T61 Left Side Palm Rest Heat

Hey All,

I am absolutely in LOVE with my T61. I've owned probably 6-7 laptops in my career, and this one takes the cake across the board.

The only grievance I have is a common one for laptops these days which is the thermal engineering just can't keep up with the chips.

My left palm rest heats up quite a bit on continued use to the point where my hand starts sweating and I'd have to call it uncomfortable. I'm suprised it's this side because there doesn't appear to be any heat generating components there.

I was curious if anyone else has experienced this and found a way to deal with it.

- Is there fan control for the T61 so that I could rev it up?
- Anyone found some sort of "palm rest guard" against heat?

Much thanks!

 

The heat is most likely caused by the hard drive, not the cpu. Check to see where the hd is located, but I really doubt you're feeling the cpu heat.

My laptop for example I can get the cpu to like 75*C benchmarking in hot weather and the palm rest is cool to the touch. Then I benchmark my hard drive getting it to 55* (cpu at 33*) and the palm rest is absolutely smoking, can barely touch it.

So I think it's your hard drive.

Not much you can do about it, a laptop cooler might help a little but it's all about your ambient temps. So cool down your room which in turn will cool down your hard drive and not make the palm rest untouchable.

 

Hard drive is on the right side adinu

 

I have this problem too on my new T61. After only a couple of days my palms were leaving permanent marks on the palm rest that probably won't come out unless I use cleaner or something. It can be very annoying.

 

Hmm, weird tho because I had an R61 with the T7300 and I never felt any heat on the palm rests. What is your ambient temp?

 

I currently have that problem with my T61. Mine is in the right palm though. I've got a 7200rpm drive so that could be part of the problem.

I've read that if you turn off indexing and diskeeper it would help, those things keep the hard drive in constant work.

I uninstalled diskeeper and my palm is a bit cooler, but still gets too warm at times. I will not turn off indexing because I can see myself relying on it a lot.

I'll watch this thread though; maybe someone comes up with a good solution.

 

the heatrest in the palm area is due to your HD...a 7200rpm will cause more heat usually than a 5400rpm one...I don't notice any heat issues on mine

 

To the R61 User - I think the R61 may actually run cooler on the palm rest because of its thickness which makes the internal components further away from the typing and palm rest surfaces.

I rarely use the touchpad, so I'm thinking of finding a thick piece of fabric that will go over the entire palm rest and touch pad area. If any of you find something like this - preferably in black , let me know!

 

It is confusing to me since the hard drive is on the right side on the T61, and so I wonder what the heat build up is on the left side of the palm rest. I have not had any issues with the palmrest and too much heat. It seems very cool, and I have been running two virtual machines and watching a video...Phil

 

I see a correlation here; it seems that people with the problem are using the 14 inch version.

I've been troubleshooting this today. I disabled indexing, enable SATA compatibility mode, and even opened up my machine to see what was under the hood. After all of this my palm rest is still as hot as before. So I re-enabled indexing and SATA ACHI Mode.

Maybe I'll have to step down to 5400rpm.

I have a 200gig 7200rmp Hitachi, will this be any cooler than the Segate Momentus?