Problem with IBM Thinkpad T30 shutting down due to high temperatures

[Martin]

Am Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:53:10 +0200
schrieb Christian Walther <cptsalek at gmail.com>:

> What could I try next to prevent this from happening again? I guess
> it's needless to say that rebuilding ports (for example after the jpeg
> version bump) is next to impossible because it would require manual
> intervention everytime the temperature reaches the limit...
> 
> I'm happy about any help I can get on this issue.

Hi Christian,

I've had this too with my T60p. The temperature when it shut down was
101°C. Also while compiling ports on FreeBSD. Other OSes were fine on
this laptop (around 90°C when on high load).

This seems to happen when using ATI based Thinkpads. The fan is for
both CPU and GPU and the GPU runs idle at over 70°C, because FreeBSD is
missing any power saving modes that tune down the GPU voltage (this is
the only way to keep the GPU cool). Also idle temperature with FreeBSD
is very high, at around 70°C instead of 50°C on OSes that can use power
management for ATI mobile adapters.

What to do?

- check the fan and look if there is dust (clean it, but don't touch
  the fan too hard, because it will break!)
- when compiling ports/world, make sure you have your laptop near fresh
  air
- use a script that tunes down the frequency when temperature is
  above a sane level (it should tune up again, when it's sinking too
  far) and use it while doing some heavy things on FreeBSD

I don't have the laptop anymore, because of this problem, but I still
have the script. You have to check if it still works and tune the
values for the temperatures and sysctls. I really don't care to make it
an universal solution.

http://bsdforen.pastebin.com/f331d2357

The perl script keeps a history of the temperature in last few seconds
and tunes it according to the average, afair. It also prints the
CPU temperature and the CPU speed.

Have fun with it. ;)

--
Martin