CPU temperature Thinkpad R61

[Konstantin Svist]

On 10/15/2009 03:19 PM, Christoph Höger wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just wondered why my fan always runs after a while. After closing
> firefox (which took 50% cpu along with X) I now have a load of roughly
> 0.06 - barely nothing computed at all. Both cores are in the lowest
> config and yet my cpu temperature goes from 42°C to 47°C in roughly 2
> minutes (and back by fan activity).
>
> I would understand this if there was some load, but what causes my CPU
> to heat if it does nothing? Design failure? Has anybody seen such a
> thing?
>
> regards
>
> Christoph
>

I get similar behavior with my Dell laptop. The cause here is that the 
radeon driver doesn't shut off my backlight when the lid is closed, so 
the temperature stays fairly high -- and the CPU fan attempts to lower 
it constantly.
When I boot with nomodeset (so that the BIOS can take care of 
backlight), the fan goes off/quiet after a while