T61 estimated life with Nvidia 140

[vm5]

I hope I'm not bothering somebody but i read, only recently, a lot of posts about the issue "Nvidia 140" and I'm using my T61 08/05 with the fear that it could stop working just now that i finished adding some items (SSD; more Ram and more..).
I didn't understood if it's quite sure that Nvidia will crash or the fact that a lot of people here had problems only represents a part of a much more cunsumers that are using t61 without having troubles.
The only thing that I'm doing, trying to prevent problems, is to use a fan speed control to mantain the GPU temperature under 50 Celsius (the computer became a "little" noisy) but I'm not so sure that it's so important....

[Neil]

Here's the deal...It's a know fact that the NVS140m is one of the chips that, when manufactured before 08/08, has a defect that can case it to fail. Several have failed, but it's unknown what percentage have failed, and what percentage are still working. Not all have failed, but any with the defect certainly can fail.

Since your T61 seems to have survived all these years without issue. It would seem that if you continue to provide the extra care it needs, you may never experience a GPU failure. But then it might fail tomorrow, it's just that uncertain.

[ajkula66]

Stay away from thermal cycling. Keep the machine on 24/7/365 if at all possible, just shutting the display off when not in use.

Keep the cooling system clean and don't attempt to play the latest games at high settings.

That's the best I have.

Good luck.

[Cigarguy]

I've used about 8 T61 with Nvidia 140M GPU over the last few years with date code before 08/08. I use and abuse it. My office is my truck. Last week it was -20 deg C to -30 deg C where I live. Even in the cold, I cycle my laptops on and off during the work day. Only issue I have is the occasional condensation on the LCD and I swear the battery life is slightly shorter in the cold. After 3 years of doing this (I got my T61 used), none have failed. When it fail, no biggie, I got a few more T61 waiting in the wing. Takes 5 min to physically transfer the memory, HDD and SSD. Average bare bones T61 is about 60-100ish so I don't sweat it to much. It's only a tool.

[vm5]

Thank You for the suggestions.....I understood that I've to keep my fingers crossed.

[precip9]

Nvidia's botch was a huge industry scandal. But let's be clear about one thing. If your chip came off the line before the magic date, it will fail, no ifs, ands, or buts. Every time you power cycle the machine, you move it closer to its demise.

Like all chips with more than about 500 interconnects, the Nvidia GPU is a "flip chip." This means that it is mounted face down onto the surface of the package base, which contains a "printed circuit", consisting of all the pads that connect external to the package. It is glued in position. Then, a dash of infrared heats the chip to fuse the special low-melting point solder to fuse the package pads to the chip pads.

The engineer in charge of specifying the glue made a mistake. The glue has too much give. When the chip heats up, it expands more than the package, applying force to the solder. Eventually, it breaks loose. Some ingenious hackers have resorted to heating the package to restore the solder joints, but this is just a temporary fix.

When Nvidia realized their mistake, they switched to a glue with less give. However, the system manufacturers were SOL. They were unable to recover their losses, because the payout would have bankrupted Nvidia, and the continued existence of Nvidia was and is essential to their own. But this is specifically why the machines that immediately followed the T61, such as the T/W500, have inferior graphics made by ATI. They could not risk doing business with Nvidia until the problem was solved with certainty.

I don't like to make people feel miserable for no reason, but I don't believe in telling nice bedtime stories either. When your machine fails, which it will if made before the date of the glue switch, take all the parts and transfer them to a machine that has only integrated graphics.

[ajkula66]

I don't like to make people feel miserable for no reason, but I don't believe in telling nice bedtime stories either. When your machine fails, which it will if made before the date of the glue switch, take all the parts and transfer them to a machine that has only integrated graphics.

I'd offer a slightly different perspective here...

Within a month or so the youngest T61/p on planet will be five years old. That's a lot of time in computer years.

Everything and anything made by a hand of an imperfect human race will fail at some point in the game. The only question is when.

