[ltp] T60p idle GPU temperature?

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Sat, 07 Jul 2012, Richard Neill wrote:
> What temperature are other people getting for their GPU? Mine is
> running at about 76 degrees.

...

> The 4th one is the GPU temp, and it will climb to 80+ if allowed to.

If it is overheating, your thinkpad is expected to alarm, and thinkpad-acpi
should scream blood murder at LOG_ALERT or even LOG_EMERG level.  Make sure
you do pay attention to the kernel log, especially if you run Gnome, which
*refuses* to alert the user that his box is about to get damaged, *ON
PURPOSE*.

> Do I have heatsinking problems? I know the GPU heatsink on these

Most likely you have thermal compound problems.  Technically speaking, a
cracked thermal interface between chip and heatsink.  It is an easy fix:
remove lint, remove the heatsink, clean old thermal grease, apply Artic
Silver 5 properly, replace heatsink (and *make sure* it is pressing down on
all ICs).

You must do a near-perfect job of removing the old compound and applying the
new one, though.  And if you're going to use anything other than Arctic
Silver 5, make SURE to get an AAA+ compound that can deal with rapid
temperature cycles, doesn't go fluid in its hot phase _and_ which is
completely non-reactive to metals and non-conductive.  They're all quite
expensive (Arctic Silver 5 included).

Messing with the heatsink on some thinkpads is not for the faint of heart,
though.  My T43 required minor surgery with bladed tools to detach the old
thermal compound from the GPU when the time came to replace the fan.  The
T60p should be about the same, so make sure you have the proper tools, a
clean workbench, lots of time, search the webs for relevant tips and photo
guides, AND review the T60/p hardware maintenance guide beforehand.

> machines is quite poor. Is there any way to throttle GPU power
> consumption further? I don't mind if the GPU is really slow; all I
> want is for my text-editor to run silently!

You can run ATI and nVidia GPUs downclocked, and even reduce voltage
levels.  Intel GPUs can have some optional compression features enabled
that are supposed to let it run cooler.

For the ATI GPU, just mess with the power method/profile in
/sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method

The Linux ATI framebuffer/DRM power management is crap, at least for the
X300/X600/X1500/X1600 ATIs, so it really runs the GPU a lot hotter (and
wastes a lot more power) than what non-KMS X.org used to do, and let's not
even compare it to what fglrx could do...

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh