[ltp] Safe X60 temperatures?

Richard Neill linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:50:57 +0100


Dear All,

What would you suggest are safe temperatures for an X60? I'm not 
concerned about the surface temperature for now (I use the machine on a 
table, but I don't want to hurt the hardware). At the moment:

* Without invoking tp-fan control, the system sits idle, with the fan 
running, at about 42 degrees.

* With two copies of "nice yes > /dev/null &" running (one per core of 
the T2500), but no manual control, I see sensors 0 and 3 hitting 90 and 
89 degrees respectively (the fan is running at 3500 rpm, and the room is 
at 20 degrees).  The base of the machine is too hot to hold for more 
than a few seconds. It seems stable for at least 20 mins in this state.
    =>  Is this normal (and safe), or is it hurting the CPU?
    =>  Does anyone make an egg-adapter, so I can cook on this? ;-p

* For normal usage, is it OK to ask tp-fan to hold it at below 65 
degrees, (and only pass control back to the BIOS if the machine gets 
hotter than that?)

* I want to submit this fan-control profile back to tp-fan; before I do, 
does anyone know some better names for the sensors than 0-9?

Thanks,

Richard