Is a T40p long fan in a T43p a good idea?

[arpeas]

Title is all. My T43p long fan is on its last legs even after lubrication, and I'm not willing to spend any more than 5 euros on a fan that might suffer the same fate in a week or two. I've got a fully functional, lubricated, quiet and nice T40p long fan that I used on my Intel board T43, and it did a great job cooling it down. Now my question is will it be able to sufficiently cool down a FireGL V3200? It has a much smaller surface area and heatpipe compared to the T43p's fan assembly. On the other hand I've read reports that the older heatsinks are built out of material with more heat conductivity. Has anyone dared to try this?

[TPFanatic]

the fan itself is separable from the housing, so if you wanted to combine the both of them that may be an option.

if the GPU is already not overheating, you can try T40p heatsink as is, if there is a substantial and concerning increase in temps, then do more work. otherwise it just may be fine.

[arpeas]

the fan itself is separable from the housing

Not in my experience unfortunately, I tried to get it off some time ago to no avail. I actually broke one of the rims holding it to the heatsink lol. Gave up afterwards.

My average GPU temps are, on idle, about 50-52 degC. What would be an acceptable temperature with the T40p heatsink? I really don't want to go above 54-55 degrees when idling.

[TPFanatic]

the GPU temp to worry about is heating up with load. i used to see between 80 and 90C at worst with gaming on T42p back around up to 2015 or so when i was still using them.. they were all my old man would buy lol .. with respect to hindsight i don't recommend getting your machine that hot since i know i cooked at least one T42p/R50p to GPU death while others just had their southbridges fall off which is also caused by heat / stress / flex whatever.

[arpeas]

the GPU temp to worry about is heating up with load.

The worst my unit ever got when downclocked to 350MHz core/220MHz memory is 65 degrees, but usually it hovers around 60, just like the CPU. Are these good numbers? Also, could you share your TPFanControl thresholds for a T43p if you have them on hand? Mine skips level 1 completely and goes to 3 when it gets to 58 degrees, increases a level further when it gets to 72 and goes max at 80. The fan shuts off at 47 degrees. But I've never actually experienced it going above level 3 and I'm pretty sure it maxing out at 65 is as good as it's ever going to get.

What I'm more worried about is the southbridge temperature. With my Intel board it usually idles around 48-50 degrees, but on the ATi board that increases to 53-55. Under load the Intel board never went above 56, but the ATi regularly hits 60. I think building a heatsink that goes to the PC Card cage is the only solution of this. And I won't be removing the Mini-PCI WiFi card, not having it integrated is too much of a tradeoff on a machine such as this.

Also the fan grinding appears to be correlated to the angle the machine is in. When using it on a port replicator it's much more likely to start grinding than on a fully flat surface. It could be there is a part inside the fan that the machine oil didn't get to.

[arpeas]

Also have you ever made use of PowerPlay? I find it limits my performance too much while on battery power. Is there a way to set specific clock speeds for particular programs, that will preferably be auto-detected when launched?

[TPFanatic]

i havent used TPFC for awhile. irrc I favored Fan 0 for sub-50, Fan 3 for 51- 55, Fan 7 for everything between 55 - 79, then Fan 64 for 80 and up. i ran my machines hard. i did this for T42p then my T500 with Radeon 3650. The T500 put up with my gaming antics a lot better than T42p. the T42p and R50p i used to use tended to die after a year or so of hard use, while the T500 still works last i checked.

now i just have a P71 with a P3000 which is equivalent to a GTX 1060 6GB but i don't even plays games anymore so nothing really matters anymore. ive moved onto casual 3D rendering which the P3000 is inadequate for, i have a plug-in RTX 3060 12GB for that, good for rendering but choppy for games, so i unplug it in the rare occasion i do run a game.

[arpeas]

Fan 0 for sub-50, Fan 3 for 51- 55, Fan 7 for everything between 55 - 79, then Fan 64 for 80 and up.

