X60 overheating with 7.1

[Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko]

On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 16:05 -0500, George Neville-Neil wrote:
> On Jan 16, 2009, at 15:28 , Josh Paetzel wrote:
> >
> > A few things I've never posted before to the mailing lists.
> >
> > 1)  My heat problems were somewhat intermittant.  Enough so that it
> > would fool me in to thinking software was fixing things.  I'd try some
> > change, and it would seem to work, or not, but every once in a while I
> > was able to run a mke -j4 buildworld without it hitting 100C and
> > shutting down.
> 
> This sounds quite familiar.
> 
> > 2) IBM has admitted they had assembly problems.  If you browse around
> > you'll find some people who think their T60/X60/R60's are loud or have
> > unusably high heat, and some people who think the are quiet and
> > perfectly fine.  When I took mine apart the thermal compound was very
> > excessively applied (think 2 year old applying jelly to a sandwich)  
> > and
> > after I cleaned it up and reassembled it I thought I had damaged it
> > somehow as the cpu fan wasn't running at all.  It turns out that  
> > with a
> > proper amount of thermal paste it can handle low cpu load with only
> > passive cooling.  My CPU temps went from 65-70C at idle with the fan
> > running full out to 42-45C at idle with the fan either off or barely
> > running.  At full load it went from unusable to 65C with the fan
> > eventually ramping up to full speed after an hour or so of intensive  
> > use.
> >
> > You may be hitting a software issue, but my issue was caused by  
> > hardware
> > and very intermittant, which lead me to believe it was software  
> > related
> > for months on end.
> >
> 
> I started down the path of opening the box but it's pretty complex and  
> even with the manual
> getting to the CPU seemed fraught with peril.  If there were a site  
> like ifixit
> that had a good set of "to get to the CPU" I might attempt it again.
> 
> There are some factors that lead me away from a hardware problem:
> 
> 1) This machine was previously owned by my other half, who ran XP and  
> Vista on it
> with no problems.
> 
> 2) It really does seem related to 7.1 RELEASE vs. 7.1 STABLE and  
> CURRENT.  I have re-installed
> RELEASE twice and built -j 4 on it with no problems.
What are your idle temperatures with the -RELEASE? If they are still in
60s, I'd say Josh is right and -RELEASE is just masking hardware problem
better than -STABLE. If they are down to more reasonable 40s, I would
look some more into the software -- taking apart X60 will be harder than
taking apart T60 or R60 -- there are pieces of the casing that break off
easily enough even during the normal use. Like the molding around the
infrared sensor on the front right.

Just my 2c.
> 
> That being said, I may still look at the CPU paste.
> 
> Thanks,
> Geore
> 
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-- 
Alexandre "Sunny" Kovalenko <alex.kovalenko at verizon.net>