T430 Fan speed

[thomas-kloiber]

Hi together,

I own a Thinkpad T430 for two weeks now. Since yesterday I realized a louder fan sound. I use Ubuntu and when checking the /proc/acpi/ibm/fan it always (when the laptop is idle) shows a speed of approximately 3400. This cant be correct. What should I do?

Thanks,

Thomas

[elarei]

Hi,

I recieved my new T430 a few days ago. I've posted a small review on the German Thinkpad-Forum.de, yet I'd like to adress a few of the more annoying points here to let Lenovo staff know about them and maybe give them incentive to fix them.

• Fan stepping. The CPU/GPU fan starts at 3400RPM - that's quite a noisy lowest speed, and it's almost the same sound as the 4000RPM following. In an office environment, it's clearly conceivable. On my X220 and similar laptops, the slowest fan speed is a lot less noisy. Furthermore, running the fan at this speed seems quite pointless at 41°C temperature. I'd love to see a BIOS update introduce a calmer low RPM fan level.
• System Update. Drivers are rarely found by the System Update utility. I had to manually download the Optimus graphics drivers, Dolby AAS, ethernet drivers, ultranav drivers, Power Management utility and so on. So pretty please with sugar on top - keep that tool up to date, since it used to be very very helpful.
• Dolby AAS. In the driver matrices, a Dolby AA suite can be found. Yet the package seems defective, it just says "Need to have PCEE installed" and closes immediately. With a different version (which I downloaded from Gigabyte servers) I managed to install it anyway.

Apart from that it's a pretty nifty device, but the fan issue really keeps me second-guessing.

If you would like to read the full review, see the German Thinkpad-Forum (or read it in English).

Regards

[elarei]

Hi,

I recieved my new T430 a few days ago. I've posted a small review on the German Thinkpad-Forum.de, yet I'd like to adress a few of the more annoying points here to let Lenovo staff know about them and maybe give them incentive to fix them.

• Fan stepping. The CPU/GPU fan starts at 3400RPM - that's quite a noisy lowest speed, and it's almost the same sound as the 4000RPM following. In an office environment, it's clearly conceivable. On my X220 and similar laptops, the slowest fan speed is a lot less noisy. Furthermore, running the fan at this speed seems quite pointless at 41°C temperature. I'd love to see a BIOS update introduce a calmer low RPM fan level.
• System Update. Drivers are rarely found by the System Update utility. I had to manually download the Optimus graphics drivers, Dolby AAS, ethernet drivers, ultranav drivers, Power Management utility and so on. So pretty please with sugar on top - keep that tool up to date, since it used to be very very helpful.
• Dolby AAS. In the driver matrices, a Dolby AA suite can be found. Yet the package seems defective, it just says "Need to have PCEE installed" and closes immediately. With a different version (which I downloaded from Gigabyte servers) I managed to install it anyway.

Apart from that it's a pretty nifty device, but the fan issue really keeps me second-guessing.

If you would like to read the full review, see the German Thinkpad-Forum (or read it in English).

Regards

[JDay]

There's supposed to be a new version of System Update coming out in the next month.

[targetaudience]

Same problem here with the fan.

It stays at around 3700 rpm regardless of load; room temperature is 23 ºC. The highly-pitched noise is very annoying.

[cche0691]

Hi thomas-kloiber,

Please try update BIOS and try leave overnight in BIOS. If problem remains, please contact local lenovo for hardware test.

BIOS Update (Bootable CD) for Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit), XP - ThinkPad T430, T430i
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS029253

Worldwide Support Center phone list for ThinkPad, ThinkCentre and ThinkStation systems
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?DocID=HT036550

Fred

[bmihai]

Hi Thomas,

It might be due to the nVidia video card, if your model has one. Try either installing bumblebee to shut it down when not needed, or disabling the nVidia card entirely in BIOS (as a test, at least).

Mihai

[welchgc]

I notice too that the Fan on my T430 is almost always running load. Can't be normal. So a few questions:

1) how do you check fan speed and cpu temp?

2) anyway to control fans? there is limited opitons using the thinkvantage tools

Thanks

(T430, Windows7, i5-3360, 8GB, SSD)

[hausman]

---

welchgc wrote:

1) how do you check fan speed and cpu temp?

2) anyway to control fans? there is limited opitons using the thinkvantage tools

---

1) There are various free utilities that report on CPU temperature. This one comes from the same people who developed CCleaner: Speccy. It also shows myriad other details about your system.

2) There's a free utility that was developed for older ThinkPads, TPFanControl.  It reports fan speed and also controls fan speed based on the various temperature sensors in your ThinkPad. I've been using it with older generations like T6x and X6x for several years. I don't know if it works on current generation ThinkPads like the T430. I haven't yet installed it on my T430s because that system runs cool as a cucumber (~40°C) and the fan is almost inaudible. 

[hausman]

---

elarei wrote:

• Fan stepping. The CPU/GPU fan starts at 3400RPM - that's quite a noisy lowest speed, and it's almost the same sound as the 4000RPM following. In an office environment, it's clearly conceivable. On my X220 and similar laptops, the slowest fan speed is a lot less noisy. Furthermore, running the fan at this speed seems quite pointless at 41°C temperature. I'd love to see a BIOS update introduce a calmer low RPM fan level.

---

Have you tried to control fan speed using TPFanControl? (Or is that how you obtained fan speeds and CPU temperatures in the first place?)

[hausman]

• Fan stepping. The CPU/GPU fan starts at 3400RPM - that's quite a noisy lowest speed, and it's almost the same sound as the 4000RPM following. In an office environment, it's clearly conceivable. On my X220 and similar laptops, the slowest fan speed is a lot less noisy. Furthermore, running the fan at this speed seems quite pointless at 41°C temperature. I'd love to see a BIOS update introduce a calmer low RPM fan level.

---

[welchgc]

Thanks for the info.

My fan turns on whe CPU/Motherboard temp goes above 40oC and its load (have not checked speed but image its high)

System idle I am at about 39oC, web/word use goes to 42-45oC. 

Does anyone know safe operating temperatures for these new thinkpads? Could I program the fan to turn on above 45oC?