Wow, that's an aggressive config. Way too loud for me lol
I play games on my T43p, but it's mostly being used for watching DVDs and lightweight web browsing, which still maxes out the CPU to about the same level as playing a game would. But I do think the config I made will suffice for the tasks this machine sees, and once the motherboard does die I'm counting on me having enough BGA rework skills to do a repair.

BTW I'm thinking about getting a T400/500 with the AMD graphics. I've currently got a very beat up T400 with Intel, do you think going for another one with AMD would give any benefit? I don't game on that machine, and it's actually still surprisingly great with the modern web. YouTube is the only website that chugs a bit, but once it fully loads in it gets decent too.

[TPFanatic]

T400 with 3470 is not worth it. 3470 is garbage

T500 with 3650 or W500 with FireGL are equivalent. The 3650 is close to Intel HD4000 in gaming performance Imo But the T500 classical build is very similar to T40, and this is preferable, and 8:5 LCD is so much nicer than 16:9. otherwise seek w520. i cant stand 16:9 so much even when i had a K2000M W530 with 7-row mod i just gave it to my sister for free…

Only be careful with a T500 and W500 because if previous owner never changed thermal paste that Radeon may be toast by now. replacement motherboard i imagine is inexpensive. So just be prepared for typical old laptop problems. Also t500/w500 is prone to blowing the left hinge. T60p might be more worth it for built quality and speculative longevity, T60 wide lid can actually go onto a T500 with some modding. I did it. In any case A nice example will otherwise last a long time.

[arpeas]

I've heard people say the AMD dedicated graphics in these ThinkPads aren't worth it and to just stick with the Intel GPU. Either way, it's not like I'm able to choose which ThinkPad I'll stumble upon at the flea market lol
Also why the left hinge specifically? And my T400's hinges are quite floppy but stiff at the same time. Lubricating helped and freed them up a lot, but they're still really worn out. I hope to someday find a nice, barely used/really well kept T4/500. I've already had great luck at finding T4x units in such condition, but nothing newer unfortunately. The ones that do show up have been through hell and back some 19 times, and people want ridiculous amounts of money for them.

[TPFanatic]

T500 left hinge is just bad. the hinge gets floppy or it seizes. if it sezies it takes out the very thin magnesium corner of the lid with it. bad design. but replacement hinges are plenty.

my family is very on the spectrum, stuck in their ways. dad was stuck purchasing crates of t42p. i convinced him to upgrade to t500. then we had crates of t500s. i maintained 5 of them for the household for about 3-4 years. then i got a job and lavishly graced each human with a ThinkPad personalized to their desires: Dad got a W530 I modded with QHD 2560x1440. my older sister got my other W530 with K2000M and FHD. my middle sister made do with T430 with QHD and NVS 5400m, then upgraded her to P70 with 4K and M3000M, very respectable rig. youngest sister got ThinkPad Yoga S1, then 260. i paid for everything. exception being youngest sis recently bought herself X1 Yoga, incredible machine, very well built. everyone else is still a leach.

in maintaining T500s, we got lucky only one had a failed ATI video. everything else i changed thermal paste on and the chipsets lasted forever. Only problem is the left hinge corner of the lid broke in almost EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. exceptions being my Dad's personal T500, which he used on a tabletop so it generally sat still. and my personal T500, which had the opposite of a seized hinge, the hinge actually totally loosened up. i replaced the hinge last year for fun but haven't seen the laptop in months.

Radeon 3650 / FireGL is worth it for games and CAD. the 3470 is worthless but the 3650 is alright. the 256mb/512mb of VRAM does actually loosen a very small load on the chipset, we noticed an ATI T500 handled Facebook slightly better than Intel T500. T500 also has two extra MPCIE slots you can put NVMEs in. Serial Ultrabay is quite nice, could take a BD Burner even. just all around a very classical ThinkPad that's more fun than it seems.

[arpeas]

Alright so I got tired of the fan's noise and replaced it with the T40p one. It took me multiple tries to get it bent downwards, only the upper part isn't making full contact with the GPU heatspreader but it's 99,7% there. Playing NFS MW and it gets to about 78-80 degrees celsius, about the same as the other heatsink does, and considering the smaller surface area I say it's good enough for me.