Well... My Thinkpad is already faulty

23 Mar 2026

One month of use and it is already faulty

I got a used Thinkpad T14 in early February this year.

I must admit, the machine is superb: excellent keyboard, screen is good, sound quality acceptable (honestly, the MacBook's speaker is really a dark magic).

But the build quality is... a bit unlucky in it.

The machine I got was a used machine. After a month of usage, I realized when I open the lid and restore from sleep, the fan was spinning really fast. The CPU itself is not hot at all, at most 40 degrees Celsius. In the diagnosis tool, the CPU temperature is normal, but the one linked to fan speed has shown the temperature to be 128 degrees Celsius, which is a very problematic value.

In the early stage, when I closed the lid and reopened it, it would resume to normal. But the issue went south. The fan would turn really fast at 4000+ rpm even in the BIOS stage. Given that I had the newest BIOS installed. It was showing some signs of hardware failure.

Debugging with Ai leads to sad conclusion

I then had a long conversation with ChatGPT and other Ai tools. They told me to try the following things:

Update BIOS to the newest version
Perform a reset by pressing the reset button at the bottom of the machine
Toggle the disconnect battery option in BIOS and press the power button for a minute to drain the charge
These are to make sure the EC memory is refreshed and hope that the machine can regain proper reading

All those attempts failed. Ai concluded that the machine's sensor or chip is problematic, and there's no software way to bypass the issue. I should either live with the spinning fan (of course the persistent high speed could result in a premature wear-out), or repair the machine.

I sent the message to the seller, hoping that they will reply to me. Their shop description claimed that they would honour a 90-day labour and parts. See how it goes.

An irony to my thoughts on the repairability and durability

Sigh... What an irony when reading my previous posts:

I am being attracted by Thinkpads. Repairability, durability, usability, able to run Linux properly, and most importantly, cheap and available in the second-hand market.

I cannot repair that faulty sensor (need to replace the whole motherboard, which costs the same as the machine itself), and it is not durable (OK, I will accept my machine is already 5 years old when I get it).

I must say, most PC companies cannot make really durable hardware. Even Thinkpads, I know most people will say the Thinkpad nowadays is the Lenovo Thinkpad, not the IBM's. But I owned quite a few Apple devices, laptops, phones, and iPads. They are built to last. I never encountered any hardware failure when using them, perhaps, except for the consumable battery parts.

I love the philosophy of Thinkpads. But I am confused now, should I get another used one? New ones are pricey. Or perhaps, could the new MacBook Neo suit me? Not sure. I really love the Fedora ecosystem.