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?
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If it is summer where you live, it is likely because the ambient temperature is higher.
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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.
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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 -
Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow
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.
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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.
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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
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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?
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John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator
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
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Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow
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.
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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.
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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.
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is it possible to over tighten heatsink screws? the ones on my other machines seem to have some kind of force limiter
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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.
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Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow
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.
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I got so eager to post I didn't see the obvious desktop RAM slots in the last pic.
@ me.
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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
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download realtemp and check your temperature of the system.
have you recently updated the BIOS firmware? -
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 -
John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator
John -
cant be because of fan noise, its louder now.
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then just backdate the bios if that is the case, and see whether the system is still having the bios with the old bios.
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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?
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John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator
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? -
John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator
John -
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John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator
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.
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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.
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"im out of ideas except for the repasting."
The value of 'repasting' is hugely a myth of this board.
Renee -
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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.
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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 yearsespecially 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. -
(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.
why on earth is my X201 heating up so much suddenly?
Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by afhstingray, Jul 28, 2011.