Thinkpad Upgrade

[Blze001]

I've been poking around awhile, decided this was as good a place as any to pose my questions, so here goes.

I have a Thinkpad T61p that's rather dear to me: First computer I ever bought with my own money back in 2007, was my primary coding machine through 4.5 years of Computer Science and it survived the great NVIDIA recall of 2010 (And by that I mean it died, went to Lenovo, and came back with a post-08 chipset). It's still running like a champ, but kind of showing it's age. So I'm planning out an upgrade path to give it a little more muscle and hopefully squeeze another 5 years out of it. I've read a dozen or so threads already and have an idea of what I can do, but I'm the type who doesn't like to act until I hear a "Yes. This will work, and this is how" statement, especially with computers.

1) The screen has gotten extremely dim and has some weird smudges that look to be on the LCD matrix itself. I saw the sticky with screen information for T60s, does anyone know a good place to pick up a quality replacement T61p screen? 15.4"

2) I've determined my mobo will run T8xxx and T9xxx processors with a bios update, however this box hasn't had windows installed in a few years. Is there a way to run Middleton's BIOS update via boot disk or through Linux? Also, I've heard of a few fitment issues with upgraded processors (the T8x/9x is a little thicker), was this a unique case or rather common? I have my eyes on a T8300 that I can pick up for $50. Should be a nice performance boost over my old T7250.

3) I want to go SSD for the harddrive. My computer came with SATA I if I'm not mistaken, however 99% of SSDs are SATA II and III. I'm pretty sure a SATA II will plug in, with a speed loss, but how drastic is that loss? Is it enough to justify saving the extra $$$ and sticking with conventional drives?

The other upgrade would be memory, but I already know it can support 8GB max. Thanks for any tidbits of advice in advance

[Raceboy]

You really should flash Middleton BIOS as this will unlock the T61p to SATAII speeds, allows to use any CPU you want (even if the board din't support Penryns from the factory) and clears whitelists of WWAN/WLAN cards. Also, DUAL-IDA becomes available which means that with the IBM_ECW, Throttle Stop etc utility you will get additional multiplier for the CPU (and T9300 gets two multipliers).

[91011]

Inside the RAR file there is a bootable .iso of the modded BIOS.
I've used it more than six times with no problems. Use good discs, the slowest write speed and verify the burned data.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/ ... ost6501443

[Cigarguy]

1) The marketplace of this forum is a great place to look for a new screen or anything else Thinkpad. Post a wanted ad.

2) Download the CD image of Middleton's BIOS, burn image to CD, boot from CD and follow instructions. Dead simple. Obviously take the usual precautions whenever flashing BIOS/firmware for any device. PM form member TuuS about T9300 and inquire about screen.

3) SATA III SSD works great on our T61. My two T61 each with Sandforce 22XX controlled SSD benchmark (ATTO) around 280ish MB/s which is about max capacity of SATA II. T420 with SATA III benchmark around 530ish MB/s. However, in real life usage you'll hardly notice the difference. I recommend fresh install after new SSD is install. Obviously set SATA mode in BIOS to AHCI which I believe is the default setting anyways.

[Blze001]

I'm burning the .iso right now, thanks. Looks like SSD is the way to go, I might save a few bucks and get a SATA II since the box can't use III speeds anyway.

Any insight on the processor fitment? That's the big question mark, as processor cooling is paramount in laptops.

[Cigarguy]

I did a lot of reading before I upgraded from a T7300 to a T9300 and never heard of "fitment" issues. T9300 ran noticeably cooler and faster. Well worth the upgrade if you can find one at a reasonable price.

edit - It's important to properly apply new thermal paste and properly install the CPU.

[TuuS]

You'll definitely see a noticeable difference upgrading from a 7250 merom. Any of the penryn or even merom chips would give you more performance. I can get any of the optional chips, all pulled from complete working systems. The T8300 I don't have at the moment, but I can get you one cheaper then $50, probably closer to $40 plus shipping. The T8100 is a good option too, it's a very cool running and efficient chip at half the cost. I can also get the T9300 and T9500.


ps. When you're doing the upgrade, take note of your boards FRU number, they may have installed a penryn board during the free repair program. Also check the numbers on the GPU, some got newly manufactured chips from nVidia, while others got used chips, it's just a matter of luck really. There will be a four digit date code, first two are year, second two are the week, so it will be 07 to 12, followed by 01 to 52. These numbers are far from conclusive, but in general it's believed the updated chip was introduced slowly beginning in early 2008, and not exclusively until weeks 20-30 of 2008. Any dates beyond this should be treated as highly suspect unless on a genuine lenovo refurbished board. 3rd party refurb boards usually have chips with forged dates on them, as nVidia only manufactures these chips in small quantities when ordered by oem partners under contractual obligations. If you're lenovo installed board has a later date, then you hit the proverbial lottery.

