Thinkpads running hot

Thinkpads running hot

[Thomas Renninger]

Hi,

I got several reports of Thinkpads shutting down due critical temp limit.
Here are some more:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pipermail/linux-thinkpad/2005-August/thread.html

I have no idea yet, but it seems as if the fan control does not work as expected.

I got a good hint that helps a bit for some models (Xorg.conf - graphics card tweaking):
____________________________________________________
>Could you please tell me the card and how to solve it
> (just curious)?

ATI FireGL mobility T2, Option "DynamicClocks" "on". This way the temperature
of the gfx card goes down from ~ 98°C to 56°C, when idling over night it goes
down to 48°C and the fan stops completely.
____________________________________________________


Still when the processor is on load the critical temperature is reached quickly
(1-3 minutes?).

Thinkpads are widespread and I wonder whether others have experienced that problem
and whether it only exists on current kernels or got it solved somehow.

Thanks,

     Thomas


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Re: Thinkpads running hot

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> I got several reports of Thinkpads shutting down due critical temp limit.
> Here are some more:

What models are affected?

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Re: Thinkpads running hot

[Jonas Petersson]

Hi Thomas,

Thomas Renninger wrote:
> I got several reports of Thinkpads shutting down due critical temp limit.
> Here are some more:
> [...]
> Still when the processor is on load the critical temperature is reached quickly
> (1-3 minutes?).
> 
> Thinkpads are widespread and I wonder whether others have experienced that problem
> and whether it only exists on current kernels or got it solved somehow.

Have these Thinkpads been in use for a while? My 1.5 year old ASUS would
occasionally turn off like that and initially I assumed it was either a
bug or my hardware being close to death. However, when I pulled it apart
I found that the way out from the fans were partially blocked by a layer
of dust.  After I cleaned that out it runs ~20 degrees cooler which
seems to solve the problem (and it is less noisy too).

In fact, it also seems to have solved my earlier suspend2 issue which
would have a seemingly random failure once every two weeks just when X
should be refreshed during the final stages of resume.

			Best / Jonas
-- 
Jonas Petersson  |  XMS Penvision  |  mailto:Jonas.Petersson-7RBX4Gk6oWI@public.gmane.org
Box 3294, Västgötegatan 13, S-600 03 Norrköping | http://www.xms.se/
Tel: +46 11 400 13 00 | Dir: +46 11 400 13 05 | Fax: +46 11 10 30 50


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Re: Thinkpads running hot

[Thomas Renninger]

Jonas Petersson wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> 
> Thomas Renninger wrote:
>>I got several reports of Thinkpads shutting down due critical temp limit.
>>Here are some more:
>>[...]
>>Still when the processor is on load the critical temperature is reached quickly
>>(1-3 minutes?).
>>
>>Thinkpads are widespread and I wonder whether others have experienced that problem
>>and whether it only exists on current kernels or got it solved somehow.
> 
> Have these Thinkpads been in use for a while? My 1.5 year old ASUS would
> occasionally turn off like that and initially I assumed it was either a
> bug or my hardware being close to death. However, when I pulled it apart
> I found that the way out from the fans were partially blocked by a layer
> of dust.  After I cleaned that out it runs ~20 degrees cooler which
> seems to solve the problem (and it is less noisy too).
> 
No. The fans are clean. I also heard about this and it is the first thing
I asked. Those machines are even too new to have a dirty fan.

There seem to exist Thinkpad models (T42p, 53e, ...) that do not have a
perfekt thermal design (Or Pentium Ms are now also hitting their heat prod.
limit).

The graphics card tuning seems to help a bit (another report):
________________________
Ok, I tried now Option "DynamicClocks" "on".

Where there is no significant change when the system is idle it seems that
applications with high graphics activity no longer trigger the alert.
________________________

Still the critical trip point can be reached on permanent high load.
I expect that these reports are also poping up lately because of this
embedded controller firmware update:
_______________
Symptom corrected by version 3.03 - 1RHT70WW
Reduced Fan noise in some models
_______________

But even I could find the EC address and value to set the fan on full speed
(echo 0x2f 0x50 >/proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump - with ibm_acpi module)
(>5000 instead of ~3700 rpm) , the machine still run very hot.

However, when passive cooling works well, people shouldn't notice much.
It seems as if these machines are designed to work with OS thermal management.
The userspace governor works nicely and temperature stays at passive trip point
with 1200 instead of 1700 MHz (even on 70 C passive tp limit it stays at 1200 MHz
poking around 70 C - default is 92 C).

The ondemand govenor and I also expect the conservative governor do not consider
thermal limits yet, but this should be fixed soon and those critcal alert reports
will disappear.


     Thomas


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Re: Thinkpads running hot

[Bernd Schubert]

Hello!

> But even I could find the EC address and value to set the fan on full speed
> (echo 0x2f 0x50 >/proc/acpi/ibm/ecdump - with ibm_acpi module)
> (>5000 instead of ~3700 rpm) , the machine still run very hot.

Blimey! Thomas, you can't imagine how happy you made me with this command. Not 
that this special command works on my R31, but I never knew how to write data 
to the EC-table. After the repair of my R31 (see below), they also adjusted 
the fan-trigger temperatures *grumble* making the fan more or less always 
running. It was rather easy to find the fan-trigger temperatures in the 
ec-table and now I finally can adjust it to normal data.

>
> However, when passive cooling works well, people shouldn't notice much.
> It seems as if these machines are designed to work with OS thermal
> management. The userspace governor works nicely and temperature stays at
> passive trip point with 1200 instead of 1700 MHz (even on 70 C passive tp
> limit it stays at 1200 MHz poking around 70 C - default is 92 C).

Hmm, about two years ago I had the same problem on my R31. I sent it to 
repair, wrote a nice explanation whats going on (about one a4-page), after 
not having it back after two weeks I called the repair-centre, they connected 
me with a technician - he didn't get my error-report, but when I explained  
him about the problem, he then seemed to know what to do. I got back the 
notebook two days after the phone-call, on the report about what they had 
done was written that the cpu-cooler was not properly connected to the cpu. 
Before the repair the cpu-temperature went up to more than 100°C, but now I 
can't get more than 80°C (at high load with fft calculations).
Maybe this is also an issue with recent thinkpads?

Cheers,	
	Bernd


-- 
Bernd Schubert
PCI / Theoretische Chemie
Universität Heidelberg
INF 229
69120 Heidelberg



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