@JameZ,

I'm having the same issue with my T420s. Fan is running almost all the time and becomes very noisy even under minimal load (CPU temperature around 40 C) :smileysad:

All drivers are up to date. Power Manager version is 3.52.

Fan related setting in the currently used power plan are:

- System cooling policy: Active (on AC), Passive (on battery)

- Optimize fan control to: Reduce noise dynamically (on AC), Balance all parameters (on battery)

Any help is appreciated. I'm very unhappy about this issue and considering seriouly returning my T420s...

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wrote:

,

 

I'm having the same issue with my T420s. Fan is running almost all the time and becomes very noisy even under minimal load (CPU temperature around 40 C) :smileysad:

 

All drivers are up to date. Power Manager version is 3.52.

 

Fan related setting in the currently used power plan are:

- System cooling policy: Active (on AC), Passive (on battery)

- Optimize fan control to: Reduce noise dynamically (on AC), Balance all parameters (on battery)

 

Any help is appreciated. I'm very unhappy about this issue and considering seriouly returning my T420s...

 

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Exactly the same here! I'm working the whole afternoon now and being on battery. The fan doesn't stop spinning. Eventhough it seems running at slowest speed, its noise is just awfully anoying and gets on your nerves. It's the second day I have my T420s and I don't know if I want to bother with such noise for the next 2-3 years untill the next upgrade. 

The settings in PowerManager are on "Passive" when on battery. Passiveness never occures. Temperature is around 40° C, pretty normal I think...

All drivers are uptodate, I'm running Win7 x64 and used ThinkVantage System Update 4 for a clean windows setup. I got the laptop without OS and installed it from scratch. 

Before starting windows installation I went to the BIOS just checking the features and the noise started then allready. As my T420s has an SSD built in there's no mechanical part that could possibly do any noise. So it's the fan. 

LENOVO, do you read this? what's the matter with this issue? We're on business laptops and are expection high quality products. Bad design but quality poducts. 

@ReneW and Dan0,

Yes I do read the thread, I understand both of you have a different machine which is the T420s. Appreciate if you could PM me the following so I may raise it as a different case with the X220 and T420.

MTM:
S/N:
Name:
Mobiles:
Email:

BIOS:
Win 7: x86 x64 SP1?

Are there any steps which you did which can trigger the fan to run? Or does it happen just after you boot up the laptop?

Thanks
James

@JameZ,

I just PMed you requested details. Thanks.

@Dan0

MTM = Machine Type and Model :smileyhappy:

Something strange happened today. 

I was working on battery (both main 6-cell and additional 3-cell optical drive bay) starting at 100% capacity. I could work 3 and a half hours until the capacity dropped to 18% and left me with a remaining 50 minutes battery life. I plugged the power cord in and kept on working. 

After a while I had to move. So I unplogged the power cord, moved around and when I settled down and plugged the power cord again, the system fan stood still. 

There was no reason for it to stand still. I didn't put the system to hybernate or standby, The programms were all running, etc... but there was no ventilation any more. I was happy with that. 

After 45 minutes of fan inactivity, I worried about temperature thershold as the upper left corner of my T420s felt pretty hot. So I started AIDA64 exteme edition and could see that the CPU temperature was at 64°C! I kept on working. When I reached 1 hour without fan activity I tryed to lanch a system stability test in AIDA64. I started the CPU stress test that made the temperature climb at 82° C in no time. Still no fan cicking in. 

Worried, I stopped the stress test, closed each program and did a reboot. As soon as the log off screen appeared, the fan cicked in at a decent speed and my machine rebooted as I demanded. 

Since then I'm woking on and the fan behaves as from the beginning on: IT SOUNDS LIKE A HAIR DRYER! 

Right now I've opened Chrome, one instance of Word 2010, one wireframe software (very light) and a MS PictureViewer and I'm writing a report. The fan keeps spinning like mad. AIDA64 reports 40° C CPU temperature and 100% GPU fan load. 

When I put my hand next to the ventilation, the air feels cold, which is normal. 

In my opinion, there's something terribly wrong with the drivers or the temperature sonde from the fan. 

I really need some backup here, it's not a vital situation. 

[EDIT 29.05.2011] : the behaviour described here at message 19 matches the above mensioned symptoms. I Think JameZ allready treated this issue...

I have the same issue on my brand new T420 under Win 7x64.

Most of the time, the fan operates per the power policy i.e. passive on battery & plugged in as I set it.

But *sometimes*, an event triggers the fan to go full speed,and from there it won't stop. Even if I put the machine in standby, it reumes blowing like a hair dryer when resuming. The only way seems to be a hibernate or reboot. It does not respond either to tweaking the power options, it just keeps blowing cold air as fast as it can.

It is not overheating related, the air blown is stone cold, this has no similarity with the overheating issues I had on my old T61.

It seems that a triggering event can be switching from AC adapter to battery operation, but it is not repeatable.

But it is VERY annoying.

Okay, I figured something out: 

the dolby home theater V4 has a rather ressourceful graphical user interface (GUI) and on my T420s that GUI is accelerated by nVidia and not by the HD3000 integrated graphics.

I activated the nVidia monitoring option in the system tray to be able to see when a programm uses the discrete graphics instead of the integrated graphics. It so happens that when listening to music (I'm on Winamp 2.91) the GUI works in the background and nVidia does the job. As it's not very heavy it seems that system is idle, but it isn't actually. 

As soon as I killed the Dolby home Theater from the system tray, the fan slowed down to medium speed. But it still doesn't stop when on AC and idle system (I think typing on word and having 2 word instances running can be considered as idel system). 

When on battery, the fan inactivity periodes are really really short. It's maybe 30 seconds out of 2-3 minutes activity even thoug the temps are around 40° C. 

So much for the sunday update. I'm looking forward to JameZ's inputs to resolve that issue as fast as possible!

Hello all,

Bios version 1.16 has been released -> JameZ note -> BIOS 1.16 released is for the X220 and not for T420s

The accompanying notes indicates that it is supposed to remedy the fan noise issue: BIOS released is for X220 and not T420s "Changed thermal setting to reduce annoying fan noise.'

Owners on the X220 thread are tentatively reporting a significant decrease in fan noise:  http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/X220-fan-constantly-on-revving-up-and-down/td-p/425965/page/22  However, they report that there is still a pulsing noise (which is now the subject of a new thread:  http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/X220-fan-pulsing-beating-issue/m-p/445609)  In addition, some users report that there continues to be a high frequency whine when the fan motor goes about ~3000RPM.  

I'm wondering if any T420s owner has applied the bios, and if it has remedies the noisy fan problem (s).  I've been waiting for the resolution of this issue to place an order.

Thanks,

Tom

edit note: -> Change links to note as it was pointing to a X220 BIOS which is not for T420s