Where to plug in Small Second Fan?

[E350]

I installed a wireless-n card in my X61s with phenominal improvement in performance. I would like to lower the temp by installing the small second fan which I bought on ebay but cannot find where to plug in.

My X61s did not come with wireless WAN. And I know that the small second fan shipped with machines with the wireless WAN mini pci-e card.

I looked at the pictures of the wireless WAN cards on ebay, and they have no socket for plugging in the small second fan. Also, the cord on the small second fan is too short to make it all the way over to the WAN slot.

So, do you any of you know where to plug in the small second fan? Or what I would have to purchase to have a place to plug it in?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,


(BTW, about a year ago I installed 8 Gb of RAM and a 500 GB Seagate Hybrid HD and am running W7 64-bit. My X61s has a 1.60 GHz Mobile Core 2 Duo processor. I recently downloaded Core Temp and have been watching the portion graphing ram usage, global cpu usage and max temp. After reading post replies by Real Black Stuff and Bill saying that 8 Gb is not necessary for these machines, I can say they might be right. My actual RAM usage seems to never go over 40%. So, that would mean I could get by with 4 Gb RAM and a 64-bit OS. Or is there less efficiency in the 64-bit operating system such that I could get by with only seeing 3 of the 4 Gb RAM and using a 32-bit OS?)

[hunterman223]

For the memory part, if you already have the 8GB, than there is no sense in downgrading. And 40% of 8GB is 80% of 4, which is getting a little close for comfort. And by taking out one stick of memory you are going from dual to single-channel, which might reduce performance in certain situations. Like I said, I would keep it.

I chose to upgrade to 8GB when I was experimenting with multiple servers and clients in VMs, really came in handy. For certain tasks a RAMdrive is also somewhat useful, and cool. Right now, pagefile is set at 200mb max and with chrome and a few background apps, I am sitting at 18%. I rarely go much higher than that unless I am running VMs, etc.

Good luck adding a fan, besides where to put it in these cramped machines I have no idea what you'd use as a power source. X61s is even slimmer so that adds to the challenge. Are you running either Vista or W7? You could turn on power saving for the card. There's a setting for this in Lenovo Power Manager, and you can specify the level of power savings and battery/ac/both. It's also in Windows power settings under advanced if i'm not mistaken.

[E350]

Thanks for the reply. I am running W7 64-bit.

You know I was just looking at the PCMCIA (PC card) socket. I occupies miles of acreage and I don't and probably won't ever use it. I could put a full size fan (without the heat sink) there. Just thinking.

[hunterman223]

Thanks for the reply. I am running W7 64-bit.

You know I was just looking at the PCMCIA (PC card) socket. I occupies miles of acreage and I don't and probably won't ever use it. I could put a full size fan (without the heat sink) there. Just thinking.

How big is this fan? And if you do figure out a power source for it, it will not be controlled by the bios like the main system fan. So unless you also rig up a manual switch/knob somehow, it's going to be on full-speed when there is power..

[E350]

It's about 1.5"x 1.5"

FRU: 42W3410

Page 83 on ThinkPad X60, X60s, X61, and X61s Hardware Maintenance Manual.
(But doesn't say where socket "2" is located and I can't find it by looking at the MB.)

Pictures at:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-OEM-IBM-Thi ... 4602ff10cc

I wouldn't have a problem with it being on all the time.

Thanks again for the reply, Hunter.

[hunterman223]

It's about 1.5"x 1.5"

FRU: 42W3410

Page 83 on ThinkPad X60, X60s, X61, and X61s Hardware Maintenance Manual.
(But doesn't say where socket "2" is located and I can't find it by looking at the MB.)

Pictures at:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-OEM-IBM-Thi ... 4602ff10cc

I wouldn't have a problem with it being on all the time.

Thanks again for the reply, Hunter.

Ah, wow I'm dumb. Did some googling. I had no idea the X61 had a second fan OE, but apparently so. And than I re-read the OP..

I found this picture. Maybe this will help you out?
http://www.tpuser.idv.tw/articleimages/ ... pic-44.jpg

I'll keep digging.. Maybe the models with the WWAN are an entirely different mainboard?

------------------

Edit: See the last post here. You might not have the connector at all, it seems some models without WWAN have it, some don't.

