W520 upgrades

[redot]

Hi TP community ,
I got myself ThinkPad W520 (4284W85) and so happy as **** , but , but i`m a bit fuzzy about what is inside of my system and what i want ( usual geeky thing ) . I upgraded my 320GB (7200rpm) HDD into 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD , upped to 24GB of RAM but i need more thing .. . First i need to find out if my BIOS is moded or no ( i mean flashed to whitelist other bits in it , i could get info trough dmidecode less trough linux) this is most important for me because form next mnth i`m getting new internet plan for up to 1mbps and i know current WIFI card not an AC (my one: Intel 802.11agn wireless ) so i wont get full advantage over new internet over wifi and i would like to find out which WIFI card i would be able to use to use full AC advantage . Second, i want to understand which CPU i could use on my W520 , currently i have i7-2820QM(2.3GHz) but i want better one, even if i wont see difference or increase in speed ( one of the needy things to know i have maxed it out ). Third thing is calibration thingy on palmrest ... ive seen them but my one is not there, so i would like to understand for what type of usage this is needed because my plan is to use W520 for long term as a main pc for working on it ( due to i cant use Xx30 and upper series of thinkpads due to lack of quality and keyboard ) and as i`m multitasker and working every day with 3 monitors at work i would like to know how many monitors i can connect to my W520 from actual pc and how many from ultrabase as i have one ( FRU 04W1815) . Graphi card is nVidia Quadro 2000M .
Issues: all my ThinkPad`s including this one have an issue with TrackPoint ( behaves on his own )
sometimes i hear noise like transistor or something bussssssing when im using TP ( i have disabled trackpad in bios due to i hate it )
P.s what else i can make with it ? any other updates/upgrades which is posible for it ?

[Thinkpad4by3]

Well to answer the trackpoint moving by itself, if it calibrates while you're pushing it hard, it starts to move by itself. Just leave it and it will return to normal in a few seconds. Rarely happens to me.

Sent from my SM-G550T using Tapatalk

[redot]

Well to answer the trackpoint moving by itself, if it calibrates while you're pushing it hard, it starts to move by itself. Just leave it and it will return to normal in a few seconds. Rarely happens to me.

Sent from my SM-G550T using Tapatalk

Interesting thing is that it moves even when im not used it for a while , lets say i closed my lid and left it , after couple of hours or later when im opening my lid - it moves
I was thinking it might be because i use linux xf86-input-libinput instead of xf86-input-evdev but last night i installed win 8.1 to try enable FR for powering on my TP and it moved on it as well ... could itr be actual red plastic bit which causes this ?

[axur-delmeria]

lets say i closed my lid and left it , after couple of hours or later when im opening my lid - it moves

Maybe the Trackpoint cap is sticking out a bit, and the LCD panel puts some pressure on in with the lid closed.

[Thinkpad4by3]

Are you using the correct cap, there are 2 variants, the short and tall, a tall won't work on a short cuz it won't reach the stick and a tall has problems I short, I don't remember what the xx20 series takes but I think it's short.

Sent from my SM-G550T using Tapatalk

[redot]

actual button sticks out a bit ( les than a mill or might be a mill) but when i gow nex X220 keyboard it came with it and this is happening on all 3 machines including W520 (i swapped my X220 keyboard into W520 due to UK keyboard instead of Scandinavian in W520) and i never changed these caps ... but i think i will check the height of it to know how tall it is

[nforce4max]

Bang for buck the 2920xm is a winner but the 2960xm is sometimes near the same price so get that should there be an opportunity, 2920's base clock is 2.5ghz while the 2960s is 2.7ghz both with the same features and both have fairly beefy turbo but be warned they dump a fair amount of heat with the turbo enabled. Great in the winter and doubles nicely as a electric blanket

[jaspen-meyer]

Bang for buck the 2920xm is a winner but the 2960xm is sometimes near the same price so get that should there be an opportunity, 2920's base clock is 2.5ghz while the 2960s is 2.7ghz both with the same features and both have fairly beefy turbo but be warned they dump a fair amount of heat with the turbo enabled. Great in the winter and doubles nicely as a electric blanket 8)

You could probably put a Intel Core i7-3820QM in a W520. I haven't researched whether it's been tried.

[MikalE]

If it were a little cheaper I'd try it in my T520. Seems the specs are nearly identical except for speed and cache.

The upgrades I've performed on my T520 so far:

i7-2760QM (from i7-2620M
500 GB SSD
16 GB RAM
Smart Card reader
Bluetooth 4.0
German keyboard
Intel Ultimate 6300 AGN Wi-Fi card
Whitelist BIOS
135W Power Supply

It runs well.

[MikalE]

Bang for buck the 2920xm is a winner but the 2960xm is sometimes near the same price so get that should there be an opportunity, 2920's base clock is 2.5ghz while the 2960s is 2.7ghz both with the same features and both have fairly beefy turbo but be warned they dump a fair amount of heat with the turbo enabled. Great in the winter and doubles nicely as a electric blanket

You could probably put a Intel Core i7-3820QM in a W520. I haven't researched whether it's been tried.

Now I'm getting interested and curious about this third generation processor.

Can this work? The sockets are the same, but would it require a different BIOS to function? Would the system even boot with the original (whitelist) BIOS?

Does anyone know, or has anyone experimented, or can it be deduced from the specifications that I may not be able to interpret correctly?