T60p faulty motherboard replacement with one from T60/T61p

[rosma197x]

Hello,
My T60p went dead. Model Type 2007-8JU

- Already tested the supplier voltage and is working fine (checked against another T60).
- dismounted the dead T60p and checked that at yellow connector voltage is correct
- before going dead I sometimes got the message "Fan Error" so I assume motherboard went fault and to be replaced

From Lenovo web site ( http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... MIGR-62741 ) 2007-8JU has an ATI M66-256 (ATI v5225 FireGL) e googling a bit I got several post reporting overheating problems with ATI v5200 family.

I was wondering what is the best choice to replace the my dead motherboard.

I am pursing the following options:

option 1: buy same as original (FRU 41W1407). pro: no need to reinstall anything, just install it and system are up and runnong. Cons: could have same overheating problem in future

option 2: buy a less performance motherboard with X1400 (or even X1300 which motherboard seems much common and cheaper on ebay than x1400)
Question:
- can someone confirm all the following FRU are fine to replace a 41W1407 and equivalent:
X1400: 41W1368 41W1456 42T0163 42T0296 44C3971
X1300: 44C3706 replaces 42T0120 41W1364 42T0161 44C3969 44C3977

option 3, the one I would like to go but do not have knowledge to evaluate it: buy a motherboard from another model (eg. T61 or T61p http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... MIGR-68208) which would fits and is compatible with my T60p 2007-8JU and I would be happy to have 4gb.

Questions:
- Is this option something feasible and makes sense ?
- Is the 256MB nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (or 128MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M ) more reliable that ATI v5200 family ?
- which FRU from the following link (http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... MIGR-68208 item #17 ) would fit my bottom shell plastic and able to host 64bit CPU so I can have 4Gb RAM ?

Many thanks for answers and I apologies for the long post,

rosma

[dr_st]

Is the 256MB nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M (or 128MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M ) more reliable that ATI v5200 family?

Less.

But there are other advantages to a T61 board - SATA2 support and 8GB RAM limit (instead of 3GB in any T60/p board).

[RealBlackStuff]

You are talking about a T601 Frankenpad here, search the forum for Frankenpad.
Any of those T61 motherboards will fit in your T60/T60p, after you make some modifications to the chassis.
You will lose the modem in any case.
Boards starting with 42W78xx are Penryn-CPU capable ex-factory.
The others are made for Merom CPUs, but with a Middleton BIOS-update can also run Penryn.
Unless the motherboard has been produced in 2008/August (08/08) or later, I would abstain from any nVidia boards.

Your occasional error is: Fan Error.
All you need to do is just replace the fan, to get rid of that error, not the board!
You also already have a T7600 CPU, the most powerful available on a T60/T60p, and is also 64-bit.
The T60/T60p is chipset-limited to 3GB usable, even if you would put in 4GB.
The above T61 boards are all suited for up to 8GB RAM.

[TuuS]

To further clarify what has already been said, your T60p board is 64bit, but the boards chipset has a limitation preventing you from using more then 3gb of ram, this limit is similar in size, but completely different then the limit imposed my microsoft's cheaper line of 32bit end-user operating systems.

The T61 or T61p boards will support upto 8gb of ram if you use a 64bit OS or a 32bit OS that has the PAE enabled.

The T61 boards with discrete graphics (nVidia) in laptops build before august 2008 are less reliable then the ATI and unfortunately after years of research I've found no evidence that Lenovo ever produced a non-widescreen nVidia T61 in August of 2008. There are some refurbished boards made by lenovo that have had the GPU chips replaced, but these boards sell for $600-700 and there is no assurance you'll get a new GPU on it. All refurb boards made by 3rd parties are believed to have fake GPU chips on them. These are old chips that have had the date codes polished off the dies and new ones etched on them. Chinese part stripping factories have been doing this for decades, and on chips that are a reliable design it's really not much of a problem, but in a case like this it's made it very difficult to tell the good chips from the bad.

Used nVidia boards are very risky to buy unless you know it's history well. Websites like ebay are filled with boards (and laptops) that have already failed and have been improperly repaired. It's actually a trivial matter to get a failed board to boot. Sometimes it will work for only a few minutes, other times for weeks, perhaps months, but once the chip fails, the odds of it failing again is pretty much 100%.

I use nVidia boards in my T60 frankenpads, but only boards that have been sourced from complete laptops that I know the history and I'm certain they have never been tampered with and even then I run them through 7 days of testing to confirm they are stable. If reliability is your goal, then the Intel board is your best bet, if you want the best performance and are willing to accept the risk that comes with the territory, then consider an nVidia board. If you're interested in either I have them, well tested, but intel and nVidia. I even have a couple genuine lenovo refurbished boards. I also have a fireGL 5250 board that is well tested if you're interested.

Regardless of the route you take to fix this, I'd consider upgrading your cooling system. One simple upgrade you can do is to remove the grey pad from your heatsink that cools your GPU and replace it with some Arctic Silver #5 thermal paste. The T61 series all use thermal paste instead of the grey pads and will give better cooling. Also confirm a good flush fit of your heatsink on the die when installing. You might also consider using a T61p fan. This fan uses 3 heatpipes and does a much better job of cooling. It would be overkill on a board with intel graphics, but I've used them on Intel, nVidia and ATI boards and they work equally well on all. I have a few that are well tested available too if you're interested.

If you're more interested in cost then performance, then you might want to consider a t60 board with Intel graphics, they are very cheap, I don't have one to offer you but I believe others active in this thread have some for a very reasonable price.

[rosma197x]

Hello everybody,
Sorry for being late in replying, I am a bit busy lately since we had a newborn
Thanks everyone for the replies.
It's really helpful and informative even if not everything was clear to me (e.g. Penryn-CPU, Merom CPUs,etc)

Now, since I am more interested in reliability than outstanding performance, I think I will go for Intel low performance graphic card (from ThinkPadder suggestion "If reliability is your goal, then the Intel board is your best bet").

This means:
T61: 42W7648 or 42W7872
T60: X1400: 42T0163, 41W1456, 44C3971,42T0296,41W1368 42T0122
X1300: 44C3706, 42T0120, 41W1364, 42T0161, 44C3969, 44C3977

T61 mother boards: would allow me to have 4gb of RAM but the used market shows a price around 100USD
T60 mother boards: still keeps me at 3gb but the market price is much lower (see http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0715472353)
So I it seems to be the best option for the price.

ThinkPadder: if you have a cheap and tested T61 board which allows 4gb, pls let me know the price. Do you also provide used complete laptop, like T400 ?

Just for me knowledge, when RealBlackStuff mention "Any of those T61 motherboards will fit in your T60/T60p, after you make some modifications to the chassis" what kind of modification would be required ?

Looking forward for your next reply,

rosma

[farmall]

T61 boards allow 8GB in reality. No mods required. Mine works fine.