol for gpu temp and "core temp" for CPU core temperatures)

I am running in adaptive mode, would take data backup this weekend, and then send my laptop to the service centre asap.

BTW the cost as enquired here is 225 Euros (after student discount: they do a 3 for 4 year on-site upgrade for 120 Euros and a post 1 yr warranty for 105 Euros.. It is very costly.

The 45K6025 is listed in the US website, but not available in Germany! (5 yr Depot Upgrade for 3 yr warranty machines ~ 150 $ in US online sites)

Thanks for all the suggestions,

More updates at the weekend!!

 

I also run TeaTimer, 4GB (all non original RAM which in my case is Hynix), a host of other programs, use mine intensively. Maybe the only differnce is I always run on a low power state. 56C is my operating temp. Mostly 56 to 59C. BTW IMO your NV card is crapping out it seems.

 

Idling in the mid 30s to low 40s is a good normal range. Idling in the high 40s to low 50s would give me some pause, and idling higher than that would worry me. At full load, temperatures should not exceed about 75 degrees, although you shouldn't worry about damage to the parts until 90 degrees or so (for the CPU; GPU can go higher with no damage).

One easy remedy would be to (referring to the Hardware Maintenance Manual) open up your T61 and clean out the dust and gunk that collects in the fan/heat sink (do not, however, remove your heat sink as that will void your warranty) with some compressed air. That should drop temperatures.

 

I have to run my T61 in the "maximum battery life" profile with everything set low because of heat issues. I occasionally use the higher settings when I want to watch HD videos on Youtube, process a few images quickly, etc. but it's kind of futile, since the CPU just climbs up to the 90s, gets throttled back, and kicks the fan into overdrive. My GPU is also very hot.

 

Have you tried cleaning your interior? Dont just blow air into the vent holes on the outside, try removing the keyboard and palmrest, restrain the fan, and blow canned air to remove dust outwards.

 

I had it apart a couple of months ago, and it made no difference. It's been like this for a long time; I just haven't got around to sending it in for warranty work. It has other issues like crazy screen corruption requiring a reboot every few days, so I'm guessing it will need some hardware replaced.

 

Don't mind me asking, but if you have a warranty what are you waiting for? What you've described is not normal behavior and you should get that fixed as soon as possible.

 

BTW, the rebooting is nor normal. Suggest heat issues internally. If you dont understand, your TP is having mild strokes. This is a prelude to full blown cardiac arrest so I suggest you seek help right away and get the momma board swapped out as that is the only fix. Then cross your fingers that it doesn't become a cycle of refurbed for refurbed until your warranty runs out.

 

To tell you the truth, it's because I use this laptop every day and don't have easy access to a temporary replacement. It's extremely annoying, but it still *works*, so I haven't had sufficient motivation to be without it for a couple of weeks. Retarded, I know

I bought a T410s in December, which I thought would give me a chance to send in the T61, but I ended up returning it because I was so disgusted with the screen quality. This has gone on too long; I will give them a call on Monday and see about sending it in.

Yep

 

I am sorry that it took almost a month to update the progress. I called up Lenovo, and a tech service representative turned up at my door finally.

He brought the CPU cooler (looked like a Copper tube with a fan mounted on it - shaped like a conch!?) and replaced the defective one.

Now I tested the laptop in his presence with prime95 torture test; it runs upto 70 degree Celsius (full 2.2 G mode). The tech rep told me that he has replaced quite a few CPU coolers in T61 during his service visits in Germany.

My pertinent questions are::::


1)Which is the best Thinkpad laptop I can buy now? (Internet browsing, occassional MATLAB-CAD, MS Office etc.)

2) Shall I dump this T61 7663 model? if I do dump it, then what can I buy?

I need a reliable Thinkpad/laptop which is stable and no failure record (atleast high reliability with high MTBF). I am sick of having to replace the part every 8 months. The warranty must be purchased now (another 150-170$ ) as I am wary of this Chinese part. This is the second time the CPU cooler was replaced since October 2007.

Where is the flagship IBM quality? Has it taken a beating since Lenovo's entry?

I am not sure, if it is manners to ask for an advice in this forum regarding a Macbook. Is it superior to Thinkpads?

Many Thanks for your assistance!

Cheers

 

the same companies make the cpu heatsink/fan package (i.e. Toshiba, etc) so nothing changed from the IBM day.

I think your heatsink is just been worn out faster by the Nvidia GPU + T7xxx CPU combo, which maybe running at full speed a lot of time.

For occasional CAD i guess the T400 and T500 should be okay, a second hand in warranty examples are not that expensive.