new CPU for my T61

Tsunade,

I agree. I may put a little more one large CPU chips. But just a little more.

Renee

 

i've always applied a thin layer of thermal paste. With CPUs that have no heat spreader I have seen problems with the thinner pastes where it seems like you have to re-apply them overtime...hence why it seems the OEM pastes are generally thicker.

 

Hrm you are right. I recall everytime I ordered an HP heatsink/fan I would get a tube of Shin-Etsu. Intel also gives you a tube of Shin-Etsu (at least in my Gulftown 970 did). Dell mounds a white compound on their CPU, probably silicone based.

OEMs usually just mound TIM, as long as it lasts past 1 year manufacturer warranty they aren't liable.

 

I read the excellent review mentioned in this thread. SE came out ever so slightly better then Artic Silver although they both still received a rating of A+ from the reviewer.

Renee

 

Cool thread. I'm still rocking T61p and I just upgraded from XP to W764bit with a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB hybrid drive. T61p has never felt so good. Oh I just got done redoing my TP on GPU and CPU. Went with IC Diamond. Good stuff.

I use TPfan control for cooling and I use MSI After burner for GPU. Love to play UT3 as well. I'm able to play UT3 with gpu clocks at 620/1240/915.

Going to upgrade to 6GB of DDR2 soon.

My T61p right now:

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1733906

 

^ nice 3DMark score there Mine when overclocked hit ~2440 with the old T7500, but it has only 128MB video memory (smaller laptop).

middleton is working on new version of the BIOS that would enable the DUAL IDA mode for our laptops ... which would be great

So you got an engineering sample of the T9300 cpu ?? I see yours idle at 0.925 Volts, same as mine.

 

Running on Dual IDA since today ... at 2.8GHz.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/566213-first-lenovo-t61-running-dial-ida-would-mine.html

 

Nice setup. I'm very happy with my T9600 upgrade (had a P8600 originally).

 

Hi everyone, I am convinced you guys are the people to shed light on my T61p situation and the most qualified to advise me on which direction to take it. I found the thread searching for information about T61 crashes, the "bad" NVidia GPU, and possible heat issues and solutions.

My ThinkPad is: T61p, 6459CTO, Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 (2.4GHz 800MHz 4MBL2), NVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (256MB Open GL), 15.4" WSXGA+.
(CPU-Z, which I am using today for the first time, tells me I have a Conroe E6600 processor (65 nm die). The machine was purchased 12/2007.)

For the last 8 months, (coinciding with, perhaps only coincidentally, having installed Windows 7 32-bit to replace the original Win XP,) the computer has been shutting down abruptly, an instant power-off condition. This almost always only happens when graphic processes, mostly video encoding/decoding occurs. I have been using FLV Player to watch video files, and often the scrolling of the video timeline bar will cause the computer to suddenly shut off. I have also seen it happen once when Windows was generating thumbnails of a newly opened folder. I have been researching this for ages, but in desperation I’m turning to the people in this thread for your unmistakable expertise!

I have seen posts relating to ThinkPads losing heatsink functionality as well as the potential of "bad" chips in the NVIDIA FX 570M GPU. Is the power-off crash a sign of a heat condition, or a bad GPU? I cannot find information that explains what happens if the GPU fails due to [the manufacturing] flaw, only that users are concerned about keeping temperatures as low as possible to "save" the GPU from failing. I have been using TPFanControl to get a sense of temperatures. Idle temps with room temperature quite cool, I see 45-50C for both CPU and GPU and the most common temperatures I see (as in right now) are around 65C / 60C (CPU/GPU) and that’s just with web pages open and nothing really intense going on. The shutdowns have occurred sometimes without seeing a sudden spike in temperatures. I have been scrolling through video with temps in the 50s, and had a sudden shutdown without seeing marked increase, as well as seeing temperatures at 80 without a shutdown, and then, again, viewing a video file causes the crash. The TPFanControl log file shows temperatures just before the last crash at: 79C / 73C (CPU/GPU)

So, with this info in mind, what are my best options and your suggestions? I’m looking primarily to have a STABLE, reliable system, although if a CPU upgrade would make it faster AND lower temps, that would be great.

