Thinkpads Forum

Hey everyone! I just recently got my IBM T60 "8744-5BU" and been doing a bit of research on it. I am generally new to ThinkPads. I have seen a lot of talking about swapping the T60's mainboard out for the T61's on the 4:3 models but never seen anything on the widescreen models interchangeability. If anyone has any insight on this, I'd love to hear. I've looked at the T61 motherboard list and found that there's a 15.4" motherboard with the Nvidia FX570 chip and I would like to get that in my T60 15.4" as well as the other hardware features. Is this possible at all? it may be silly I'm doing all of this for a 16:10, but I do really like this laptop. Thank you!

FloppyFish wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 17, 2025 12:20 am

Hey everyone! I just recently got my IBM T60 "8744-5BU" and been doing a bit of research on it. I am generally new to ThinkPads. I have seen a lot of talking about swapping the T60's mainboard out for the T61's on the 4:3 models but never seen anything on the widescreen models interchangeability. If anyone has any insight on this, I'd love to hear. I've looked at the T61 motherboard list and found that there's a 15.4" motherboard with the Nvidia FX570 chip and I would like to get that in my T60 15.4" as well as the other hardware features. Is this possible at all? it may be silly I'm doing all of this for a 16:10, but I do really like this laptop. Thank you!

As far as I know, the 15.4" t61s are nearly identical to the same size t60's, so a motherboard swap would not require that much modification. However, I've never done it and I don't know where you'd find details or instructions.

That said: the reason people swap motherboards into 4:3 T60's is so they can combine t61 specs with a t60's IPS screen (none of the T61's have IPS as an option).

The widescreen models of t60 and t61 did not have an IPS option, so there is absolutely no reason to do a swap with the widescreen laptops - just just buy a 15.4" T61 in working condition and you get the same form factor, the same ports, same screen size and aspect ratio, with better internals. You can get t61 widescreens on Ebay for less than $100 if you're willing to put up with having to supply your own SSD, possibly your own disk caddy and drive bay cover. The caddies and covers cost peanuts from Chinese sellers (subject to change if the new administration passes those silly tariffs).

I would not recommend seeking am fx570 quadro motherboard due to Nvidiagate or whatever we called it. Every T61p is good as dead. The T60 is competent enough.

TPFanatic wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:24 pm

I would not recommend seeking am fx570 quadro motherboard due to Nvidiagate or whatever we called it. Every T61p is good as dead. The T60 is competent enough.

No. Only *some* NVIDIA chips were affected by the problem. If a T61 has survived until now, then it's no more likely to suffer GPU failure than any other thinkpad with a discrete GPU. There are simply scads of widescreen T61's and their motherboards in working order available on Ebay (and non-widescreen models come up for sale every so often), and the vast majority of them are Nvidia.

If you're paranoid about T61 GPU failure, there are modded versions of the middleton bios that undervolt the GPU, making for a very cool running laptop. https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T ... -p/1721929, and (in german) https://thinkpad-forum.de/threads/anlei ... en.172581/

No. All T61p are prognosed to die, as is everything, the only difference is T61p die faster and this is supported by decades of reports on this forum, Lenovo's forum, internal memos, every other OEM's memos, everyone who ever bought a [censored] Nvidiagate laptop in that time... If you think you'll get some enjoyment out of a model that by science you know is going to be done for on an accelerated timeline, so be it. But it's your money and time swapping boards unnecessarily, not mine. At least the recycler and post workers get paid so it's not all lost in the economy.