why on earth is my X201 heating up so much suddenly?

i've noticed the last few weeks my X201 has been heating up considerably. it never used to do this. it always ran cool even if i leave it on the bed. i opened it up to see if it was clogged with dust, but it was clean. very little dust. i havent checked the exact temps, but its clearly not right. its almost painful to touch hot.

i'm going to try changing the thermal paste, but i dont see how that could be the problem causing it to heat up this much.

any ideas?

 

If it is summer where you live, it is likely because the ambient temperature is higher.

 

Use ProcessManager and keep it minimized and occasionally check your CPU usage. If there's some process constantly consuming 100% CPU, that could be a sudden source of excessive heat.

 

nope, that was the first thing i checked. its not a rogue process. in fact the computer is idling and still heating up considerably.

and its not to do with the ambient temperature either, because its in a climate controlled room

 

Perhaps cleaning out your vents or doing a repaste maybe in order. Though that is usually a gradual thing, not turn on your machine one minute then getting hot. Also Arrandale processors still get pretty toasty. When I had my Latitude E6410 with a i3-380M, it was like high 40's with 26C ambient, and load easily hit up to high 70's.

 

Is your fan still working?

Where is it heating up? If you can pinpoint the spot you can cross reference the hardware maintenance manual to see which part may be causing the heat.

 

My x201 idles around 55 degrees celcius and will run 90-95 during stress tests. I thought I needed to do a repaste too, but when I asked a few months back, no one seemed to think it was a problem.

I have the i5 540M. Do others have much lower idle temps? Like in the 30s?

 

its the heat sink and fan area. as i said in the original post, i already opened it up to clean and there was hardly any dust. will try a repaste anyway soon. fan is working fine. im out of ideas except for the repasting.

 

last time when my system heated up out of the blue i found out that it was the "plugin-container.exe" process in task manager, which is usually flash, i just ended the process and it cooled down almost instantly

 

yea thats the flash plugin for firefox if im not mistaken. i dont even have firefox installed, and no web browser open. have no idea why its heating up. it cant be that the processor is malfunctioning or something?

 

If temperatures are high, the cooling system is clean and there's no substantial CPU load then (i) check the actual fan speed (TFfanControl should give this info - maximum fan speed is usually > 4000rpm) then, if fan is behaving OK (ii) repaste the CPU.

John

 

fan is behaving ok. its speed is quite high when the thing is boiling hot. didnt have time to repaste today but will do so when i have a moment and report back

 

Flash is already hard on CPU's, maybe email up Adobe lol.

Have you tried out TPFanControl? A repaste or worst case scenario, a whole new fan/heatsink.

 

at least its still under warranty if it needs a whole new heatsink/fan.

 

Perhaps boot some linux live CD and check if that heats up abnormally as well. If it doesn't, it shouldn't be a hardware problem.

 

I would suggest when/if you repaste, make sure to secure the 4 screws that hold the heatsink in place, but DO NOT over tighten them.

 

is it possible to over tighten heatsink screws? the ones on my other machines seem to have some kind of force limiter

 

On my T410 it's definitely possible to over tighten them. Since there is no heatspreader the heatsink sits directly on the processor die.



That's an arrandale processor, I don't think there is a heatspeader on sandy bridge processors as well, but I haven't seen one personally to know for sure.

Edit: Apparently it does.

 

Usually there is a backplate for the heatsink on the opposite side of the motherboard, and it will stop allowing it to thread after enough torque.

 

That's a desktop SB processor, which has a heat spreader (as is standard). Recent laptop CPUs don't have heat spreaders as far as I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong)...

 

I got so eager to post I didn't see the obvious desktop RAM slots in the last pic. @ me.

 

dont think i've seen any laptop cpu's in the past 6 years with heat spreaders.they all seem to have force limiters though, so i think it should be alright

 

download realtemp and check your temperature of the system.

have you recently updated the BIOS firmware?

 

actually, you might have hit on something there. quite recently there was a new bios update available on the system update list, i allowed it to install it. is the new bios bad? or did it not flash properly or something?

the heat problem is really a disappointing issue for me, because i loved how cool and quiet it was. I bought it to write my master's thesis on, so i can sit on the couch/bed and write or go out to the park etc. the heat is making it quite uncomfortable

 

It is unlikely to be bad as such but the thermal tables may have been changed, probably for less fan noise, but in your case it gives more heat. Download the previous BIOS (choose from near the bottom of this page), install it and see if your heating problem goes away.

John

 

cant be because of fan noise, its louder now.