1. Do my power-off crashes appear to be heat-related?
2. Does opening this puppy up, remounting heatsinks & applying (better) heatsink compound make sense?
3. Would a CPU upgrade make sense? Which CPUs are best choices? (I don’t see myself getting into overclocking/undervolting etc. unless doing that will provide a more stable machine.)
​

I’m okay with opening the laptop, my main concern is whether this particular model used thermal paste or the [inferior] thermal pad – I am using this as my primary computer, and I am concerned that I have appropriate thermal conductor replacement material on hand before disassembly (and I really don’t want to have to fashion copper shims etc to fill the space if, indeed, a thermal pad was used on my machine. Any of you with direct experience with my model, and can advise what was likely used in this unit, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks very much for input! I don't post in forums often, but then only if I'm convinced the people and the discussion are appropriate. I REALLY am optimistic you will be able to advise me!

 

If you're getting what I'd call an "insta-crash", with no warning, such as graphical corruption, banding, etc., the graphics card wouldn't be my first conclusion.

The first thing I'd do is (assuming you feel comfortable with it) clean out the heatsink assembly. Open your ThinkPad, and use a can compressed air while holding the CPU fan so it cannot spin up (so you avoid placing stress on the fan bearings). Even if this doesn't turn out to be the culprit, it's the first thing I'd try, since it's reasonably simple. I wouldn't reseat the heatsink/fan unit unless it is loose.

When I see what you describe on desktop systems, it's usually a power supply issue. I suppose trying a different power brick if you have one around would be an option. It could be an overheat issue, but usually when a system overheats, the CPU clock throttles back rather than shutting the system down entirely.

Are you running the latest BIOS? Sometimes fan speed profiles are updated during BIOS updates to prevent overheat issues.

P.S. I probably wouldn't upgrade the CPU. Yours is pretty fast as Core 2 Duos go. The only exception I'd make is if you're doing a lot of video encoding --a Penryn-core chip would add SSE 4.1 instructions that could make a difference.

 

Thanks, LoneWolf15. I had cleaned dust out of the fan. Also, this issue has happened both on AC power using two different power bricks, as well as when running on battery only. Also, it's happened while using TPFanControl to manually have fan on highest RPM setting.

Between the time of my post and your reply, I found in Lenovo forums that Lenovo was repairing T61 units with discrete graphics, even those up to 6 months out of warranty, for the known defect in the NVidia chips. It's discussed extensively in posts relating to a failure and a long and 2 short beeps here: T61p exhibiting 1 long and 2 short beep and black ... - Lenovo Community. Despite my laptop being 4-1/2 months out of warranty, I called Lenovo support and with a little gentle prodding & armed with info from the forums, (after they first suggested I try something like BestBuy Geek squad,) they agreed to accept my unit for repair, even though the support rep understood that my unit was not exhibiting the same failure (with beeps) but rather just crashing on graphic intensive use. This ThinkPad cost me over $2,000 and I did express that I hoped Lenovo would stand by their quality control and repair it since the GPU and overheating defect was *known* to them, and being repaired for other customers with a similar situation. I wanted to try to get this done before this window of opportunity I just discovered might have closed. (Just hope that they won't backtrack on me once they receive the unit. They are sending me a box to ship it back to them.)

Of course I don't know what the fix will be, but can I expect a new motherboard to be installed?

 

If the fault lies in the graphics chip, I'd say you can expect that.

If it does not, that's up to Lenovo. The repair extensions have only been to cover the graphics chip.

 

hi i have a lenovo t61 with a T7100 @ 1.8 with thw nvidia 140m, i want to upgrade the cpu to a T9500, i currently game on this laptop overclocking the gpu (i know it's not a gaming machine) but i get acceptable FPS from many games (on crysis 2 and black ops it stutters sometime but it's playable), so if i upgrade the cpu would i get a resonable fps boost?

