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T480 fan upgrade? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My T480 runs hot and sometimes the fan is really loud. Occasionally upon boot it'll give me "fan error." Tried reapplying the thermal paste but that didn't help much. It's got plenty of storage, ram, and an i7 processor, so it's not for lack of power that it's doing this.

At this point I'm thinking of investing in a fan/heatsink upgrade, but what do y'all recommend I upgrade the fan/heatsink to?

Has anybody else expierenced the same issue?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Some people will swap the heatsink in the integrated GPU version with the one intended for the Nvidia version. It has a second heat pipe, so it should be a bit more efficient. The thermal pad that is supposed to connect to the GPU must be insulated to keep it from shorting out the motherboard though.

I haven't tried it yet. Some people say it helps, others say it doesn't make much difference. It may be an issue of whether you get an OEM heatsink or a clone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I did this. I got about a 4c reduction on my t480 i7 when running geekbench. Well I also switched to honeywell ptm7950 thermal pad at the same time so not sure which change helped the temperatures the most.

You can get the dgpu heatsink and the thermal pad from AliExpress for about $30usd

Just make sure you tape off the underside of the dgpu heatsink so it doesn't short out your motherboard. I used kapton tape