 

then just backdate the bios if that is the case, and see whether the system is still having the bios with the old bios.

 

i just checked out the bios download page, apparently its the same bios i "updated" to, its just a new version of the package. does that mean there is no difference?

 

One never knows whether the change logs contain all changes or just the major changes. I suggest you try the previous BIOS version.

John

 

ok downgraded the bios and it seems to be running cooler. gonna change the thermal paste as well just in case

is realtemp more accurate than hwmonitor?

 

You need to edit the tjmax value in the hwmonitor .ini file as explained here. Then the programs should agree.

John

 

oh, do i have to do that for HW monitor on my M4600 as well?

 

It looks like Tjunction for the i7-2620M is only 100C. If in doubt get a 3rd opinion from HWiNFO32. For the i5-540M Tjunction is 105C. I hadn't realised that Intel had lowered this parameter when it introduced Sandybridge.

John

 

thanks. if there are any X201 users here, could you post your idle temps? i just want to check them against mine.

 

I have the X201 with the dual core i7 as well and have the same problem. Until I can figure a better solution, I went into the windows power management, (not the thinkvantage power management), and reduced the max processor state to 75%. There is a free program called CoreTemp that you can download, which I've found pretty useful. ...Hope this helps. Edit: ...core temp went from 90-95C+ to between 60 and 68C under full load. If you have a million browser tabs open like I tend to do, then you may want to set the processor state wee bit higher. You'll likely see the temp difference immediately after changing it.

 

"im out of ideas except for the repasting."

The value of 'repasting' is hugely a myth of this board.

Renee

 

For new machines I generally agree. For old machines, or for the odd defective machine (where the assemblers seemed to take the "more is better" approach) it *can* be beneficial... but I agree: it's highly overrated.

 

for very old machines, the paste that Lenovo and IBM can dry out and crack. Even though they use mineral oil within the paste, they still can slowly evaporate overtime and reduces the efficiency of heat transfer as the voids are filled with air.

 

IBM (and now lenovo) have used various shin-etsu microSi compounds since the mid-90s.   silicone grease, thankfully, isn't oil-based.   no worries there.

...except that it's machine-applied onto the heatsinks at the manufacturer to spec (typically resulting in what looks like too much applied) to guarantee a connection.   with shin-etsu compound, it usually doesn't matter if there's too much applied since it's soft enough that the excess will squeeze out the sides.   since it's non-conductive, the excess is usually only a visual issue.   if it's too thick then it's usually because the heatsink didn't get clamped down all the way.

but, technical minutia aside, i highly doubt an X201 would suddenly begin to overheat due to thermal compound breakdown.   it should have run hot from day one if it was related to the factory compound or heatsink alignment.

 

silicone grease will still use some silicone oil (albeit not petroleum oil based), to act as emulsifier agent. While silicone oil does have a much lower vapour pressure (and therefore evaporation rate) at room temperature, it doesn't mean they don't evaporate at all if they are heated up.

Thermal aging effect on silicone grease are noticeable and is real.

Unless Shin-etsu (which i highly doubt) have managed to manufacture a product that has zero volatile constant/content at elevated temperature, otherwise thermal aging will occur. This will lead to drying and cracking of the thermal grease overtime.

From the data sheet on their websites, you can see that they produce a volatile content over 24 hours when kept at elevated temperature.

These volatile contents (and size of the particles) are important for the thermal grease to fill tiny microscopic voids between surfaces, and maintain dimensional stability overtime, thus not cause any shrinking and thus increasing void sizes between the contact surfaces.

P.S. Mineral oil doesn't necessary mean Petroleum derived oil, it can also include silicone oil depending on industry and profession.

 

there's definitely a breakdown eventually... even in synthetic oils.   but, given what i've seen of shin-etsu's products, i highly doubt they'd break down so rapidly as to affect a system built within the last 5-6 years—especially an X201.   my point above was that any such breakdown would likely be the result of an outside factor and not the compound itself.   this of course assumes the use of a good compound in the first place.

we have to keep in mind that manufacturers don't want their products coming back into service for something as rudimentary as thermal compound on a heatsink.   the compounds are formulated and application methods/amounts performed specifically with this in mind.   but, that's an obvious point.

for anyone who really wants to swap their compound, X23-7783D is where it's at.

 

Yeah, and the first-gen MacBook was machine supposedly had the same assembly -- but nevertheless, too much thermal past caused many a thermal shutdown...

(For the record, I don't think that's necessarily what's happening here. I was just pointing out that it wouldn't be completely unheard of.)

You raise a good point about the heatsink. That should be easy enough to check though.