Thinkpads Forum

So I fell for a off lease T420s that has all of it's rubber feet.

My old T61 is just starting to grumble, it's not exactly happy with running Windows 10, it's weight is also starting to wear on me, dragging it around to classes and such. So I'm not sure how much of an upgrade it'll be, I put a lot of effort into kitting this thing out, and building it to my desired 'specs'.

It's a Type: 4173-LUU so it's packing a i7-2640M, 1GB NV Quadro 1000(IIRC), but the 4GB of ram is getting bumped up to low latency 16GB, 1600x900 matte, and all that.

At least I can use the almost new power brick from my T61 on my T420s, so there's a little bit of cross over. I already have the mod bug with the T420s and I haven't even gotten a HDD caddy and cover for it yet.

One thing I'm really interested in because I have rather sensitive hearing, so cooling is very important too me. I was looking at the beefier non-s coolers, as a source for a better fan? Are there any ways beyond thermal material to improve cooling on this thing?

Lenovo's site says I can get a service plan for it since it just left it's warranty, and I was wondering how much I should expect that to cost and if I should get the service plan, I got my value out of my warranty on my T61(new mobo, new palm wrest, new display, new power brick, new speakers).

Any suggestions on how best to get this machine rolling?

SaskFellow wrote:
Lenovo's site says I can get a service plan for it since it just left it's warranty, and I was wondering how much I should expect that to cost and if I should get the service plan, I got my value out of my warranty on my T61(new mobo, new palm wrest, new display, new power brick, new speakers).

Post-warranty service agreements tend to be on the expensive side and I can't think of any reason why one would go into incurring such an expense for a $200-250 machine...nevertheless, give them a call and check what the exact offers are...

Any suggestions on how best to get this machine rolling?

SSD is the key for machine's overall responsiveness, IMO. Do your research, buy once and be done. RAM would come in as a close second in my book. Apart from possibly getting a bay battery if battery life is *very* important to you, there's not much to improve on these machines short of FHD upgrade that you're already aware of.

Enjoy!

SaskFellow wrote: ...i7-2640M...

One thing I'm really interested in because I have rather sensitive hearing, so cooling is very important too me. I was looking at the beefier non-s coolers, as a source for a better fan? Are there any ways beyond thermal material to improve cooling on this thing?

Yes, 'improve cooling' by lowering heat production.

I made my 420s silent by
1) limiting processor to 1.6 gHz
2) keeping fan off for temperatures under 75C
3) lowering wifi card TX-power
4) running gnu + linux

Okay, so what would the suggested SSD be? I'm thinking about the Samsung 850Pro.

Battery life is pretty important to me, as I have 3 hour classes at times.

Not like my T61 and it's 2 hour life on it's 9cell... Of course that battery is a few years old... lol

HMM.... I'm partial to the doze though...

I went through lots of trouble to get me the NMB keyboard for my T61, I really love this keyboard. Which is the best keyboard for my T420s?

I have the 128GB samsung 850 PRO and it is awesome! Noticeably faster than my 256GB 840 PRO as well.

As far as keyboards go, NMB is usually regarded as the best, but quality has varied slightly for each thinkpad model. The NMB ones in X300/X301 thinkpads are especially good (they also only came with NMB). However, the NMB keyboard in my T43 is quieter and maybe less "springy" than my T60/T61 NMB boards. I put an ALPS keyboard in my W530, and I prefer it to my NMB keyboard in my T60. Chicony keyboards are usually more clacky sounding and develops shine faster.

All different keyboard manufacturers are still great, regardless (NMB, ALPS, Chicony). Chiclet keyboards on post T430 era models are made only by Chicony, Lite-on, and another company I can't remember. Lite-on is usually the best of the three.

Okay after digging into the cooler question the two models for the dedicated graphics are:

04W0413: 0.45A low blade count 4 pin fan made by AVC, Aluminum plate between heatpipe and GPU, Copper plate for CPU heatpipes, open face contact area(no backing plate over CPU or GPU). The fan has a plastic air dam(hello noisy air turbulence maker, and only one side of is tapered to provide optimum air flow through the cooling fins.

04W0417: 0.24A high blade count with fancy blade design, 3pin fan made by Toshiba, copper plate between heatpipe and GPU, Copper plate for CPU heatpipes, Backing plate over CPU area(more even clamping force), GPU area built up. The fan has nice slopes on both sides to connect to the cooling fins, maximizing air flow over the cooling fins.

The 04W0417 looks to be a signifigant upgrade over the 04W0413 cooler in terms of cooler construction/performance, and in fan performance characteristics, it'll be a much quieter setup. It's just a shame that the fan uses voltage regulation rather than a PWM setup like the AVC, and that's really the only perk that the 04W0413 cooler has over the 04W0417 cooler.

The T430s coolers are a bit weird... One is low power and one is a screamer

04W3487: 0.12A high blade count, fancy blade design, 3 pin fan made by Panasonic, much less open area for the fan to breathe through, GPU gets a backing plate as well as the CPU.

04W3488: 0.45A low blade count, simpler blade design, 4 pin fan made by AVC, more open area for the fan, no backing plate for the GPU or CPU, but copper plates for both.

So you have a howler in a cheaper built cooler, and a quiet fan in a well built cooler.

The best cooler, that can still cool and be relatively silent when pushed, is most likely the 04W0417.

The quietest cooler, that may have some throttling issues, will be the 04W3487, if the T430s cooler can be mounted in the T420s.

The others will just be noisy high rpm coolers, very typical of AVC.

Turning off multi-threading and multi-core in BIOS will lower temps.

jaspen-meyer wrote:Turning off multi-threading and multi-core in BIOS will lower temps.

I would strongly recommend keeping multi-processing ON in the BIOS. Hyperthreading is a whole different matter, and turning it off can reduce temps by around 10C, especially under load. Few programs take advantage of hyperthreading well and some programs will actually perform worse with it on.

The issue here is that the thermal paste was applied incorrectly, the heatsink is not aligned, etc. Stock, properly running T420s models should not get those high temps stated before.

Yeah, HT can be helpful but when it's not, it can really cause problems. I think the reason for the increased temperature is because HT is allowing unused parts of the cores to be used by other threads, which increases how much work the CPU is doing. Of course HT can cause threads to lock up in the pipeline, forcing the core to basically purge the active threads out of the pipe to get things going again.

I will probably disable HT, but disabling multi-core, just seems like a bad idea, and would really limit the systems performance.

Encoding applications tend to use HT to great effect.

I could see disabling HT also netting a really good temperature reduction on Quadcore systems, then using your OS of choice to limit use to only 3 cores.

New question time...

What's the latest Bluetooth Daughter Card available? I know I got a BDC4.0 from a T430 in my T61, but I was wondering if there was a newer one that I can swap into my T420s?