W500 Overheating with Immediate Shutdown (Not Graceful)

[mdjtlj]

Greetings,

Having a bit of a problem with my W500 with respect to overheating. It will occasionally shut down without any type of warning (quick shut down, not the graceful one). I believe that I have tracked this down to overheating, due to some system monitoring (via speedfan) and just temps in the room where this normally happens.

Let me tell you about the particular setup that I have, as I believe that this does make a difference:

- W500 (4058-CTO)
- 8GB RAM
- Vista Business x64
- Main Hard Drive - 320GB 7200rpm
- 2nd Hard Drive - 500GB 7200rpm (in Ultrabay Drive)
- 1920x1200 resolution - always using the integrated graphics, never the ATI card (it sucks up too much energy)
- 6 cell normal battery (9 bay causes the laptop to not fit in my sleeve from Tom Bihn)

The temps that I'm running are as follows (currently in a cool hotel room):

- HD0 (Main Drive) 33C
- HD1(Ultrabay Drive) 32C
- Temp 1 (Don't know location of this) 85C
- Temp 2 (Don't know location of this) - 78C
- Core 0 - 50C
- Core 1 - 55C

The machine runs fine at these temperatures. However, should I go to a "normal" office, where it is not so cold, the Temp1 and Temp2 go up to 94C and 88C respectively. This is the highest that I've seen them before the machine actually shuts off.

I'm wondering if the additional of the second hard drive has something to do with this, as I recently replaced it from a 320GB 7200rpm to a 500GB rpm, Hitachi to Seagate.

Does anyone know where Temp 1 and Temp2 is located? Perhaps I have a BIOS problem with the fan control or a faulty fan? What are the design temperatures that these things should be running? I would like to see if an update to the BIOS might help, but with Vista x64, this requires you use a CD ROM to flash the BIOS, which I don’t even have in this machine, due to the second HDD.

Any suggestions? I guess that I could call out Lenovo, but they are usually pretty worthless in terms of finding a solution to this.

[awolfe63]

I have had this happen on other Thinkpads. Use a CPU temperature monitoring utility to confirm that you are approaching 90C or so before it shuts down. If so, it is a heatsink problem. Send it in or reseat the heatsink yourself with some Arctic silver.

If it happens at a lower CPU temp - below 90C - then it is a different problem.

[nivla]

Any update on this? I find my W500 doing the same thing. Lenovo recently sent me a replacement 9cell battery and the overheating/shutdown happened three times since I swapped out my original battery with the new one sent.

[maxapps]

Did any of you ever find root-cause on this issue? My W500 has recently begun to do abrupt shutdowns. I also suspect something heat-related. I've just installed Speedfan to monitor the Core1/2 temps, but no shutdowns yet.

[mdjtlj]

I did finally get this fixed, turned out that this was the fan assembly. Lenovo came out, swapped it out under warranty and I've never had the problem since. Runs much cooler now.

[nivla]

I did finally get this fixed, turned out that this was the fan assembly. Lenovo came out, swapped it out under warranty and I've never had the problem since. Runs much cooler now.

Same here. Lenovo swapped out the fan assembly on my system and its been running great. They also replaced the system board though I'm not sure that was entirely necessary.

[QFoam]

Same here. Lenovo swapped out the fan assembly on my system and its been running great. They also replaced the system board though I'm not sure that was entirely necessary.

Just curious, nivla, how long have you had your W500? I see that mdjtlj has had his w500 since they came out in late 2008.

Thx.

[nivla]

I've had my W500 almost exactly one year now. Use it every day for at least 6 hours a day running common apps and sometimes resource hogs like VMware Workstation w/ multiple VMs open.

[AdaSch]

regular working like excel, www, etc, bios fan speed,

temps after 6 hours
gelid extreme paste (diamonds)

1 cpu 36°C
2 aps 36°C
3 crd 35°C
5 no5 32°C
7 bat 32°C
9 bus 37°C
10 pci 40°C
11 pwr 43°C