Temperature and boot issues on refurbished ThinkPad T480s

[bixo]

Hi everyone,

I recently purchased a refurbished ThinkPad T480s, and overall, I’m very satisfied with it. It’s exactly the laptop I needed, but I’ve been experiencing some issues and would appreciate your insights.

1. Temperature Problems:
I live in a tropical country and don’t always have access to air conditioning. The laptop has reached very high temperatures, causing video glitches and, on one occasion, preventing it from booting after shutdown. I temporarily fixed this by pressing the "Emergency-reset hole".

I also noticed that it sometimes wakes up from sleep mode inside my backpack, overheating badly. To avoid this, I’ve switched to using hibernation instead of sleep.

I’ve tried several fixes to reduce temperatures, with partial success:

- Reapplied thermal paste on the CPU.
- Adjusted software settings (uninstalled Lenovo Commercial Vantage, as it worsened thermal performance).
- Mostly use it on battery power, which has helped in most cases.

2. Boot Issues:
Twice now, after shutting down, the laptop refused to boot. Both times, I followed forum recommendations:

- Removed the battery.
- Disconnected the internal BIOS battery.
- Held the power button for 20 seconds.

The last time, it wouldn’t boot until 3 days later. On top of the steps above, I also reseated the RAM, SSD, and Wi-Fi card, reconnecting them one by one. Eventually, it booted, and Windows reverted to its state from three days earlier (a surprise to me!).

I ran UEFI Diagnostics, and everything showed as "OK." I’d like to take it to a repair shop, but with such erratic behavior, I’m not sure when it might fail again.

My questions are:

- Which components could be failing?
- If the BIOS is corrupted (one of my hypotheses), can it be replaced?
- Could it be passive components (like failing capacitors, similar to desktop PCs)?

I’d appreciate any advice or shared experiences. Thanks in advance!

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the Forum.

Most heat problems could be solved by applying a Honeywell PTM7950 thermal pad instead of paste.
Some more info here.

If you have integrated graphics, get a fan for discrete graphics (FRU 01YR200) instead, install it at the same time when you install the above pad.

[axur-delmeria]

As a fellow owner of a T480s who lives in the tropics, I recommend PTM7950 as well.

Never, ever put your laptop in a bag while in sleep mode.

[bixo]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I’ll give the PTM7950 thermal pad a try.

Just a quick note for future readers: The fan FRU 01YR200 mentioned is for the T480 (discrete GPU). For the T480s with discrete graphics, the compatible fans are:

• 01HW694 Delta
• 01HW695
• 01HW696 Sunon