[Radioguy]

I might save a few bucks and get a SATA II since the box can't use III speeds anyway.

You will if you can find them. They are being clearanced out in many places, and you may score big by actually shopping around retailers rather than online. Most of the SATA II drives are being withdrawn from retail websites, but linger longer in stockrooms while decreasing in price.

[Cigarguy]

Around my neck of the wood one have to look really hard to find SATA II SSD at lower prices either online or at a local B&M. It's not hard to find an on sale 240 GB SATA III SSD selling for $159 locally or the same price or lower with free shipping. SATA III SSD is also more future upgrade friendly.

[Radioguy]

I think we discussed this before in another thread, but here in the US, you can find such deals.

I think I also pointed out then that by the time you tire of the SATA II machine you upgraded with an SATA III drive (which it cannot fully make use of), another faster interface will probably exist. At that time, you'll find your SATA III drive best suited for storage; something the SATA II drive will likely also suffice for. Again, little upside considering the cost and limited hardware you're upgrading.

[Cigarguy]

You Americans are definitely lucky with deals and electronic pricing. Lenovo Outlet come to mind.

To OP, how much memory you currently have? Our T61s are still very capable with 4 GB of RAM and a SSD upgrade. Upgrade the CPU too and you should be good for another 5 years. I know me and my T61s will be. My recent T420 is just because I'm a geek.

[Radioguy]

Is there a Canadian version of Slickdeals or Fatwallet? If so, you should monitor it for such deals. A fair amount of those I refer to are posted on these sites or in their forums.

[Blze001]

To OP, how much memory you currently have? Our T61s are still very capable with 4 GB of RAM and a SSD upgrade. Upgrade the CPU too and you should be good for another 5 years. I know me and my T61s will be. My recent T420 is just because I'm a geek.

It only has 2GB at the moment. I was planning on getting it up to 4GB, I have my desktop for when I need to do something extremely memory intensive (12GB)

[Cigarguy]

I agree about the desktop. That's what I do too. Having said that I would definitely recommend going to 4 GB.

[miro_gt]

- for CPU - go either T9300 or T9500, and if you want to top out without too many mods then X9000.

- for SSD - dont look at SATA 1, 2 or 3 stuff, check how the SSD performs over time, and how it does at 4k random writes. Here's a good info on endurance tests on many different drives, it for sure made me cement my choice to the brand and model that I got:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... nm-Vs-34nm

- really watch out for GPU temperatures, as the T61p models heat up much more than the regular T61 nVidia laptops, thus are more prone to failure. Try using TPFanControl and some CPU undervolting to limit max temps as much as possible.

- if you plan on going with 4GB RAM then you can put the effort in finding two G.Skill CL4 2GB DIMMs rather than the regular CL5. This will give you some tiny performance benefit, even though you may not notice it at all, heh. There are no CL4 4GB DIMMs out there.

[Blze001]

- for CPU - go either T9300 or T9500, and if you want to top out without too many mods then X9000.

- really watch out for GPU temperatures, as the T61p models heat up much more than the regular T61 nVidia laptops, thus are more prone to failure. Try using TPFanControl and some CPU undervolting to limit max temps as much as possible.

A T9300 would be neat, but I wont really need to squeeze every ounce out of this box. A T8300 will do 99% of what I need it to do no problem. I'll be gaining .5GHz and 2MB L3 over my T7250. The beautiful part is that it's a 25W and my current is 35W, so I'll get a little more battery life and, most crucially, it'll put out less heat.

For what I have planned, it's win-win.

EDIT: I took a look at that page you linked, but I'm not sure I'm reading the data correctly. What I'm looking for is the drive with the highest Data-per-MWI-used value? Simplified: A drive that read/writes 1TB and uses 1% of it's MWI is better than one that read/writes 1TB and uses 2% of it's MWI?

[miro_gt]

what this thread shows you is how much data you can write on certain SSD before it fails permanently, and what is the average speed during its lifetime. In other words how an SSD will perform over time, which is what you should be interested in.

WMI is only relative. As you can see, many drives go over twice of their WMI, others much more. Yet there are some that cant even reach their WMI limit before those die out.

EDIT: I took a look at that page you linked, but I'm not sure I'm reading the data correctly. What I'm looking for is the drive with the highest Data-per-MWI-used value? Simplified: A drive that read/writes 1TB and uses 1% of it's MWI is better than one that read/writes 1TB and uses 2% of it's MWI?

this is the write amplification of the drive. It's not necessarily that if a drive uses lower WA then it's better than another one with higher, such as the case with some drives that use SF controller that can compress data and are said to have WA of less than 1. Or that because it writes less due to lower WA then it would last longer. There are many other factors in determining the life of an SSD, and this is where the endurance testing comes to help, thanks to some brave guys willing to sacrifice their drives for the results.