Info Lenovo products have a really bad fan management

[Takenfal]

My Product:

Model: Lenovo ThinkPad E560
CPU: i5-6200u
GPU: AMD R7 M370
RAM: 16 GB DDR3
SSD: PNY CS900 240 GB


Purpose of this topic: help the community and (maybe) the designers and developers

I want to write this post to inform the Lenovo community and all the users that Lenovo designers and developers don't care about the reliability of their products. Yes, this is an important but completely legitimate statement. There are three reasons why I feel absolutely right to make this post:

1. It is unacceptable that a product intended for professional use has such a bad bad management of dissipation; and on a notebook, the fan is a vital component of the dissipation system. In my specific case, using both the CPU and the GPU, temperatures rise quickly above the maximum allowed threshold (I'm talking about 100 and over degrees). Obviously the fan and the notebook in general are completely dust-free and I also changed the thermal paste but with no significant improvememnts, meaning the problem is simply the undersized dissipation system. But there's the fan at least. The fan makes a huge difference when the copper heatsink is small. The problem is that designers most probably don't know this, or maybe they don't perform tests properly on their products, or maybe they don't care, and this results in reaching the throttling temperature with the fan still stuck at half its maximum speed.

2. I asked a question a long time ago on the Lenovo community (here's the link: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkP...res-but-the-fan-speed-remains-low/m-p/4125111) asking for a feature to be added that would allow users to manage the fan speed on the BIOS, or at least an improvement to the automatic algorithm. Nobody answered me, no updates until now. Nothing.

3. Maybe you're thinking that the fan is not that important after all, especially when the heatsink is inappropriate. Let me tell you what I did: I completely disassembled the laptop, disconnected the fan from the motherboard and located the 5V power pin and the ground one. I isolated them and passed them through the hole of the ethernet port towards the outside of the body. Then I cut and stripped the wires of a USB power cable and soldered the cables to those of the fan. In this way, when I connect the USB to any of the laptop's connectors, the fan runs at full speed instantly. Result? Not only the laptop, under stress, no longer reaches a throttle situation but remains at absolutely acceptable temperatures. Now it is no longer absurdly hot to the point of being even annoying to touch at any point, but barely warm. And this by using both the CPU and the GPU. This shows how important the management of the fan is in a laptop.


I would also like to point out to the designers a couple of things:

1. A slower CPU that doesn't throttle, IS NOT SLOWER than a faster one that does.

2. Letting the CPU and the GPU temperatures rise to a critical point just by keeping the fan speed low due to the noise, on a notebook, not only exposes them to damages, but they make other components to warm up too, like the memories or the HDD/SSD, for example.

I also tried to post this on the official Lenovo community. Deleted after a few minutes.

I hope someone will read this message, I hope that users or people interested in a Lenovo product realize what they are going to buy and what kind of company they are relying on.

Designing and producing a notebook that exposes its components to damage due to temperatures is not a compromise, it is A DEFECT, I hope you get it in your head.


Thanks for your attention.

 

[COLGeek]

...or don't buy and use a Lenovo laptop? There are other options.

 

[Takenfal]

There are other options yes. But what does that mean? First of all, Lenovo is a big laptop producer and it has a huge market share. People say that their products are good but that's not the truth; most of the users need a PC just for social network and writing purposes. And yes, obviously they work well when you don't stress the components. Every notebook would work properly. The fact is that if I buy a computer with a dedicated GPU is because I need to use it; I mean, it's obvious. But when you start using it, it throttles. What's the sense of that? It's like buying a Ferrari and say "hey, this car is fantastic, I only use it mainly at 130 Km/h on the highway." but when you take it to the track the cooling system breaks and the engine bursts; damn the only purpose of a similar car is just to run on a track! This is what Lenovo does. They build professional products, but when you try to use them in that way, they don't work. And it's funny because the problem is just the fan management.

The goal of this thread is helping people by the way, and maybe point out to Lenovo developers that they should listen more to their users and behave more professionally, especially if one of them find a serious defect and write about it on your own forum (instead of removing the post).

 

[Sagar_20]

This is true for some of their old laptops. The most common problem being fan error. which prevents the laptop from booting up and makes loud beeps when you try to turn it on.

I had this problem in my Lenovo E49. To fix it, I cleaned the air vents, opened up the back cover and tried to clean the fan with a mini air blower. The inside structure is so poorly designed that you can't even clean it properly because you only have access to half of the fan.

Once i was able to fix it but after a few days, the problem came back again. and this time, i held down the disassembled laptop under a running tap and then let the water pass through the air vents for some time, and finally let the laptop dry. This might sound odd but it actually fixed my problem.

 

[Takenfal]

This is true for some of their old laptops. The most common problem being fan error. which prevents the laptop from booting up and makes loud beeps when you try to turn it on.

I had this problem in my Lenovo E49. To fix it, I cleaned the air vents, opened up the back cover and tried to clean the fan with a mini air blower. The inside structure is so poorly designed that you can't even clean it properly because you only have access to half of the fan.

Once i was able to fix it but after a few days, the problem came back again. and this time, i held down the disassembled laptop under a running tap and then let the water pass through the air vents for some time, and finally let the laptop dry. This might sound odd but it actually fixed my problem.

Well the E560 is not that old (and it's a really common notebook by the way). And the undersized heatsink for the components it's a very common problem. The new MacBook Pro have this problem too, making the CPU throttle instead of increasing the fan speed. Completely nonsense.

And I also agree with you about the poor internal design. You have to disassembly completly the motherboard in order to access the fan, which ironically is the biggest problem here. I don't understand why producers are doing this. And I'd like to remember that when the i5-6200u throttle on the E560 (more than 100°) the fan is still at half the speed.