re: T420s Fan noise Issue

[alexcriss]

Well, Linux doesn't have HWInfo, still my fan is stuck at 4000 RPM

[JameZ]

@antsh or people in the States,

Appreciate someone who has a T420s which runs at 4k RPM all the time (Temp below 45c), running at idle with no external monitor connected. I want to get a machine in to engineering since they do not have any problematic one left in the lab.

//JameZ

[calkenneth]

@JameZ: Check your PM!

[WL_t420s]

@Jamez

Open any box in your stock. You can feel the noise.

I can't believe sngineers stil can't figure out this problem. I guess your team has just one good sample.

[JameZ]

@Calkenneth,

Replied you.

@WL_t420s,

Do check back previous post where the BIOS did help some of the customers.

//JameZ

[b4]

Thanks JameZ for following this up with the engineering team.

---

JameZ wrote:
...T420s which runs at 4k RPM all the time (Temp below 45c), running at idle with no external monitor connected. ...

---

@JameZ:

Three (.5) questions:

1.) You are saying the T420s has been designed to run mainly on 4k if an external monitor is connected? 
2.) Can you please share the relation table "temperature --> fan speed" that has been incorporated into BIOS version 1.30?
2a.) Is the temp/speed relation table for Nvidia and Intel graphics based models identical?
3.) Are there any other temperature sensors that are not visible in all of the previous posts? If so, what do they measure?

Thanks,

b4

[alexcriss]

I'll add some more questions that remain unanswered yet.

4) Are there different fan models?

5) Do different fan models behave differently with respect to speeds?

6) May changing fan help to reduce the noise?

Could anybody please answer back

[fraktalek]

What? 4k RPM is OK when an external monitor is connected?! That's just crazy with such a bad fan.

[pleon]

Hi, i use docking station and 22" LCD and this does NOT have any infuelnce. Higher CPU temp starts fan mostly to 3500 RPM (befor BIOS 1.30 update it was mostly to cca 4000 RPM). After temp goes down, fan RPM goes down as well, to cca 1980 RPM. And doesnt matter if i work with laptop only, or in docking station with external LCD. So generally it works on my device, true is, sometimes it really goes to "crazy" situation and fan RPM is high without any reason. Once i just closed the laptop, without any activity and fan RPM was cca 4000 RPM for whole night, without any reason. We have bought about 11 T420s devices, i checked another 2 devices and generally similiar problem, but eachdevice works little bit different, different fan RPM on different temp. Its really strange, but i am almost sure, there is NO just simple logic temp 1 means fan RPM 1, temp 2 means fan RPM 2, it just does not work this way. I think, iCore power management itself is quite complicated, that any another power management environment, like Lenovo Power Manager is really complicated. True is, if i compare my older T400s with this T420s, then T400s is really great (no noise, no heat, good performance), T420s is just not "Thinkpad quality expectation" device (in question of cooling system).

[galeon]

Hi there.

So I own the T420s with the i7 and this fan, espacially it's high frequent noise which is always there at speeds >2000RPM, is driving me nuts. Every speed above 3k RPM just does a difference between annoying noisy and extremly annoying noisy.

At the office the notebook is always docked with one external 22" monitor (1.30 BIOS, CPU set to Balanced).

Considering the large amount of money I paid for this notebook (as my work depends on it) I would also have paid 100€ more for a good and quiet fan. The notebook is so wonderful but I wouldn't recommend it anyone else just because of the fan.

Cheers