Thinkpads Forum

Hey there, I am thinking of buying a refurbished ThinkPad. I am planning on doing programming (C++ mostly) and light-ish gaming on it and hopefully virtualization, if possible. I am looking for something with nice specs but also relatively portable - the W-series seems a little bit too heavy, from what I gather. Do you guys have any recommendations? Here are the things I am looking for:

• 1. A TrackPoint (so much more useful when programming than a trackpad, in my opinion)
  2. Hopefully a quad-core, but a strong dual-core might also work
  3. At least 1600x900 resolution
  4. The old style of keyboard (not chiclet) or later replaceable
  5. Hopefully a relatively good graphics processor as I will be doing light gaming and some 3D OpenGL programming/3D design. Something that can run HL2:E2, Quake 4 and maybe Hat Fortress 2 . The pinnacle of performance for me would be something being able to run GTA V at medium settings with ~50 fps
  6. Under 3 kg since I want to be able to move around a little and maybe take to school at times
  7. Budget is around 500$ but can be stretched

I've been thinking about T420, but it seems as if it might be getting outdated for the task at hand so maybe T520?

Thanks for reading!

P. S. Btw, should I wait for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lqAa_e ... u.be&t=816 ? Or do you expect the price/quality to be disappointing?

A T430 with a classic keyboard + bios mod should meet your requirements. You can put in 16GB ram, an SSD, a lower wattage quad core, and even do an FHD IPS screen mod.

Jerreko wrote:P. S. Btw, should I wait for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lqAa_e ... u.be&t=816 ? Or do you expect the price/quality to be disappointing?

You might be old and grey like me if you wait for this. There ia a section below where you can follow this under

"Retro Thinkpad Project"

brchan wrote:A T430 with a classic keyboard + bios mod should meet your requirements. You can put in 16GB ram, an SSD, a lower wattage quad core, and even do an FHD IPS screen mod.

T430 looks quite nice, both in terms of performance and upgradability, but it seems like I have to mod quite a lot of stuff, such as BIOS (I even need something like RPi to do the mod) and the biggest modding I've ever done so far is adding memory/HDD . Are there any other alternatives that are easier to set up, that is to get the classical keyboard working and a better display (if needed)?

shawross wrote:You might be old and grey like me if you wait for this

Haha, not really . A couple years ago I used HP 8710w, which I loved for its perfect keyboard and responsive trackpoint, as well as the upgradability - you could potentially swap out the GPU!

T430 looks quite nice, both in terms of performance and upgradability, but it seems like I have to mod quite a lot of stuff, such as BIOS (I even need something like RPi to do the mod) and the biggest modding I've ever done so far is adding memory/HDD . Are there any other alternatives that are easier to set up, that is to get the classical keyboard working and a better display (if needed)?

No RPi is needed for a bios update. SImply burn the iso to usb or cd/dvd and boot from it. It will ask you a simple yes/no for updating the bios, and less than a minute later everything is done. T430 and older machines are generally very easy to take apart and Lenovo provides very detailed instruction manuals (HMM) and videos.

Jerreko wrote:I've been thinking about T420, but it seems as if it might be getting outdated for the task at hand so maybe T520?

It's just as outdated, isn't it?

brchan wrote:A T430 with a classic keyboard + bios mod should meet your requirements. You can put in 16GB ram, an SSD, a lower wattage quad core, and even do an FHD IPS screen mod.

Is the FHD mod actually available at this point for non-s T420/T430?

Jerreko wrote:Are there any other alternatives that are easier to set up, that is to get the classical keyboard working and a better display (if needed)?

You can just do the FHD IPS mod on a T420/s. You still need the kit with the adapter, but you don't need to flash the Embedded Controller since it already has the classic keyboard.

The 420 is an ok choice if you're not a huge tinkerer and just want things to go... problems are there though, at least in my version...

the 1,600 x 900 is visibly worse than the previous gen. 1,400 x 900 screen and that wasnt a good screen either

i find the i5-2520/40s are fine for most but I doubt there's a quad available

also not so good power even with the ultrabay but fine for me

the nvs4200m 64bit isnt a good gpu either unless you're all 2d

dr_st wrote:It's just as outdated, isn't it?

Pretty much the reason I am thinking about T430 - since I will be doing some OpenGL programming I need something with at least OpenGL 3.3 support, and HD 3000 only supports 3.1. I could try to find a model with a dGPU but then comes the hassle of making my program always use dGPU instead of iGPU, and it would be a better idea to get T430 as it is more powerful than T420.

brchan wrote:No RPi is needed for a bios update. SImply burn the iso to usb or cd/dvd and boot from it. It will ask you a simple yes/no for updating the bios, and less than a minute later everything is done.

Ah, I see! I had the keyboard mod confused with the bios mod a bit, I only need to re-flash EC. But, from what I gather, I will still need to do HW flashing to remove whitelist for the WiFi cards? The default one is fine, but I really wouldn't mind sticking some AC card in there.


Also, which quad would you recommend? The faster, the better, of course, but the price is also of import - the i7-3632QM costs around 120 GPB, and that's the cheapest I could find! The 45W quads seem to be a tad cheaper, but from what I gather they might overheat unless turbo boost is turned off, but then what is the point of having turbo boost in the first place.

Jerreko wrote:I am planning on doing programming (C++ mostly) and light-ish gaming on it and hopefully virtualization

I haven't found a conclusive answer to whether "Intel® HD Graphics 3000/2000" supports OpenGL 3.3.
At least some sources say it'll run 3.3 on Linux and OSX.

What is the advantage of a quad-core? Is it faster compile times, or something else?