 

it is hard to say exactly how much FPS boost with the T9500 (but usually at least 10% would be something you would expect).

It is probably better that you don't game too much with the Nvidia GPU of that generation.

 

Lead_org is right. Heating up a T61 with nVidia graphics will increase the chance of failure in a graphics chip already known for a high failure rate; overclocking the GPU is highly inadvisable. Adding to the system temperature by upgrading the CPU to a top-end model could also speed this along.

If you wish to do a CPU upgrade, I'd look at a T8100 or a T8300, which are cheaper, and still significantly faster; they should also run as cool or cooler than the T7100 you have.

 

The T8100 has been running nicely for some time now, but after setting up the TS Dual IDA (incl bios-mod) and some general system tweaking, again I am brought to think that there is less heatsink-cpu contact than I had with the T7300
Running Dual IDA 11,5@1,00V I can still hit 90C in Orthos (TPFC-manual-7) which seems much to high.
Any ideas?
(On a sidenote, running the thinkpad from AC with the battery removed results in a temp drop of 10C or more - is this common?)

 

How "thick" are such thermal pads? When I installed the T8100, I followed the guides here and applied a rice-grain of AC ceramique. Could it be that the relatively high temps I get under load after installing the T8100 are caused by the thermal-paste being too thin? And if so, should I, (i) apply a thicker layer of paste, (ii), buy and install a thermal pad or (iii), attempt to install a cobber-sheet w/rice-grain layers of AC?

 

from a glance at some of the other pages in this thread, you seem to have had problems with heat transfer from the CPU to the heatsink. I would bet that could be a problem again with your laptop. I'd open and repaste nicely this time (i.e. dont count on one drop in the middle only) if the temps do not drop when you're using the maximum fan speeds (setting 64 on TPFC)

for instance, my laptop can hardly hit a temp over 75 deg C under hard use (Unreal Tournament 3) while running in Dual IDA at 1.075V, but the fan speed is set at maximum and the laptop itself is lifted on 1" stands. Recently I tested the CPU with the LinPack software from Intel (beats Orthos in stressing the CPU) and I hit like 83 - 84 deg C on the 5th minute or so. At regular clock of 2.6GHz (1.025V) for my T9500, the laptop did not even touch the 80 deg C mark.

no complains for the GPU as well, hitting what - 3rd year of heavy overclock (>50%)

holla this laptop rocks, and I keep gaming on it almost every day

 

<- thinking in PLL overclocking the bus from 200 to 266MHz ...

the resulting CPU frequency will be 3.46GHz for normal operation (13x), and 3.72GHz for Dual IDA (14x) for my T9500

either that or X9000 CPU instead, though that would be another 200 bux wasted

I cant believe I'm still hitting 100% occasionally on both cores when playing Unreal Tournament 3. Even my 2.8GHz-running-CPU right now seems to get stuffed with work for this game ..

P.S. at this point I may need fan upgrade of some sort as well :|

 

Is T7600 the fastest CPU a T60p would support or is there a hack to allow newer ones?

 

You could always replace the mainboard by a Penryn capable T61 mainboard and use a T9500 CPU. While it would give you just a rather humble 270MHz speed increase and an additonal 2MB CPU cache, you'd be able to use up to 8GB RAM. That's what i am currently using.

 

If you buy that X9000, I'll take the T9500 off of your hands .

 

so I've been doing some research and it looks like I'm going to be facing close to about 90 deg C at 3.2GHz and full load on the CPU only (with Orthos, possibly more with Intel's Linpack software). And this is with my fan working on full speed, with the laptop lifted on some 1" stands.

and I'm trying to keep my GPU from not going over the 80 deg mark due to the well known nVidia issue - sucessfull so far (and for the past 3.5 years actually), tops at about 75 atm while still >50% overclocked.

So I guess with the current cooling system that 3.2GHz would be about the highest possible somewhat safe CPU clock. At least that's where most people stop pushing it.

hmmmm ... anybody know of a fan upgrade of some sort? I've seen people add another copper wire/line to help the heat transfer from the chips to the fan ... And I'm sure I dont want to do water cooling modifications at this point, lol.

