Page 1 of 1
Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:34 am
by Thinkpads4Life
I'm interested in buying a 15" t60 frame and putting the innards of my existing 14" t60 into the 15" frame. I'm open to suggestions on what upgrades to buy. I have a 100 dollar budget. I'm just looking for suggestions on what upgrades I should do. I play Minecraft,
so nothing regarding Nvidia Graphics stuff or t61 killer junk.
Thanks!
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:44 am
by RealBlackStuff
Buy a 15" machine without (or with a bad) motherboard, so you get all the plastics and screen as well.
All T60 motherboards are the same dimensions. To put one from a 14.1" into a 15" T60 machine, all you need extra is the interposer card 39T0482 if that's missing in the 15" that you buy.
All the rest can be transferred from 14.1" to 15"
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:50 am
by Thinkpads4Life
Thanks for the advice.
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:32 am
by ajkula66
My understanding - which might be incorrect - is that Minecraft is a memory hog and that it might not play all that well with T60's 3GB RAM cap...
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:40 am
by Thinkpads4Life
With my experiences using Windows XP in the past is that Minecraft ran at 100 fps. I do not know why in Linux i barely get 30. Its strange that on a more resource intensive OS plays games better than a less resource intensive OS.
Hence XP being the more resource intensive.
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:42 am
by Thinkpads4Life
FYI. I am running Linux Mint Debian Cinnamon Edition on the t60.
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:54 am
by ajkula66
Thinkpads4Life wrote:FYI. I am running Linux Mint Debian Cinnamon Edition on the t60.
The last time I checked Linux support for older ATi GPUs was pretty spotty...
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:08 am
by Medessec
My understanding - which might be incorrect - is that Minecraft is a memory hog and that it might not play all that well with T60's 3GB RAM cap...
Nawh, this is pretty spot on.
Although 3GB, Minecraft *can* work okay with, you will still run into memory limit and garbage collection issues. Definitely not a good idea to run Minecraft with anything else open.
As for the primary dilemma, I think your easiest bet will be to buy a cheap 15" T60 with Intel graphics, or with a BIOS lock or bad motherboard. When swapping hardware between frames, it's best to have both full laptops if you can.
You will have to completely disassemble everything, such as getting beneath the roll cage to get at the motherboard, and interposer card that RBS mentioned. This is key in putting motherboards in between the 14" and 15" models.
As for Linux+old ATI graphics, I'm not a fan of Linux and I don't use it, so I'm not sure what to tell you. But good luck.
Re: Building a 15 inch t60 from 15 inch t60 frame.
Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 11:29 am
by 86turbodsl
The open source ATI drivers are getting better all the time. But for gaming, a T61 is usually a better fit, but you always have that nvidia bug issue to fend off.
I know its outside your budget, but a T410 w/nvidia graphics or if you get really lucky, a post 8/08 T61 motherboard could be a solution. I know it won't fit your 14.1 T60 frame, but
it's an option if you HAVE to have good gaming graphics if you want to stay with Linux.