The Lenovo Thinkpad T490: The thermal control bug that pissed me off

 Holy fucking shit have I been through it for the last week

Motherfucker, for the last WEEK, I've been dealing with my Thinkpad T490's very unique bug. I've recently been playing games like Black Ops II, Team Fortress 2, Fallout New Vegas, etc. These games all run SPLENDIDLY on my Thinkpad T490, which has 16 GB of RAM, and laptop specs otherwise. 

Nothing SPECTACULARLY impressive under the keyboard. Even by Thinkpad standards this really isn't the top of the line model, and hasn't been for years. Even though it was the flagship version of this product line until they went to the "generation 1" naming scheme, which brought these to even bigger heights.

So, what happened? Well, I was playing Black Ops II zombies with a friend, and an acquaintance of mine at the time. We were playing Mob Of The Dead, I think that map is slightly bigger than Buried in total scale, but is still smaller than Tranzit, (the worst map in the game).

We'd been playing pretty much every day for around a week. Before I actually tried to play Black Ops II on this T490, I knew that it was definitely a possibility that it could run. But HOW well was the question. And I wasn't exactly in such a hurry to answer it. But my friend who introduced me to Invincible, who was also the friend I'd been playing it with, finally got me to cave. Because I really didn't have anything to lose, it's not like I'd be giving up a kidney to try it. 

Usually, I wouldn't do something like this. But, seeing my cousin and his friends having so much fun with the new PS5 ports of the older call of duty games, this was probably the perfect time to sway me on the idea. So I did it. 

It's no secret that I almost exclusively use Linux as my daily operating system. I'll probably be the first to tell you that. So, I had to run the launcher through a compatibility tool called "Lutris". This tool is AWESOME, and I completely recommend using it. It absolutely does work with games such as Battlefield 3, and I know that because I've tested it. 

So, I acquire a copy of the game, and I run it through Lutris. Our first few games were unimpressive, I hadn't played in MANY years, I forgot most (>99%) of what I knew, and I'd been playing Black Ops I zombies in most recent history. So all my knowledge that was mostly up to date was coming from that, and wasn't exactly so helpful. 

Through the rounds, I'm playing with windowed, full screen, frame rate caps, graphics, etc. I want this to run at 60 FPS on average. So I dim down everything, resolution, graphics, etc. And I set the cap to maybe 90 FPS. No VSYNC (which isn't called VSYNC in Black Ops II for whatever reason) 

So, eventually, I optimize it for my own system. And it works BEAUTIFULLY. And it WORKED beautifully for a week or so, maybe 1.5 weeks. I'm starting to like buried again, I'm playing Nuketown Zombies, I'm still not playing Tranzit. But I'm remembering all the good times had, and how it felt to be alive from 2012-2016. 

Skip to a week or more ago. I can't remember WHEN this started really. But it was about then. We've been playing for about an hour, maybe more. We've done countless rounds, some maps, and this time we want to do Mob Of The Dead. We do a round, go about 10 rounds, die to bullshit. Run it back, we get into our second game, about 9 rounds in, and the game is suddenly UNPLAYABLE. 

It kind of reminded me of when Ant Man disconnected Iron Man's arc reactor to get the Scepter in that one movie.  Tony just COLLAPSED, not being able to breathe as well, can't walk, etc. That's pretty much what happened. Well, what about the laptop? What happened to it? 

After a few moments of me trying to just wait it out, I call it. I can't continue. So we end game, and I have to investigate. Now, for this, I had to enlist the help of a clanker. Because I had no idea what I was looking for, or even where it'd be. A reboot didn't help. So I went to GoyGPT. We quickly discovered that the drivers for the MX250 GPU in the laptop were UPDATED 2 days ago. 

So it was strange that it took so long for there to be an issue, but it happens. This is Linux, not every driver update is going to be perfect. Even on something like Windows or MacOS they're not always perfect, but Linux can be a little tricky to get to work correctly at times. So, I chalked it up to "ok whatever let's just fix this in the morning". 

Morning comes, more diagnosing. GPT determined that the GPU was actually being throttled. We start doing all kinds of tests, I get frustrated, and I pick it up again in a day or two after that. All the while my friend is like "what's happening is it fixed?" 

So, because the drivers updated very recently, I said "ok let's just downgrade huh". Fine idea. It didn't help. And I couldn't even if I wanted to because of Ubuntu's dependency shit. So, ok. New solution. How about we try to take off lap mode, and set it on performance mode? Didn't work. 

Something funny about this, is that since it's a laptop, it's generally kind of underpowered when you're not plugged in. Obviously, me knowing that, tried to just plug it in while playing. It actually made the problem WORSE! That was even MORE strange. 

So, another day goes by, and I'm in the fucking arm pits of Torvalds' pole smoking ass. Trying to figure out what exactly is happening, and trying to downgrade. Downgrading FAILS, and so I'm left with no solutions. I give up. 

But today, I decided "one more crack". And by now we've figured out that the card thinks it's melting because the target temperature is set really low for whatever reason. And so now we start to force that. And it doesn't work, it doesn't want to be forced. The MX250 is supposed to be throttled at 97 C, which is INCREDIBLY hot. I'm sure even that is damaging your GPU. 

WE were being throttled at 57 C. Which is nothing, that's literally fucking nothing. So goyGPT is sending me back into shell command diagnostic hell. And eventually, it comes up with something. We can actually reset the thermometer doohickies and whatnot by turning off the laptop, unplugging the charger, and holding the power on button for 30 seconds. So I do. 

THAT FIXED THE FUCKING ISSUE. HOLDING THE POWER BUTTON AND REALLY FORCING IT TO DO A WHOLE MOBO HW RESET FUCKING DID IT. 

I'm super mad that THAT is what fixed it. Genuinely. 

So that's the hell I've been experiencing for the last week or so.