Lenovo T430 CPU Reaching 90 and 100C

[mrantar]

Hi,

I have a Lenovo T430 with Intel Core i7-3520M and 8GB Ram running Windows 10 Pro (at this time).

It all started when my previous laptop's screen, with exactly the same specifications (as they were bought in bulk), died and we moved my Hard-disk from the old laptop to the new, which was running Windows 7 Pro at the time.

Given all specifications are the same, the laptop worked but the fan was always on and on High. After some time when Windows 10 came out, I upgrade from Windows 7. The fan and temperature cooled off their activities for a bit, but then shortly after started to rise up again.

Long story short, I have updated video card drivers, system, BIOS, cleaned the heatsinks, run very minimal programs at a time (way less than before), removed unnecessary programs or things I don't use often (though I might need at some point), ran adware and virus scans, and temperatures are reaching 70-80 degrees when on idle and NO PROGRAM IS RUNNING!

Sometimes when I run a chrome with say 4-5 tabs open with a youtube video playing, firefox with 3-4 tabs open, a couple of word documents, and Xmind, I would hover about 87-93. When an installation or any background process is happening (update, scan...), temperatures reach 101C!

What do I do!?

 

[jaguarskx]

If you merely cleaned the dust off of the heatsink, then I would say you need to actually remove the heatsink, clean off all the the original thermal paste and apply new thermal paste.

Thermal paste can dry up over time. When this happens it can no longer transfer heat from the CPU to the heatsink. Instead it acts like a heat insulator because the paste has dried into fine powder stuck together.

 

[mrantar]

If you merely cleaned the dust off of the heatsink, then I would say you need to actually remove the heatsink, clean off all the the original thermal paste and apply new thermal paste.

Thermal paste can dry up over time. When this happens it can no longer transfer heat from the CPU to the heatsink. Instead it acts like a heat insulator because the paste has dried into fine powder stuck together.

Thank you so much for your input. How often should I do this operation? (Applying the thermal paste). I have done it already about 9 months ago. I did it for both the CPU and GPU.

Thanks.

 

[jaguarskx]

You should not need to do it very often unless the thermal paste is terrible.

I installed my old Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU in my HTPC connected to my PC back in 2009 and to this day I have no problems with heat. I used Arctic Silver 5. It's been around for a long time so there are better thermal pastes out there. But AS5 is still considered very good and it's pretty inexpensive.

Its mostly used to watch movies. But I did play games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim (using keyboard and mouse) on it just to get a feel for it, and I did not notice any unusual spike in CPU temps.

 

[mrantar]

Thanks again for your reply. I just checked the paste I used, and I'm not sure who it is made by, but it has a GR-005 on it with Thermal Conductivity of > 1.93W/m-k and Thermal Resistance of <0.12 C -in^2/W (No idea what these mean!).

In any case, I went over every single device driver in my device manager and checked for any driver updates. Notably, drivers under the "System Devices" and the "Display Adapters" needed updates, thought I had updated them before. Aside from these, I also found that Windows 10 was having an issue running an upgrade which I only found after running the "Check for Updates" at least 3 times.

Anyway, after all these updates I'm now running Chrome with 5 tabs open, Firefox with 4 tabs, with a youtube playing and I'm at 60C - it is some improvement but not ideal. However, when I idle, it does drop and hover around 49 (which I consider an achievement!)

What should the normal temperature be? Could it be possible that some back end processes are consuming CPU power?

 

[Obakasama]

No help whatsoever here, but I have a Lenovo T430 but running an i5-3210M, so how applicable my temperatures are to yours I'm not sure. Mine fluctuate between 40 and 50 deg C on idle but usually on 40. I use Speccy for my temperatures.

 

[mrantar]

Thanks Obakasama. It is good to know. I actually am noticing a much better improvement after all the updates from yesterday. I am too now idling between 40 and 50.

I read in some other forums that "a 45C is considered warm". Not sure if it was really meant to be in general or for a laptop. If so, what is the ideal temperature.

Just curious now.

Thanks again. I'm considering my issue resolved at this point.