Thinkpads Forum

Installation were pretty easy, and I was surprised that I didn't have a lot of troubles. Just throwed in my HDD (mSata SSD is still on the way), Scandinavian layout keyboard instead of US one and installed Windows via USB Stick to it. After installation was complete, all drivers (excl. audio and sd card reader) were installed to it automatically. Those two missing drivers I found here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=122432. I had also problems with Scandinavian keyboard layout, ' and < keys weren't working. Fortunately, there was a bios update which fixes that problem (and also adds a Fn/Ctrl swap). The bios is available here: http://forum.51nb.com/thread-1716835-1-1.html (You can download it in the end of this post).

The performance of X62 is amazing compared to older thinkpads. Everything is running pretty smooth (not all, still waiting that SSD...) and no heat on palmrest at all. There has been a mistake in motherboard design, Wificard emits a small heat to the palmrest. That was gone, when I switched a energysaving mode on for the wificard. And for those, who want to take full potential out of wifi - the palmrest heat isn't very bad IMO.
For it's size, the screen has the ultimately good space for working and it is sharp and bright. That is the thing, I enjoy the most with this laptop. Unfortunately my laptop's screen had one stuck pixel on the far right and for now, no rubbing or Jscreenfix have made it alive. Well, I can't blame Jacky or the X62 builders about that - just a bad luck and it's not very annoying.

Audio card isn't very high quality, headphone jack isn't very good and the sound from the speakers is very "metallic". But this is not a Netflix laptop, and it doesn't try to be a one. Also fan noise is pretty annoying, it reacts too easily to the temp raises. The temps itself are low enough, between 40-75 degrees in normal use. I'm going to try out X200 fan, it should be more quiet with that.
I ran Passmark test and results were as expected from i7 Broadwell. CPU Score was about 4000 and 3D Score was over 300. Graphics score was a little too low for HD 5500, but games ran well. I made small test with Portal 2 as native resolution and medium graphic settings + 2xMSAA. Action scenes dropped fps near 30, but usually fps was between 40-50fps. The average fps in the 5 min test was 38 fps with 28fps as minium and 60fps (vsync on) as maximium. X62 should run lighter and games with good details and resolution and more demanding games with low graphics and resolution.

My first thoughts from this device were quite positive. 51nb.com community has made great work with the product and the result is amazing! There is some downsides with the product though and that is why it is laptop for the enthusiasts and old-school Thinkpad lovers. Linux has still problems with audio drivers, but I hope that those will be fixed in the future. After that I'm going to dualboot Windows and Linux and I think this laptop will handle well enough it's job as my main laptop.

Pros:
Performance seems to be good
Everything works (incl uk layout (scandinavian) keyboard, shortcut keys, fingerprint, Bluetooth, wifi, sdcard reader etc)
Screen is almost perfect! (had one stuck pixel in the left side, I'll try to fix it)
It was pretty out-of-the-box installation
No palm rest heat anymore (wificard delivered little heat to left side, but when it is in the energysaving mode - no heat at all!)

Cons:
Audio quality (this is not an Netflix laptop though)
Fan control sucks (temps are good, between 35-75, will try x200 fan to it, should make it quiet)

Links:
For those who assemble their own X62 - remember to trim chassis' USB3 port hole to prevent unwanted pressure to the port and the board (3 pics): http://forum.51nb.com/data/attachment/f ... memmmt.jpg http://forum.51nb.com/data/attachment/f ... i5bzpv.jpg http://forum.51nb.com/data/attachment/f ... g623uy.jpg
Bios update to enable Fn/Ctrl swap and support for non-US layouts (extract files from C117 to DOS bootable disk drive, boot from the drive and run upec to flash new bios): http://forum.51nb.com/forum.php?mod=att ... gzNQ%3D%3D

nkwsky wrote:I think this forum is better place to discuss about X62 than /r/thinkpad since threads won't go down that fast.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Yup, see this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 02#p791402

creshal wrote:Out of curiosity, does anyone know what Wifi antenna FRUs are / can be used with the X62 case? I broke my antenna cables, and the seller isn't responding to my emails any more.

dmdsoftware wrote:

creshal wrote:Out of curiosity, does anyone know what Wifi antenna FRUs are / can be used with the X62 case? I broke my antenna cables, and the seller isn't responding to my emails any more.

Aren't they just the normal ones that come with X60/X61? Checked the hardware manual for the FRU?

creshal wrote:

dmdsoftware wrote: Aren't they just the normal ones that come with X60/X61? Checked the hardware manual for the FRU?

There's five different antenna FRUs which seem to do different things (MIMO vs… something else), that's why I'm asking.

@CMOS battery: Ought to be exchangeable, I think there's one model for all Thinkpads made in the past ~15 years.

@Fan: I wouldn't replace it, if I had the choice again. No matter which fan you install, it's too loud because of the broken fan control.

creshal wrote:

dmdsoftware wrote: Aren't they just the normal ones that come with X60/X61? Checked the hardware manual for the FRU?

There's five different antenna FRUs which seem to do different things (MIMO vs… something else), that's why I'm asking.

@CMOS battery: Ought to be exchangeable, I think there's one model for all Thinkpads made in the past ~15 years.

@Fan: I wouldn't replace it, if I had the choice again. No matter which fan you install, it's too loud because of the broken fan control.

Thanks for "trying" to answer the questions. Can someone who has a board share answers?

Someone told on reddit that the X62 is able to accept a m.2 SSD.

binbash wrote:Someone told on reddit that the X62 is able to accept a m.2 SSD.
Is it really m.2 or msata?

What form factor is compatible, 2242?

dmdsoftware wrote: The m.2 slot is a bit different and the motherboard doesn't have the correct slot. I haven't tested the WWAN slot with a mSATA. I can confirm th WWAN slot doesn't work with a wifi or wifi combo card.

binbash wrote:

dmdsoftware wrote: The m.2 slot is a bit different and the motherboard doesn't have the correct slot. I haven't tested the WWAN slot with a mSATA. I can confirm th WWAN slot doesn't work with a wifi or wifi combo card.

Hope msata works like on my X230, it's really cool, you can use one with GTP/UEFI and the other with bios/msdos.

Heard about Qubes OS? It's a really secure OS using Xen (security by compartmentalization), but only a few laptops can run it without issues. Thinkpads are relatively well supported, I really hope the x62 board could run it! It needs VT-x and VT-d.

https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/

binbash wrote:Thanks scrfce/nkwsky for the confirmation!

My X62 will be overkill! With 1TB Samsung Evo pro SSD + 512 GB msata samsung evo ssd and 32 GB Crucial RAM kit

Anyone could confirm that Crucial 32 GB kit (CT2KIT204864BF160B) will work fine with the X62?