ThinkPad X220 overheating

[axur-delmeria]

In my case, it turned out to be just dried-up thermal paste.

[heilong]

Recently I locally bought another ThinkPad X220 for cheap, again in an expensive configuration with i7-2640M CPU, 8GB RAM, HD IPS and 160GB SSD. The whole configuration of laptop is still stock.
Dismantled it carefully, cleaned, added expensive thermal compound, assembled. No sense, at all. It still heats up so much, 96 degrees for CPU in long peak tasks.

Have you tried running this laptop before you proceeded with dismantling/cleaning/reassembling?
I am just a bit surprised that you tried several of them and had the same problem.
I assume from your location that your room temperature is "normal" and not 40-50C or something.
Either you're very unlucky, or it is something about what you're doing: the way you apply thermal paste (too much? too little?), or something is up with your OS?
The chipset doesn't get super hot, which is why any generic thermal pad is good enough for it. A better thermal conduction premium thermal pad for the chipset will not hurt, but it won't do anything to make your CPU run cooler.
Try to get someone else verify your thermal paste application is good. Reset the BIOS to default settings. Try another OS without any customizations (e.g. make a bootable Linux live USB stick), run some stress test (even an online one that runs in the browser).
In my opinion, it's ok if a CPU gets to 90+ C, if it's under continuous heavy load, and the Turbo Boost is on. If the CPU gets so hot that it starts throttling below its base (non-Turbo) frequency, then I'd say it's abnormal for an X220.

Cheers
Gene

[crumby]

Some update since my previous post.

Two years ago i had bought a new x220 i5-2420 motherboard (to replace the one from my x220 that has been randomly shutdown, for years).
The new motherboard, which was the same setup (cpu/tpm/intel stuff..), but not the same FRU (different manufacturer), was running hotter even at idle. Not super hot but hotter.

Last year i bought another used one from ebay (very cheap). Last week i finally took the courage to open the x220 again to install it and it seems this one runs normaly. Will see after a little more use.

[uni_0n]

well, my gentlemen.
an update after all this long.
im really done with IT (despite my education certificate in this area) for truck driving, so i tought why not having a laptop with me for the long shifts, changing between both sometimes, holding everything synchronized.
im so in love with my t440p, and he's still with me everywhere, like a visiting card. the performance of i7-4712MQ on Windows 11 is simply amazing.
but! back to my X220:
no, i haven't abandoned anything. i'll force to modify it and push it to its limits.
my plans: i'm just going to screw the i7-2640M and jump directly to a mod chinese x230 board with an i7-3612QE with same TDP as dual cores.
you can endlessly prove how much is better the HD 4000 iGPU compared to HD 3000. although the second one had great potential, but Intel decided to kill it immediately after its release imho, even with different support on windows vs linux.

and there are rumors that the x230's cooling is slightly more efficient than the x220's

and that's not all
my plans, of course, are limited by my budget

[axur-delmeria]

Another option is the modified X230 board with i7-3687U (2.1GHz base clock, 3.1GHz max boost for both cores) -- being a 17w TDP processor, it will definitely run cooler and have longer battery runtime.