Thinkpads Forum

Hello everyone I recently bought a T61 7661 AD1 fairly cheap and I am looking to upgrade. I have already installed Middleton's BIOS, 4Gb ram and an Intel 5300 Ultimate N wireless card. My next step is to purchase an SSD hdd and upgrade the CPU. It currently has a T7100 and I would like to upgrade to a T9500. These are pretty frequent and cheap on eBay, but I'm not sure what exactly to buy. Is there a certain socket type I should look for or are they all the same? (Tried to find which socket I have in this T61, but have had no luck). I also realize I can get a T9300 for about half the price, which I may end up getting. Just wanted a little more info on the socket type, FRU, etc. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

This is what I was looking at.

That's the correct CPU.
It's a Socket PGA478.
I wouldn't waste money on a T9500 (2.6GHz), get the T9300 (2.5GHz) instead.
There is very little difference in performance, but a huge difference in price.

Great! Thank you so much. I think you're right about the difference, the extra performance would not be worth double the cost (T9300's are less than $50 and the T9500's are closer to $100). I downloaded all the manuals I could find for the T61 and didn't see the socket type in any of the documentation. I just wanted to double check here about the specs and to make sure it would be compatible before making a purchase. Now it's time to find a nice deal on an SSD. Thanks again Very much appreciated!

If you're already taking out the Heatsink/fan assembly to switch out the CPU, I would at the same time take apart the heatsink/fan assembly to put a drip of oil in the fan:

http://www.msb0b.com/home/thinkpadt60fanrepair

I didn't check if your T61 has the nVidia card, but if it has, you might want to check production date before spending any money on it. Those produced before 8/8 will fail...

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:I didn't check if your T61 has the nVidia card, but if it has, you might want to check production date before spending any money on it. Those produced before 8/8 will fail...

Well....
I have(I should say HAD) 2 T61 running fine. 1 was 8/2 and another was 8/8
Guess which one failed?

Yes folks 8/8 failed on me and 8/2 is running like a champ.

Just my personal experience...

Thank you all for the tip. This T61 does NOT have an nVidia card, but it's an Intel. Where can I check to see the production date? Also, I have ordered a T9300 that will be arriving soon, so I will be sure to oil the heatsink fan (Thank you for the link). I will also be using Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste when reseating the heatsink. I have already been inside this machine and it was incredibly clean in there. Seems to be running very smoothly on Win7 x64 and looks nice cosmetically.

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:Those produced before 8/8 will fail...

Actually this is far from certain, there were millions of these units made before 08/08 and only an extreme minority have failed. If even 1% had failed I believe we'd have far more reports. Over the last few years the Lenovo forums tend to get 0-3 such reports per month, rarely more and some of them can be attributed to improper repairs (reflowed/baked boards), so I tend to believe any failure of a board/system within a few weeks of purchase to be suspect. As for the 08/08 systems, I've never found any confirmed reports of one with the original board in it failing from gpu failure. Naturally all parts can fail, but the gpu chips used in 08/08 are very reliable.

Sorry for the N00B question, but when you guys say 08/08, Are you referring to a production date of August 2008 (The one listed under the device)? This doesn't affect me since I have the Intel gpu, but I was still curious. BTW, This forum is wonderful and packed with very useful information, Thank you all.

the 08/08 is the date code from the label on the bottom of the laptop and represnts yy/mm, not mm/yy as americans are used to seeing. There is also a date code on the nVidia chip itself, but this is less conclusive. It's date code represents yy/ww (ww=the week produce, 1-52). Generally an 08/08 T61 will have a chip from about the 25th week of 2008, give or take a few weeks, but this doesn't mean that all chips manufactured on that week are necessarily good, there were many factories and any production lines making these chips and all evidence suggests they did NOT stop production to retool the all at once, but rather a gradual process. Evidence also suggests that the redesign begun back around febuary 2008. This is confirmed by the fact that failures sharply declined since then and virtually stopped completely in August after Lenovo disposed of all boards in favor of new ones manufactured with new chips provided after a settlement with nVidia.

TuuS wrote:
Actually this is far from certain, there were millions of these units made before 08/08 and only an extreme minority have failed. If even 1% had failed I believe we'd have far more reports. Over the last few years the Lenovo forums tend to get 0-3 such reports per month, rarely more and some of them can be attributed to improper repairs (reflowed/baked boards), so I tend to believe any failure of a board/system within a few weeks of purchase to be suspect. As for the 08/08 systems, I've never found any confirmed reports of one with the original board in it failing from gpu failure. Naturally all parts can fail, but the gpu chips used in 08/08 are very reliable.

Probably only a minority of working early T61's is still in use today. Probably only a minority of users would investigate what went wrong if it would fail. Only a minority of those that would find out would come to these forums. Also, most users probably never do any GPU intensive stuff, likely lengthening the life of the GPU.

I never questioned the reliability of the 08/08 chips, that's why I put the word 'before' in my post.

Also keep in mind that a huge share of these laptops is sold to businesses, not to private citizens. Business users aren't going to spend their own time investigating why their unit failed, they just ask for a replacement at the IT department.

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote: Probably only a minority of working early T61's is still in use today.

I certainly don't want to dispute with you and we are all entitled to our opinions. As for me, I've seen thousands of these come into liquidation, all still working, and have gone through them looking for ones that had motherboards replaced under warranty. This was litterally like finding a needle in a haystack. I've also talked to inside sources at Lenovo and although they won't release any official stats, I was assured that compared to things like hinges, ram modules, harddrives, the cost of planar card replacements due to nVidia failure wasn't even a "drop in the bucket" of all warranty costs.

Additionally, I've build many frankenpads using pre-08/08 nVidia planars and out of close to 100 total boards, only one has ever had a problem and even that one hasn't been confirmed to be gpu related.

Other then the ultimate fact that all electronic will eventually fail, I see no reason to believe that all nVidia chips will fail prematurely, but I can respect your opinion if you don't agree... I guess only time will tell.

Got the T9300 today and the operation was a success! My T61 is running nicely (Now on to find an SSD).

Well, I picked this laptop up for $250. Then, I spent $45 maxing out the ram and another $50 upgrading the CPU. After spending $345 on an older machine, I was really trying to justify the cost. I came across This and so now I feel a little better. Our last laptop was a low budget Toshiba we got from Wal-mart for about $330 total (it lasted 2 years before the mobo went dead). I am very pleased with this T61. I've had Thinkpads in the past and they have always been dependable, great laptops.