[ltp] Thermal woes on Thinkpad T60p

[Peter F. Patel-Schneider]

From: Richard Neill <rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [ltp] Thermal woes on Thinkpad T60p
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:34:22 +0100

> Peter Lemken wrote:
>> Greetings,
>> finally managed to snatch a new T60p at a reasonable price. Manufactured
>> in 2006 but left in some obscure dealer's stock until last month I got
>> it with full 3 year on-site service until 2012.
>> Which I have had to use twice now, because the machine runs
>> unstable. Playing 3d-games in Windows makes the machine freeze hard
>> after 20 minutes or so. Sometimes, somtimes not. When it shut down, it
>> wouldn't start Linux, unable to load the RAM-disk. Leaving it a lone for
>> 15minutes returns everything back to normal. Sometimes the machine
>> completely freezes, particularly when I load graphics in gimp or start
>> google earth. However, this has only happened under Ubuntu so far, not
>> under Mnadriva which I run on a separate partition. Tried installing new
>> radeon drivers from git under Ubuntu, but the problem persisted.
>> 
> 
> My T60p was also rather prone to crashes of this nature. So far, the
> solution (which seems to work quite well) is:
> 
>  (a) update to the latest BIOS and EC firmware. This is actually quite a
>  simple process involving burning and booting a CD-image you can download
>  from IBM.
> 
>  (b) run the graphics card in VESA mode.
>         => pity about the nice 3D-accelerated screensavers
>         => to make scrolling fast, jump-scroll (pg_dn or space-bar)
>            or set the wheel to 10 lines at a time.
> 
>  (c) Update to at least Ubuntu Hardy for modern kernel and optimal power
>  management.
> 
> As for temperatures, the general principle seems to be, if it's too hot
> to touch, you have problems!
> 
> Richard

I have similar problems with my T60p.  Running it hard (both cores
running flat out for about 5 minutes) drives it into thermal overload.
I updated the BIOS and EC a while ago and that didn't work.
It appears to me that the BIOS fan control is buggy, as I have achieved
thermal overload when the fan was loafing along.

What does work is:
- running the fan on high (7), using thinkpad fan control
- throttling the CPUs down from their highest speed
I'm not sure that just one of these would work, but you could try.

There is a gnome applet (hardware-sensors-monitor) that will show you
all the thermal sensors.  I think that the panic level is 100C, but it
has been a while since I reached into the mid-90s.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider

PS:  I hear that T61ps have better thermal control, but that doesn't
help you or me.  :-(