These machines are now entering the phase in which they should be treated like Classic Cars. Taken out for a ride every Sunday or something along those lines.

If one uses them as a daily driver - and this comes from someone who utilized Classic Cars as daily drivers for many years - they should be prepared for the possibility of the unit failing beyond the stage of a simple repair.

I'm reasonably certain that a vast majority of the plagued *61 models will remain in service for a few more years before they go the way of the dodo. Whether they will maintain their usability as daily drivers is a whole another matter, which is in the hands of M$ more than anywhere else.

I maintain a (very old) phone system for a law firm not that far away from my house. They bought 11 units - all identical 14" T61p models with T8100 CPUs and "plagued" GPUs sometime in the spring of 2008.

Two of them died from hot coffee spills. One was dropped on the (marble) courtroom floor and refused to boot afterwards. Two were retired due to failing CCFLs. The rest is still up and running and for the most part dragged to court on (at least) weekly basis.

Lenovo replaced several hard and media drives over the warranty period, but that was it. No planar failures.

In my book - even if ALL of these were to fail on Monday morning - my customer got their money's worth.

On more than one occasion I offered to buy *all* of them - including the failed units - and was politely turned down.

I got the very same answer that I hear every time I suggest an upgrade of their phone system: "Never attempt to fix what's not broken".

Mind you, The Boss who furnishes that answer is not a cheapskate by any means and has never questioned my fees. He's just a frugal gentleman who drives a mid-90s Benz G-series turbo Diesel. Enough said.

My point being, it serves absolutely no purpose to sweat about the possible/impending/whatever failure of these GPUs on *61 series. Life is too darn short.

I am advising everyone to take reasonable care of them, by all means.

Use and enjoy.

[Cigarguy]

Exactly, "use and enjoy". The fact that it's worked for this long is pretty darn good in my books. Sooner or later, all things will die or become obsolete beyond useful. Most of my laptops die by being used and abused. Even my used almost 10 year old T42 works perfectly even though this series was prone to GPU/SB failure.

[dr_st]

it will fail, no ifs, ands, or buts. Every time you power cycle the machine, you move it closer to its demise.

This is true about every chip ever manufactured, with no ifs, buts and exceptions.

[precip9]

This is true about every chip ever manufactured, with no ifs, buts and exceptions.

You say that as if it's poetic irony, but the truth is much more complicated. It's not "all the same." The truth is, some chips last a very long time in human terms, while others die quickly, as perceived by us humans.

The most "certain death" chips are multi-level flash, marketed as "MLC". The interesting thing about MLC is that the manufacturers, perceiving that consumers have not yet become dissatisfied, keep decreasing the life of these chips with every advance.

Someone in the semi industry actually figured out that lies=money. Check out this article:
http://www.computerweekly.com/podcast/E ... enterprise
How many lies can you spot? In one statement, the article author actually succeeded in defining a bad aspect of SSDs as "good". Can you spot it? But shrinking die geometry makes wearout a concern with all the components. In a few years, your laptop will, by design, last only a few years.

As die geometries shrink, dopant diffusion becomes a death source quicker. The atoms literally get up and walk. Intel now has patents on how to determine when a CPU has worn out. The effect was first noticed with 90nm geometries, and was predicted to become practically significant at 32nm. Guess what? We're below that now.

The extreme example of unreliability was the vacuum tube computer. Gradually, operators learned to get a few thousand hours before a tube failure. Then germanium transistors replaced them, and were better, but germanium transistors were fragile. Silicon transistors enabled the first computers that would run 24/7 for years. Now the statisticians had the ideal gadget to study: a computer had hundreds of thousands of parts, and ran continuously. They were curious whether the "bathtub effect" would apply to computers, as it does to many other devices. It was observed that a new computer had a short period of high, "infant mortality", which dropped down to a much lower level after some aging. It was expected that at some point, computers would wear out, that end of life, based on operating hours, would occur -- the opposite wall of the bathtub.

