Thinkpads Forum

Greetings all,

I have a T420 Type 4180-A34 that is as dead as a door nail. Was working fine, then shut down and never powered up again. Nothing lights up when a charger is plugged in. The connector to the system board is carrying voltage from the charger. Removed all accessories like wifi, speakers, etc. and still no power. At this point I am thinking the system board is toast.

So the quandary, replace the system board and see if that fixes it, or toss and buy something from the marketplace. This was an i5 cpu and a low resolution screen.

The current system board is FRU 04w2045. Is there a better system board that I should consider ? I am interested in faster cpu and 16GB ram. I'm not sure of the max ram for 04w2045.

I open to suggestions from the wealth of expertise available on this forum. Thanks in advance.

That's a standard Intel graphics motherboard; the only upgrade would be one with the NVS 4200m GPU. Otherwise they both share the same specs as far as RAM, CPU etc. They both can go up to 16GB 1333 MHz DDR3 and the 2.8 GHz i7 dual core - quad cores do work but heat output is a concern and you'll be throttled back due to the smaller heatsink.

Thanks theterminator93, that sounds like a worthwhile upgrade depending on price. I found my original mother board on the bay for $40 or less. Of course I will still have the low res screen either way.

Does anyone know the right fru number for the board with the NVS 4200m GPU ? The HMM just lists integrated graphic as AMT or non-AMT. I am not sure what AMT stands for.

Looks like 63Y1812 is the discrete motherboard FRU. You'll also need the discrete heatsink, FRU 04W0408.

AMT http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... ology.html