[E350]

Your link doesn't like me:

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /articleimages/santarosa-pic-44.jpg on this server."

I think you may be right about the main board being different. I can see an unused white rectangle which may have been for soldering in the 3-wire small second fan's socket next to the 2-wire FRU 42W3807 X61s internal speaker socket:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LENOVO-X61S-I ... 0829660916

The FRU 42W3807 X61s internal speaker has an arc cut out on the top which may accept the arc of the small second fan. I didn't have time to finish all iterations of trying to fit it like a puzzle before I put the machine back together.

If you have the time and the interest, I would certainly appreciate your insight.

[hunterman223]

Your link doesn't like me:

"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /articleimages/santarosa-pic-44.jpg on this server."

I think you may be right about the main board being different. I can see an unused white rectangle which may have been for soldering in the 3-wire small second fan's socket next to the 2-wire FRU 42W3807 X61s internal speaker socket:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LENOVO-X61S-I ... 0829660916

The FRU 42W3807 X61s internal speaker has an arc cut out on the top which may accept the arc of the small second fan. I didn't have time to finish all iterations of trying to fit it like a puzzle before I put the machine back together.

If you have the time and the interest, I would certainly appreciate your insight.

I uploaded it to imageshack, that taiwanese/chinese/whatever site didn't like a few other people on here either it seems.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/80 ... apic44.jpg

But I don't think that will be useful to you since that's probably a model that included the fan/connector originally.

So the provisions are there, the connector isn't. I'm not sure what else you could do.. How hot is the laptop getting?

[E350]

Cool!

It was worth all the Trip Advisor pop up ads to see the picture of the X61s with the Small Second Fan installed. They way the fan is oriented, the cord is on the right. And in the picture it looks like it plugs in to a horizontal socket on the front of the MB. I have to call it an evening tonight, but I will open the machine up again tomorrow morning and check for that socket.

Thanks again, very much Hunterman.
Tim Hodgson

[hunterman223]

Cool!

It was worth all the Trip Advisor pop up ads to see the picture of the X61s with the Small Second Fan installed. They way the fan is oriented, the cord is on the right. And in the picture it looks like it plugs in to a horizontal socket on the front of the MB. I have to call it an evening tonight, but I will open the machine up again tomorrow morning and check for that socket.

Thanks again, very much Hunterman.
Tim Hodgson

No problem.

Sorry 'bout the ads, I have an adblocker so I had no idea they were there.

[E350]

O.K. typing on my T61p and looking at the MB of the X61s and the image shack picture Hunterman sent.

When I place my small second fan in the orientation shown on the picture and when I enlarge the picture to 200% it looks like what I originally guessed, the socket for the plug for the small second fan is missing from the MB. It looks like it is to be soldered onto the small rectangle immediately above the internal speaker socket.

So, if I am game to solder in a socket, any suggestions where I could buy the appropriate Lenovo white three wire socket?

And some sort of micro teeny weenie soldering iron appropriate to solder the socket to the MB?

Stating the obvious, I think we now know why Lenovo abandoned the X61s in favor of the X61 for installation of the faster processors.

[RealBlackStuff]

Cut the connector of the fan-cable and solder the wires directly to the mobo (if you can find the pin-out).

[E350]

Hey Buddy!

The three "pin outs" are obvious on the MB next to the place where the socket would go. If I can see from the photo which side is the red and which is the orange wire or assuming that the socket is usually placed in the same orientation as the internal speaker socket located right below it, I guess I could solder directly to the pin outs (the blue wire is in the middle either way).

Any suggestions for what micro teenie weenie soldering iron to use?

If so, I will toast you when I raise my next Guiness this weekend.

[richk]

If your machine didn't start out with a small fan, I really doubt that hooking the fan to the motherboard pads will help. The circuitry to support the fan won't be there. The motherboards that have the fan require the fan to be there or they give a fan error, as they would if the main fan was missing

[E350]

Richk:

As Bill Wattenberg says, "Do the experiment!"
So, I will, without anchoring the fan down and possibly without even soldering, and with and without installing the Sierra WANN card which I bought -- and I will report back.

I notice that you are a "moderator." Thank you for this forum.

But remember, "Extremism in the Pursuit of knowledge is No Vice; Moderation in the Pursuit of Science is No Virtue"

Till then, thank you for your input.