Extensive study of DEC machines revealed that the end of the bathtub curve was never reached. The older the machine, the more reliable it was, until it was broken up for scrap. This is because the geometry of the ICs in early computers was huge by modern standards, so junction diffusion did not occur within the human lifetime.

This provided a heritage of thought for computer designers. Although cost compromises had to be made, it never occurred to them to design a laptop for you with a deliberately limited lifetime. This is why there are so many separate, replaceable modules in a classic Thinkpad. But gradually, those who guide the creation of consumer gadgets realized that what they were making was "too good" for the consumer market. More recently, Steven Jobs fathered the creation of the latest Macs, which require specialized tools, normally available only in factories, to replace what in the classic Thinkpad are FRUs. It will be interesting to see whether third party support will develop for these machines five years hence, when Apple ceases to service them.

[dr_st]

By no means did I try to claim that all chips will fail after the same time or the same way. But they will fail. As you explained in your write-up, all modern chips are manufactured in small die sizes, which make them less reliable than before. Some particular ones may be even less reliable on average, like the said nVidia chips.

However, as George mentioned, we are talking about machines that are 5-6 years old now. After 5-6 years one should not be surprise that something will fail, even if it was not specifically belonging to a known defective batch. So I just don't see any point to dwell on it or scare people about it anymore.

On a different subject, thank you for the detailed write-up. I enjoyed reading it.

It all makes perfect sense, however, you put it in very plain and accessible terms. To make chips faster and less power hungry they have to be smaller. It seems that reduce longevity is the price we have to pay for that.

[vm5]

Two things are incontrovertible in this experience:
- I had to know the existance of this forum before buying the t61;
- This experience isn't worthless; thank to the expert posts i learn some new things about computers, thank You.
I'm using my T61 with a little more circumspection, waiting for his death (i hope the later possible).

[Norway Pad]

Exactly, "use and enjoy"..... Even my used almost 10 year old T42 works perfectly even though this series was prone to GPU/SB failure.

Word. In July 2009 I bought a used T42, and if you look at my details, you will see that I joined this forum some days later. I had some previous knowledge about Thinkpads, and I had been a T43 owner for 2 years at that point. But the T4x GPU failure was unknown to me. After finding out, I somehow regretted buying the T42. A slight difference, maybe, as the loose T4x GPU can be repaired, which is not the case for the T61 Nividia chip. But looking back it was a waste to worry, as the T42 works just as good today. Good luck, or a result of me always treating it very carefully? Anyway, "Use and enjoy" will be the word of the day.

[Dawnbreaker]

I bought my T61 second-hand 2 years ago , without knowing about the nvidia defect. I've had some problems, because like BSODs (even kernel panic under Linux, which is very rare), sound glitches & etc, but the machine still runs fine. Of course it will die someday, but..
A blessing in disguise people said - now I know that my next ThinkPad will be with integrated graphics!

[farmall]

I like T61s because if anything breaks it's so easy to replace what died or strip them for parts. They are disposably cheap yet one need not dispose of them. Pure win.

Board dies? So what. Buy a complete base with a board or a machine with a busted display off Ebay, play "swaptronics" and you are back in business.
As prices go down over time it gets cheaper to do that, and when you finally want to upgrade you can Ebay it then get a newer used 'Pad.

Multiple used 'Pads are more useful to me than one new one and if you hunt spares before yours dies you can get the best deals. Nvidia death makes for good organ donors if you don't need a system board, and Intel donors are cheap enough. I don't buy boards because people who bother to pull the whole board tend to want more money. A base with board is cheaper and less work.

[jcvjcvjcvjcv]

My 07/05 T61 with nVidia card failed in early summer 2011 and was fixed in August 2011 on Lenovo's dime. It failed again in early November 2013; I guess they "service" these units with old-stock boards that are dated < 08/08...

So here's your estimate: it might die today, it might last four years. It will however fail when you need it most (Murphy's law)

@farmall: I paid EUR 33,95 for my board (no nVidia)... shipped, with 1 year warranty. I don't see any T61's bases that go lower