[ltp] X60 overheating, temperatures at full speed

[Peter F. Patel-Schneider]

I have similar problems in my T60p.  When I am running both cores at
full speed, the temperatures quickly climb.  (One task that does this
reliably is creating a Fedora spin, which multithreads during a
compute-intensive part of the process.)  Overriding the automatic fan
control and setting the fan to maximum speed keeps the temperatures out
of the critical range.

All this is a bit of a long-winded way to say that temperature control
on ThinkPads can be a problem and that I expect that you will find that
other X60 machines also can overheat.  I hear that T61 ThinkPads are
better in this regard that T60 ThinkPads.  Probably your best bet is to
manually crank up the fan speed when necessary.  If you are brave, you
could install a fan speed control program.  (See
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Fan_control_scripts for more information.)

peter


From: "martin kot" <kotmartin@gmail.com>
Subject: [ltp] X60 overheating, temperatures at full speed
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2008 13:51:14 +0200

> Hi guys,
> 
> I have my Thinkpad X60 sent in for service because it was shutting
> down after overheating. Essentially the cpu temperature approached
> 105C and it shutdown automatically. The IBM repair center changed the
> motherboard and I got the computer back. Running some stress tests
> showed that the temperature still is quite high if both cores run at
> full frequency and are 100% utilized. I experienced temperatures from
> 96-104C before shutdown, although this time it took longer (several
> hours, maybe a day) before it occured.
> 
> I would therefore kindly request if someone with an X60 could do a
> simple stress test for a few minutes to see what the temperatures
> usually are. What I did was:
> 
> - Made sure that the computer was running at full speed. Set to full
> performance in BIOS, cat /proc/cpuinfo showed max speed at full
> utilization
> - Installed cpuburn, and ran burnP6 twice to fully utilize both cores
> - Ran top, pressed 1 to show both cores and made sure that both were at 100%.
> - Checked periodically the temperature with: cat
> /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THM*/temperature
> 
> Don't bother if you have a X60s, it's quite a different matter :) My
> X60 has a T2400 (1.83Gz) installed, but slower/faster cpu-s in this
> model shouldn't make a big difference. I have a stock 2.6.22 kernel
> from Debian/Lenny. Thanks.
> 
> --
> Martin
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