ThinkPad W510/T420

[Rattus_Rattus]

Hi all, new poster here.

I recently by chance purchased a Lenovo T60 laptop for work purposes last week without researching the history of the brand. As an experienced PC user, I can't believe I overlooked ThinkPads until now. The specs are puny, but it is very good for what it is. I just love the keyboard and the screen.

Now, I want to buy a ThinkPad for personal/work purposes, but as I work in the architecture industry, I need a fairly high spec laptop, that will handle 3DS Max, GIMP, Photoshop, and multiple instances of these programs.

Furthermore, my desktop PC has the following specs; i7 2600K @ 4.5Ghz, 16GB RAM, 256GB Samsung SSD, 500GB Samsung F1 HDD, 1TB Hitachi external, Radeon HD6950 2GB, and 2x NEC Multisync EA232WMi.

I know that I won't be able to find a laptop within my ~£550 budget unless I go for a used one, so I would like a laptop that will be as close in performance to my desktop as possible.

The ThinkPad that I am interested in is the W510 (4389),
15.6" HD+ screen (1600x900)
i7-720QM 1.6Ghz
128GB SSD
1GB Quadro FX880M.

I have managed to find this for a price in between £375 - £550 (fairly new, which is incredible)

However, I have done (a lot) of research, and I keep seeing issues related to the W510; CPU whine, heat issues, USB problems etc. Can someone enlighten me on how common this is?

The other I have looked at is the T420, but the problem here is that the one I have seen for £495 only has an Intel HD 3000, (which I know straight away will be pants with 3DSMax) and those with discrete chips are significantly more expensive.

So is the W510 worth a punt? The W520 I acknowledge is much improved over the W510, but I really can't stretch my budget to that.

Regards in advance.

[wolfman]

Right off realize - you will not get performance anywhere close to the desktop system than you mentioned above from the W510.

If it were me, i'd tread water a bit, save some more coin and watch the Lenovo outlet like a hawk for W520's with 1920x1080 resolutions and a 2.4ghz quad core processor. There were some there yesterday for $1022 USD (if I use $1 to 0.64 pound in conversion, your 550 pounds is about $860 USD - nearly enough for the W520).

I think you'll be much happier with the W520 vs. the W510. I have a W520 from work and it's a nice machine. Best of luck.

[Rattus_Rattus]

Thanks for the (quick!!) reply.

I do realise that I won't be able to match my desktop, but at least something that will reduce the feeling that the machine is slow - maybe an SSD upgrade in the laptop would produce a placebo effect.

In the UK, looking at the W520's -- most are going above £1000/$1564!! Well out of my price range.

I want to avoid the W510, but if the price of it is so low as it is, I am willing to take the risk on it. Any opinions of the model?

EDIT:

I have found a W520 (4282-W5W) with the following specs:

i7 2960XM 2.7Ghz
8GB RAM
500GB HDD
Quadro 1000M 2GB
15.6" FHD IPS (1920x1080)

Brand new sealed and boxed for, £590/$922.... I am definitely going to snap that up as soon as I can, more later...

Regards

[Puppy]

15.6" FHD IPS (1920x1080)

It is not IPS panel but ordinary TN one.

[wolfman]

I have found a W520 (4282-W5W) with the following specs:

i7 2960XM 2.7Ghz
8GB RAM
500GB HDD
Quadro 1000M 2GB
15.6" FHD IPS (1920x1080)

Brand new sealed and boxed for, £590/$922.... I am definitely going to snap that up as soon as I can, more later...

Regards

Oh my that's a very nice machine even without the IPS panel. Good get and congrats! I'm sure you'll enjoy that machine and you should get good service from it for a while.

[Adda]

I want to avoid the W510, but if the price of it is so low as it is, I am willing to take the risk on it. Any opinions of the model?

Take a look at this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=90854

If you go for a W510 you might have to go through all that trouble, to get it stable under heavy loads.

[Rattus_Rattus]

Yep, thanks for that link. That as well as so many other threads is seriously putting me off. I am still waiting for a response to my enquiry to the seller of the W520.

My backup plan is to go for a T420, but I am unsure of how well it would perform with 3dsMax, to be honest. HD3000 or NVM will be junk. Dealing with 2 million polygons on screen will be a stretch for those two. The W series is where it's at for me...

More later....

[period3]

I have the W510 and am reasonably happy with it. However, I have the FHD screen and I definitely think this would be a worthwhile upgrade.

- CPU Whine: yep, I have that. However, I had that on my T60 as well, and my T410s also has it. I've never owned another brand of laptop, so I have nothing to compare to.

- Overheating: It sometimes overheats if the GPU is heavily loaded. However, it never overheats under CPU load. I've run it fully loaded (CPU) for several days at a time. The GPU overheating is pretty rare - it seems to only happen in certain games that really tax the GPU. My work does not require a GPU, but I doubt that most 3d applications would cause much of a problem.

- Reliability: Pretty good except for the keyboard. The keyboard is my only complaint actually: it's inferior to the T60 (us english) and the T410s (french) keyboard, and I'm already on my third (us english) one. Maybe there are several different manufacturers/sku's, and I've just always ended up with the bad one?

- Screen: awesome screen, the best matte screen I've seen on a laptop. Wish it was 1920x1200 though, as I'm not a fan of the 16:9 aspect ratio.

- Expansion: One of the few laptops that has four dimm slots - a huge plus for me. However, the ultrabay hard drive expansion is inferior to the T60 and T410s, as it doesn't fit in snugly and leaves a large gap. I also frequently had buzzing from my second (5400rpm) hard drive because of the poor fit. I corrected it by folding up a static bag and wedging it in.

- Sound: not great. It's OK if you just want to listen some music through headphones I suppose. Speakers are terrible, like all laptops. It also lacks the 'stereo mix' feature. Not sure how common this is on other laptops. http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/General-Dis ... /m-p/10258

- Battery life: Not great - I got maybe 2 or 3 hours when it was new. Now I might get 1. I almost never use the battery, so it's not an issue for me.


I do like it *much* better than my old T60. The screen is way better, it doesn't have an annoying (and unadvertised!) 3GB upper limit on ram, and of course it's faster.