 

I'm forced to replace the failing fan on my T61 soon, and thought it may be worth it to finally upgrade the CPU while I'm at it (Been wanting to for a while, but money's tight).

I have a T7300 on an old Intel board (flashed with Middleton's latest) as well as a tube of arctic silver in a drawer. I figure T9300 would be the best I could possibly aim for, although I'd consider a T9500 if it were affordable.

Questions:

• Is the height definitely less on the Peryns compared to the T7300?
  
  
• Will tightening the heat sink further really meet the decreased height, if so? If not, is there any other fix short of increased amounts of paste?
  
  
• Is there a software-based method to compensate for the loss of thermal sensing shutdown? For instance, can TPFanControl or other apps accomplish the shutdown at the same temps?
  
  
• As the performance gap between my T7300 and a T9300/500 is larger than other's upgrades, will I see overall performance gain aside from video encoding/decoding? <- Mostly curious about specifics, since I've decided an upgrade is probably worthwhile overall.

For those who might say buy a new laptop (so many do):

My living with the T7300 for this long, and not buying a new laptop, is due to financial difficulty. It would be honest to say I'm lucky I have what I do right now. The willingness/ability to upgrade has been based on striking while the iron's hot; not being cheap (Who can afford 4GB DDR2 SODIMMS?!).

That said, I love this machine. I'd probably love a T520, but ignorance is bliss there. This is just the best I've had, and it has served me well up to now. Aside from practical need to keep it going, it deserves some loving attention.

Speaking of which, are there any recommendations for or against any particular fans, or seller of fans, on eBay? My assembly is #42W2823, but I'm going the fan route (sans heatsink), and wonder if some (if not most) of the Chinese sellers are selling low-end ones. Anyone receive a oem pull, or a better aftermarket one? I'd hate to have to repeat this experience a few months down the line.

 

The Penryn CPU is the same size of the Merom processors so there's nothing special you need to do to get it working on the T61. As long you give a thin, even coverage of decent Thermal Paste on then it shouldn't have any problems, you can always use my T61 thermal paste guide to help assist you on this. There are slight increases in performance benefits, HD movie decoding is not as strenuous (thanks to the SSE4 instruction) and benefits of less heat for same clock speed performance.

 

Ookamp:

- same height, and the springs on the bolts there compensate if any difference occurs. The Penryn chip is smaller area-wise though.

- I've never seen the need of thermal shut-down, even with CPU/GPU working on 100% continuously, so dont worry about that. Just run TPFanControl and have it spin the fan on max (64 setting) if temps get over 65 to 70 deg and all will be good

- there will be performance gain, whether or not you see it though depends on what you use the laptop for. I can show what it is for me while playing UT3

- if you cant score T9500 then try to get T9300. These would be the two chips worth getting as upgrade over a Merom chip. The X9000 is really overpriced, just like the 8GB RAM for our machines, so unless you really need it I'd suggest saving money or spending those elsewhere.

... and the T61 is really a pretty decent laptop whenever you look at it anyways I currently have 4 of them but use only 1

 

My wife is the same way with her laptop. A new one is low on her priority list and the money can go elsewhere with her. It's a Dell Studio 15" from late '08, and I've been upgrading it over time the past few years. The most recent upgrade was a processor replacement from a Merom T5770 to a Penryn T8100. What a huge difference! Significantly less heat, no more startup issues w/ Windows 7, and it does run noticeably faster. The T8100 cost me only $30, since I pulled it from a broken ThinkPad R61.

I would have preferred putting in a T9300, but the cost of the broken R61 w/ a working T8100 was too good to pass up. Either way, it's still a Penryn w/ a good amount of cache. The installation process was simple, and I used a thin layer of MX-4 paste.

The next upgrade, possibly a birthday gift, will probably be a SSD.

