X200 modifications

[Mightyena]

Hi everyone, I'm a bit of a newbie here so I thought I'd ask for some informed opinions before I completely ruin my X200!

As you can probably tell, I have an X200 (7459-M78) with a CCFL that I have until recently, been using for university. A little while ago it developed a fault where the battery refused to charge (turned out to be a motherboard issue, as the batteries were tested and worked on my friend's X201).
Instead of replacing the damaged mobo with an identical P8600 board, I decided to try and give myself as much battery life as possible and ordered an X200s board (63Y1076, I assume this will have no problems working in my X200 casing).

My question comes from the fact that I also now have an X201, that I was thinking of swapping the screens over (an LED screen should theoretically give better battery life than a CCFL right?), however the Thinklight on the X201 seems to be broken, as in the OSD symbol appears when Fn+PgDn is pressed but nothing else happens. If I wanted a working Thinklight would I need to buy a new X201 LCD cable to use with the screen, or could I somehow use the one from the X200, even though they are different technologies?

To summarise, yay or nay to the following ideas:
A) X200s mobo -> X200 body?

and would I even see any power benefits to using an LED display over CCFL? If yes then would either

B) X201 screen/lid -> X200 body
or
C) X201 screen -> X200 LCD cable
work?

I apologise if this has been asked before , but I did search and couldn't find a definite answer...
Many thanks for helping!

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.
A) yay-yay
B) yay
C) nay

[Mightyena]

Thank you for the quick reply! In your opinion, would it be worth it to switch the two screens in order to increase battery life (I know it would mean I'd forefeit the opportunity to go AFFS, but on my student loan that ain't happening anytime soon! )

Cheers,

[RealBlackStuff]

You won't gain that much batt-time, but if you can find one, get the complete lid from an X200s with WXGA+ (1440x900).
A complete lid switches easily between X200 and X201 (non-tablet) models.

[Mightyena]

Thanks! A complete WXGA+ lid seems unlikely for anything I can afford right now, so I guess I'll be sticking with the original screen since I won't have to pay anything extra to have it fully functional. Who knows, I might even be able to get a Hydis panel later down the road!

[Bibin]

A very nice upgrade that is not expensive is getting a PVA or AFFS screen. The cheaper glossy one will run you about $40 while the matte ones can be upwards of $100.

[Mightyena]

An AFFS screen will probably be my next upgrade for it. Unfortunately It will probably have to be the Matte version as I can't stand glossy screens, and getting them shipped to the UK can also turn pretty expensive...

Also, I've swapped out the motherboard for an X200s board (1.8GHz L9400) hoping for cool running and better battery life, but I seem to be getting extremely high temps (around 80C idle!) compared to the old P8600 board, which used to run at around 35-40C. Is this just because the 's' boards use a much thinner heatsink and is therefore expected, or is there something else wrong here? Not sure if it's anything to do with it but when the fan spins up I can feel no air coming out of the side vent (the fan is much thinner so is it possible that the hot air is just circulating through the case instead of being exhausted?

[harryK]

Also, I've swapped out the motherboard for an X200s board (1.8GHz L9400) hoping for cool running and better battery life, but I seem to be getting extremely high temps (around 80C idle!) compared to the old P8600 board, which used to run at around 35-40C. Is this just because the 's' boards use a much thinner heatsink and is therefore expected, or is there something else wrong here? Not sure if it's anything to do with it but when the fan spins up I can feel no air coming out of the side vent (the fan is much thinner so is it possible that the hot air is just circulating through the case instead of being exhausted?

This is definitely odd! My X200s idles at 45-48C maximum. You could try and make the fan run at maximum speed with tpfancontrol and check if some more air comes out. If I understand correctly you are using an x200s board in a x200 non-s base, which has a larger area for the heatsink, so it might well be that the air is not being expelled but somehow clogged in the extra space underneath the fan. However, X200s bases go for around 10 quid on eBay, you might have to get one of those.

Also, cleaning the thermal compound and reapplying some paste might be a good idea.

Good luck

[RealBlackStuff]

X200 and X200s have different fans, get an X200s fan for best results.

[Mightyena]

Also, cleaning the thermal compound and reapplying some paste might be a good idea.

I've applied fresh thermal paste several times now, and it's now improved to the point where it no longer reaches thermal shutdown if I lock it at 800MHz. The problem is, it still runs at around 85C, even when the motherboard is outside the chassis, and if I let it manage frequency by itself, the thermal throttling feature just seems to run the CPU at 2GHz up until 95C, where it throttles back to 1.6, and then shuts down due to overheat protection.

X200 and X200s have different fans, get an X200s fan for best results.

I am using an X200s fan. The standard X200 one doesn't fit, as the cpu mounting screws are rotated 90 degrees.

I've swapped the X200s board into a spare X201 chassis now, as I'm going to try and figure out if the original X200 board is repairable, as it ran so much better than the X200s... I'll probably post that in a seperate thread when I get around to it.

I would still like to use the X200s board as a spare though, especially as I have a spare case for it, but this heat thing is beginning to drive me mad!