Comments on: Disappointed by Thinkpad X60 thermal problems

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:24:22 +0000

Bryan – How did things turn out? I’m thinking I might try to open mine up too…I have been having the same problem with my X60 for the last couple of months. I am right now sitting here with a gel freezer pack under the laptop. It keeps things at about 45C (nice!) but only lasts a couple of hours.

By: MacHead

MacHead — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:39:13 +0000

Buy a Mac.

By: Bryan O'Sullivan

Bryan O'Sullivan — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:20:46 +0000

Wow, thanks for all the responses!

@Peter, @Marcio: I probably will open it up for a peek inside. Thinkpads are pretty easy to fiddle around with that way. I hope that I find something obvious.

@Dino, @Will: thanks for the recommendations. I’ll take a look at those models.

By: Marcio RPS

Marcio RPS — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:21:12 +0000

Well, my TOSHIBA started doing it and i ended up opening it up, took me a week to find the guts to do it. Anyways, now i keep it clean with compressed air, sort of. I usually use a brush to stop the coolers from overspinning (i’ve seen the advice about the fan burning out due to spinning caused by the air, do not know if it is reliable, but thought it better to play safe). Maybe you can do the same?

By: Dino Morelli

Dino Morelli — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:47:26 +0000

I can also recommend Asus laptops. We have two now at our home. An S96S (15.4″, 1 year old) and a W7S (13.3″, 9 months old). Both dual-core systems that are heavily used every day.

An interesting thing about Asus is they are one of the big manufacturers of the equipment inside other companies’ systems. I’m not certain about Lenovo, but I know that HP doesn’t make the machine inside their plastic exterior. Asus has the contract to make the 13.3″ Macbooks, the W7S above is actually the same system.

I was able to buy the S96S ‘bare’ with no OS at all, which suits my Linux sensibilities just fine.

By: Will

Will — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:50:38 +0000

A bunch of former Thinkpad X-series enthusiasts I know have jumped ship to the HP 2510p, which is similarly sized and seems to be a pretty solid piece of kit. Might be worth a look.

By: James

James — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 11:06:20 +0000

We have had similar problems with the Levono T60 – no problems with the T61. As a variant on Peter’s advice you could try is to try to suck out the fluff with a vacuum cleaner. That could save you having to open it up.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:19:58 +0000

Well, if the warranty has expired, there’s no harm in opening her up and trying to identify the problem. There’s a fair chance you can easily fix yourself.

I had a PC that was becoming more ever more prone to overheating. I opened her up, and noticed that the air coming off the CPU cooler was rather cool. I thought the CPU probably wasn’t overheating at all; it was a problem with the thermal sensor, which I wasn’t qualified fix.

But I wasn’t quite ready to give up. I turned her off and took a closer look at the cooling system. When I unscrewed the CPU fan, a thick, insulating wad of fluff and dust fell out. Problem solved.