 

so for PLL overclockers, the T61 uses SLG8LP564V as clock gen, and I know that because I just stripped one of my 14" T61 wide apart.

pins are really small though, will require some skill to solder wire there to bring pin 7 down to ground so that the 200MHz bus will rise to 266MHz, thus raise the CPU speed to the moon, lol.

 

May I inform that Binh has figured out how to trick the chipset to think it's using the standard 200MHz bus while overclock the supplied clock to the CPU to 266MHz, thus overclock the CPU via pinmod

read here for his report that includes pictures.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...pinmod-overclocking-methods-examples-121.html

 

What would the practical benefit be? I know it's great to OC for it's own sake, but what improvement would I see with my new T9300 OC'd?

Which I bought and installed, by the way. Glad I am for it too.

 

Hi,
sorry to bump up an old thread. I've purchased an used Penryn T9500 to my T61 (6464-4YG) and cannot get it work. When I boot T61 nothing happens, cpu fan just spins a couple of seconds and then nothing, it just powers off. No beeps or warning messsages, not even post screen. I've the latest Middleton's BIOS (2.29) and with my old Meron cpu (T7300) system runs just fine. Is it possible T9500 is dead or am I missing something? T9500's previous owner assured me it was working before.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

@zajiz:

You're not missing anything. The CPU is bad.

Return it and move on.

 

So, if I put a T9500 processor to replace T8300 on my T61, should I install a fresh OS or just use the magical blue button? ^^

my bios is now 2.29 (middleton's bios)

Thank you for the answer.

 

You don't need to reinstall the operating system in order for the new processor to be recognised, Windows should be able to pick it up and install the relevant drivers without additional work. Did it on my T61 coming from a T7300 to a T9300 processor and my Windows 7 OS recognised the new CPU straight away.

 

None of the above.

Just boot the currently installed OS and enjoy.

 

Of course, you could use this as an excuse to install tpfancontrol if you feel like installing something.

 

I had the same experience when I upgraded from T7300 to T8100
upon installing I had done everything to make sure that the CPU was seated and that everything was tight, but still nothing.
I then went on to reseat the CPU and tighten everthing a bit more as it occurred to me that the new CPU seemed to be a TINY bit more "flat".
Voila, everything has been working smoothly for more than a year after that

 

@ajkula66:
Ok, I just want to be sure because I've read somewhere that it can also depend on T61's motherboard revision (or something like that) if Penryn cpus are supported. Can someone verify if this is true or not?

I just don't wanna believe my "new" T9500 is dead already

@eyeland:
Thanks for the tip! I try to reseat T9500 once more when I get home. I'll post my results later.

 

It's true, but the Middleton BIOS stops that error message. There's a possibility of undetected overheating since a Merom board isn't compatible with the temp sensors on a Peryn CPU, but Peryns run pretty cool. If you keep your fan clean and running, you shouldn't run into any issues. (tpfancontrol is good in this situation too)

Of course, the person who owned that T9500 before you may have pushed it too far.

 

Allright folks, I've reseated T9500 and also tested it in another laptop with no luck, so it's obvious now that the damn chip is dead. I'll return it and continue looking for another. So, if someone happens to have a spare one, let me know

Ookamo:
So are you saying that T9500 works on every T61 mobo revisions, but an error message will result in some of them during post (and Middleton BIOS solves that issue)?

 

ajkula66 probably knows the dates better than I, but initial T61 boards supported Merom CPUs. Peryns have digital temp sensors that Merom boards don't recognize, hence the error. A Merom board will support a T9500 or even more (with overheating risks), but not without the Middleton hacked BIOS.

 

Here's the story:

A "Merom" board with Lenovo BIOS will boot with a Penryn CPU, but will throw a "thermal sensor" warning. Middleton's BIOS takes care of that...

A "Penryn" board will work with both with no adjustments required.

I've just sold a T601 FrankenPad (a T61 planar in a 15" T60 shell with an IPS LCD) where Middleton's BIOS was applied to a Merom board, the machine runs a T9500 like a champ.

Hope this helps.

