Thinkpads Forum

If I decide to perform this upgrade to my T520 will I have to replace the power supply to the 135W version or will the 90W version still be enough?

Is this a direct drop in with no BIOS mods needed?

Having nVidia GPU plus a Quadcore CPU, I would assume the 135W to be recommended.
The HMM also lists 135W for various T520 (and 170W for all W520).

You could also consider the almost equal i7-2820QM.

If you need one, I got a genuine Lenovo 135W/20V spare.

The BIOS might not be smart enough to complain about needing a 135W supply (as it does on
my W520 as I discovered accidentally the other day.)

What are you asking for the power supply?

I just ordered the i7-2760QM processor.

I'm really looking forward to having a hot rodded T520.

Does anyone know the machine type number that goes along with this processor and 16 GB of RAM?

I would imagine with what I've got in the machine it would be considered a CTO. ???

Enter only 4242 in the above MTM link, then do a Edit/Find on that page for your new CPU and check as close as you can get.
They didn't have 16GB listed in those early days.

I don't understand why this machine wasn't available with 16 GB of RAM if it is capable of using it.

The closest system to my T520 had only 8 GB of RAM and a 160GB SSD. Others had 500 GB 7200 spin drives. None that I saw had a Smartcard reader. I guess that was an Enterprise option or CTO only.

8GB RAM modules were not available yet (or WAY too expensive) when the T520 HMM was made and the MTM-list was created.
And Lenovo is not exactly known for doing updates on what's available...

I couldn't wait for the 4.0 BT daughter card to arrive so I swapped the processors today. Boots pretty fast, but other than that i have not seen the performance gain I thought I would see.

I suppose I will have to try out a video game or two (shudder) and see how it does. It handled PS and Google Earth and a couple of videos playing at the same time just fine, but my dual core could do that too.

I don't seem to be able to find a benchmark test that will test all cores at once. Any recommendations?

None of the tests will kick the processor into Turbo mode either. There is nothing in the BIOS to enable or disable Turbo mode either. I figure it will work when needed, but fail to understand why none of the test will activate Turbo mode.

Are you running windows 7? Will not benefit from that quad processor as much with daily software compared to using windows 10 will help with latest versions of software. Firefox is multi-core aware but to do it best, needs windows 10. Even I use anti-malware as well, which parked it in one of other cores on my computer.

Cheers, Jason

well I recommend ssd (msata or sata), 16gb RAM and with that Nvidia graphics + quad core i7 (thermal compound reapply recommended), watch it blaze thru all sorts of modern apps and beat 80% of today's laptops out of the water. Well as for psu for my T530 i7-3720qm (same tdp as the sandy bridge i7s), I'm fine with the stock power supply that came with that machine when it had i3-2320m. it's a shame that there isn't true IPS option available (its best 1080p AUO panel can't even compare to A3xp's IAUX14S other than the brighter brightness), but with another 1080p AUO panel upgrade you get a very very good experience with that laptop.

After using this T520 awhile for the normal things I do, I have noticed improvement in page loading, program start and loading, video, etc. Also noted are an increase in speed coming out of sleep and hibernation.

I finally see your sig line is win 7 pro. I have experience in both, Go for win 10 via assistive upgrade for free. The multitasking on multi core is poorer with win 7, (look in your task manager under resource monitor, CPU to see what I mean), going to windows 10 will net you more benefit and will allow more software spread out on more cores and multi-threaded as well.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

I researched this problem and apparently I'm not the first to experience it when upgrading a processor to a processor with more cores.

I found an article in the Microsoft help area that instructed me on how to 'turn on' these extra cores. In the msconfig boot area under advanced settings uncheck the number of cores box, save, and close.

Next in EasyBCD under processor, advanced settings, uncheck the same and set cores to zero, save, exit, and do a hard shutdown.

On reboot all cores appeared in the task manager and my Passmark CPU score increased as did the Novabench score. Not a phenomenal increase but a definite increase.

Flying around in Google Earth has suddenly gotten extremely smooth jumping around the globe from saved places from Europe to the US to the Far East and back again. Though I realize some of this is due to the GPU as well, it was never this smooth before.

I will still have to find a game or two to try out.