Temperature of your thinkpad

What is the usual temperature of your laptop during normal use? Mine is usually in the 40C's, occasionally goes to 50C's. But today I felt it hotter than usual, so I checked and it was mid 60C's . I can think of two reasons:

a. I didn't turn on air condition in the room (low 80F's room temperature), or

b. I had been watching You Tube for hours.

Which of the two is more likely to cause the heat?

 

YouTube for hours.

 

which machine are we talking about here?

 

It's X200s. I had set the power scheme to lower "system temperature" and less fan noise. These two seems to be conflicting with each other. (Now I resume it to "Energy Saver".

So seems video play can make a big difference...

 

Youtube uses Flash and Flash is very resource-hungry (but slightly better since the latest version allows hardware acceleration (check if it is enabled in your web browser). DVD playback, on the other hand, uses much less power.

John

 

the flash would be decoded by your CPU, and the low voltage CPU used in the X200s do have to work harder.

 

Hmm.
Heavy gaming...28c ambient = 90/85 with gpu 91c.
Underclock it and it falls nicely to 77/74 but gpu remains at 91C.
Keeping in mind that the ambient is quite hot and this is measured after 1-2hrs of gaming.

 

Thanks guys.

What about playing media files using softwares like VLC, FLV, Windows Media, Quicktime etc.?

I don't play games at all--games would be worse than watching You Tube videos? Is this correct or not:

play DVD < play media files w/ media software < You Tube < play games

?

 

The more compressed the video content then the more work is required to decode it. also, Intel graphics since a couple of generations back includes a built-in H.264 decoder for extra efficiency.

How much power is used by games depends on the type of game. 3D action graphics will be very power-hungry while Solitaire uses insignificant power. You can use HWiNFO to monitor CPU activity and temperature which provides useful guidance.

John

 

Will watching You Tube a lot and playing media (video) files shorten the life of my thinkpad a lot due to the heat?

 

There's so many factors involved in quantifying that, I'd be impossible to say. I was running my X220i when it was a bit warm yesterday. It never never went above warm.

 

If I had CPU/GPU temps above 80C for a prolonged period of time I would be slightly worried. Watching a lot of YouTube is not going to kill your machine or make it wear down faster.

 

CPU/GPU temps shouldn't get anywhere near that high unless you're trying to decode 4K video or something.

 

I am using speedfan 4.43 I am a bit confused with the readings as there are 5 different temperature readings.

HD0: 35
Temp1: 64C
Temp2: 63C
Core 0: 59C
Core 1: 59C

what is the difference between temp and core?

 

The highest I've seen were 98C on the CPU and 92C on the GPU from Linpack + Furmark on 1080p extreme burn in. Usually the CPU is at around 40C (I have it set to Maximum Turbo) just surfing the web or something. It gets up to around 42C ~ 45C (and can spike 50C) when watching a 480p video on YouTube. When gaming (really depends on the game) I've seen as low as around 48C for something like MapleStory, and as high as 86C for SCII and The Sims 3 (the CPU is usually in the 70's for the latter games and can spike into the 80's). The GPU reports it's around 40C normally (though, it should be off so I take it with a grain of salt), and goes up to 70's when gaming. I think my room is like 26 ~ 28C, and I don't use a laptop cooler.

 

I think 85-90c is still acceptable especially if the ambient temperature is +28c.

 

Right now all I've got open is this webpage and my i3 model's two cores are averaging around 50 according to Real Temp. With bios 1.17, I think the fan is set to increase from 2k to 3k at around 52 degrees and the temp drops a few degrees accordingly. I have a sneaky suspicion that the i3 runs a bit hotter than the i5 models (possibly due to using a different heatsink?). This is based on owning both models.

My thermometer says 28 right now, at home.

 

It may be that the i3 CPUs are less efficient because they reach the power limit at a lower frequency. My i5-2520M is at 1.17 volts at 3GHz. Perhaps the i3 needs the same voltage at only 2.5GHz (or whatever is its maximum frequency).

By the way, I was running a program on my T420s a couple of days back that created two threads. One was full time and one was part time but the net result was to keep the CPU temperature in the 90s C with core 1 (which runs 4 to 5C hotter than core 0) throttling some of the time (95C seems to be the threshold for throttling).

John

 

I've never seen my P9400 go higher than 60 for just a normal work load. When I stress it I can get it to the 80's.

Love my accuracy no?

 

Funny thing is, my W520's 2620M was still Turbo-ing at 98C (though, only 1 bin). From what I've read, i3's tend to run cooler than i5's as they don't Turbo.

 

Well John, according to HwinFo32 (CPU status- VID column), my i3 goes to 1.1259v when pushed to 2092 MHz.

That hasn't been my experience, although that isn't definitive, of course.