Normal operating temperature - A31 2.0Ghz

[lvlenovo]

I do not understand how designers ever thought that a machine that is only 80cm away from your ears can have a fan that it audible.

Nevertheless I am trying to use Thinkpad Fan Control (v0.18) to minimise my fan activity. Removing the battery or setting the BIOS to low speed "helps" but also means a higher load, and thus more heat!!

I am not sure if the idle CPU temperature without the fan running is normal around 58C. With the fan in BIOS mode it stays around 42C, but it still seems rather high to me. Is it possible that it needs new theral paste or the heat sink is not set well?

[MrPeter1985 Guru]

welcome,

idle around 60c is normal for a laptop. When I play a game it gets to 70c. As soon as I'm done its back to 60c. What you want to watch for 85c. (most PC's shut off at that heat).

[lvlenovo]

Just by browsing with 5-10 tabs, no video or sound, it causes the CPU to get hot. In a quiet room, the fan just drives me nuts. I can wait for the days when SSD and fanless systems will be standard (affordable). Trying to write anything is frustrating.

I think I will try to put some new thermal paste. If no improvement, would a lower clocked CPU may be better?

I saw some posts saying that the 2.4GHz would idle at a much lower temperature, but charts show the same TDP for the 2.4GHz!?!

[ajkula66 Guru]

First and foremost, you may want to clean the fan with compressed air, especially given the age of these machines.

Secondly, any P4M runs hot and the ones used on A31/p are no exception. The temperatures you're experiencing are not at all unusual, although they could be lower. Re-applying the thermal paste might not be a bad idea.

As for 2.4 Ghz CPU running cooler...no, not really. I've got it in my A31p and faster it is, but cooler it's not.

Also, I don't believe that you can underclock a P4M, not in these laptops anyway.

Another thing to consider: on a freshly booted XP, how many processes do you have running? Let us know.

Hope this helps.

[lvlenovo]

Fan and vent are clean, and the paste did not do much.

Taking out the battery to lower the system speed, I tried booting up Puppy linux  and could downclock to 150MHz( 250 MHz with the battery in), but it does not make it much of a system at that speed. But that is adequate if all I am doing is typing ( mind you a mobile phone with an external keyboard and screen would fine too).

What I do not understand is that the fan does not start until a sensor reaches 48 - from there it never stops.The CPU will even go down to 37C. It just seems prone to dust accumulation or failure if it never stops

Maybe I should just get used to hearing a little noise... or use fan control at wide ranges.

Thanks for the help.

[MrPeter1985 Guru]

From what I've seen for myself, XP does use more power. (the reason my old laptop had to have vista) I've seen several posts from people saying how much less power the new Ubuntu uses now and the low heat that it stays at now. You could try a Ubuntu Live CD and see for yourself. As for XP I've heard of people using speedfan to set the fan speed lower. But I have never done it.

[ajkula66 Guru · Accepted solution]

Check whether you have the latest BIOS/EC on that A31, that might be a part of your problem.

Also, try running a recent version (0.33-0.62) of TPFC and see what that does.

Having said all of that, cooling was always a weak spot on A3x units to begin with...

How many processes - once again - do you have running on a freshly booted XP?

[lvlenovo]

I guess this is some improvement:

on BIOS mode the CPU goes down to 33C in idle and will stay around in 51C with no fan using TPFC.

Straight writing in the word processor never makes the fan go on, but with 5+ tabs and my database open, it will go to 60C then start the fan. That probably means that watching video on this machine is a no go!

My sister, cat owner and thus good experience with cleaning out computers, took a look. She noticed that  around the CPU there was a burnt capacitor C508. It ain`t broke so no fixing, but that may be related to the defective USB ports or why it will not run from the battery. She probably also tightened the fan or put the the thermal paste on better...

The update to Thinkpad Fan Control did not make much difference, but the interface is nicer. I tried the BIOS 1.13 but it was not accepted, but 1.10 went through fine. In either one there were no indications of changes to temperature control. Power here is stable but still a risk considering my battery (or motherboard) does not work.

As for running processes, I login in a restricted account to avoid having to install an anti-virus/spyware and I used CCleaner to diasable most startup programs, and lastly using services.msc, I disabled a few that I never use. (wifi – automatic updates- help)

Thanks again.