 

I've installed T8100 CPUs in Merom T61's several times, with no need for Middleton's BIOS & no thermal sensor warnings. Only time I've installed that BIOS is to break the SATA 1.5Gbps barrier, for SSDs and newer HDDs.

Is it just T9500 CPUs and above that need it?

 

There's really not much "above" T9500 that is applicable to T61/p, unless you wanna go really-hog-wild and throw in a X9000.

I'll admit that the only CPU upgrades I've done on this particular platform were after the Middleton had introduced his BIOS, so I wouldn't know how a Merom board behaves with a T8100. Will test it out on my next FrankenPad build and let you fine people know...

 

yes, T9500 will work on every T61. Older models will pop up the thermal error, while newer will not. That would not matter at all as the middleton's bios should be used anyways due to its numerous advantages (besides skipping on the thermal error).

about the overheating - there is a CPU thermal sensor sitting pretty close to the CPU so it could catch if your CPU is overheating, though with small difference but still would do just fine. This is where TPFanControl reads the CPU temp from. And even if the CPU build in temp sensors were working, you should know that those are really crappy ones. Intel tried to switch from analog temp sensors to digital ones, but not much improvement in the accuracy, heh.

the T9500 in question couple posts above is a bad one, but I guess you already figured that out.

I'm still proudly using my T61 (specs in sig), besides the two others sitting near by. Great laptops, if you'd ask

yes there is - if you're lucky enough to find an X9100 with E0 stepping, you can make it to work with 266MHz bus while fooling the chipset that it is still using 200MHz one (the way to overclock the CPU), and then you can run high clock speeds (500MHz+ over) while still keeping normal temps. Like having a 3.7GHz CPU running on full speed yet keeping somewhat around 80 to 85 deg C max temps . I tried to find me a chip like that with no success (besides the hugely overpriced ones at around 400 to 500 USD).

the X9000 runs too hot, so not much improvement over dual IDA running T9500 (such as mine)

 

here's small update for my post above:

apparently one can install a x9100 in a T61 with pinmod on the CPU socket so that the CPU reports 200MHz bus needed rather than 266MHz, which would otherwise cause the chipset to lock the CPU to the 6x multiplier to prevent overclocking (intels attempt to prevent OC). So with this pinmod no fooling of the chipset is needed (which is harder to achieve), and it would supply 200MHz as normal to the CPU, at which point due to the unlocked multiplier one can go way up in clock speed

if anybody is interested, post here and I'll dig up and upload a picture of the actual socket being pinmodded. It really is a matter of connecting two pins (holes) on the socket with a tiny wire

 

Not that I'm in the market, but what practical improvement (if any) would one see compared to, say, a T9300? Add that it would be on the more stable Intel board (vs NVIDIA) with 8GB of RAM and an SATA II SSD as well, what added performance boost would one see besides benchmarks? Given the architecture, we must surely be brushing the ceiling of the maximum upgradability of a T61 already.

 

We most certainly are.

However, for those of us who prefer an IPS panel and a 4:3 format, the T61/p board is the last one suitable for FrankenPadding of that nature.

While I know some people who genuinely require 32GB of RAM, I've got ways to go before I get anywhere close to that point and the 8GB cap applicable to T61 - along with a T9300 is plenty for silly old me - but maxing out the performance in a way miro_gt suggests may be a very viable option for certain users, yours truly not included.

My $0.02 only.

 

I new it, passmark CPU charts change CPU scores over time, and are not really that accurate ... :\

The T9500 used to get score of 1,852 (looking at my first post on this page) and now some ~2 years later it shows it as 1,758.
The T9300 even shows as faster with score of 1,769 and now both get beaten by T9400 with the score of 1,831.

I mean really .... LOL.

PassMark CPU Benchmarks - High Mid Range CPU's

P.S.
.. maybe now passmark give extra score points if the FSB of the processor is higher.

 

The T9300 is even less than that, and it also lists an incorrect price:

PassMark - Intel Core2 Duo T9300 @ 2.50GHz - Price performance comparison