Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I will be receiving a nice 230t in a few days.

It has 16GB RAM and i5-3320M cpu.

I plan to swap out the old SSD for a new one and if possible, put in a better wifi card, although I understand I would need to unlock BIOS to do that. Not sure if I am able to do the unlocking. Will have see if there's a step-by-step guide somewhere and determine if I can do it.

Not planning on doing gaming on this machine, besides the usual spreadsheets, email, web surfing, notes, would like to use tablet mode for reading, graphics, handwritten notes, etc.

Question is whether it's worthwhile to get one of the i7 cpu/motherboards available to replace current i5?

Would the upgrade be very noticeable in real world performance based on the above?

Thanks for any and all input!

Mark

the CPU is BGA soldered to the board. going from i5 dual core to i7 dual core is not worth it. going to i7 quad core may be worth it if you're going to run CPU-intensive software the likes of rendering, compiling, etc.. on your X230T, since it'll get the jobs done a little faster with more cores/threads. why you'd use X230T for that is a personal decision you'd have to justify spending over $300 for when you can rent a server or remote to a dedicated workstation for such a task. https://www.aliexpress.com/i/3256805538732964.html

in spreadsheets, email, web, social media, youtube... the i5 dual core is overkill

THANK YOU for your helpful input!

Makes sense.....

I didn't specify it in my post, but I was referring to buying a board with the i7 cpu on it from AliExpress....

But per your input, it doesn't seem that I need the upgrade.

Again, thanks for your help.

IMO the only worthwhile upgrade is a modified board with a quad-core i7, but I've never seen one that's for an X230 Tablet, only the regular X230

Thanks for your input...

See this listing. There is option for a x230t board:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/32568050 ... ry_from%3A

ArchiMark wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 08, 2025 10:29 pm

Thanks for your input...

See this listing. There is option for a x230t board:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/32568050 ... ry_from%3A

Oh, so they've started modding the Tablet variants?
From a strictly financial standpoint, it's not a good deal, given that you can get much newer (and more powerful) Thinkpads for the price of the modded board.

But if you really really love the X230T, it's a no-brainer.

A 3rd gen i7 quad-core can be surprisingly fast, something I found out while testing an Elitebook 8470p with an i7-3720QM.

Thanks again for your input. Appreciate it!