Thinkpads Forum

I'd like to upgrade my W510 from a 720 to the 920. Do I need to upgrade anything other than the CPU?

Thanks1

Buy a fire extinguisher.

If you plan on using it's performance then don't do it.
55w is too much for the W510 cooler if the video card is under load too, it barely can cool the CPU alone.

The 920xm works perfectly in a W510. I had mine for almost a year and I just sold it today. It would be nice if you apply high-quality thermal interface compound during the installation.

thitiv wrote:The 920xm works perfectly in a W510. I had mine for almost a year and I just sold it today. It would be nice if you apply high-quality thermal interface compound during the installation.

Did yours have a different heatsink than other W510s?

sirfergy wrote: Did yours have a different heatsink than other W510s?

No, I didn't because I "changed" my CPU from a 720QM to a 920XM by myself. The stock CPU that came with the machine was a 720QM.

Awesome, exactly what I wanted to hear.

sirfergy wrote:Awesome, exactly what I wanted to hear.

Make sure you

(1) use a decent thermal paste like the Arctic MX-4,
(2) apply the thermal paste properly, not too much and not too little and no air bubble inside
(3) have read this thread http://goo.gl/vMigE where so many people share their experience overclocking the 920xm

Enjoy!

And lastly make sure you don't put load on the the CPU and GPU simultaneously and watch out for hot weather.
No matter what you do, the W510 will crash and/or throttle if pushed hard with a 920XM CPU installed.

This thread documents the problem in great detail, and shows how to replicate the error:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=90854

Thanks for the tips. Wasn't the W510 sold with a 920XM? If so, shouldn't it just work or did they just do a bad job?

sirfergy wrote:Thanks for the tips. Wasn't the W510 sold with a 920XM? If so, shouldn't it just work or did they just do a bad job?

They are sold with 920XM OEM but they are not supposed to be overclocked per original design of Lenovo From my experience, non-overclocked systems can sustain continued overnight Full Stress torture tests by Lenovo's System Health and Diagnostics utility; whereas the most stable overclocked one can go through at most 10 rounds of Full Stress tests.

Both the W510 and W520 have questionable cooling.
It seems Lenovo didn't take the extra heat generated by quad core CPU's seriously, and the W510 cooler often doesn't fit right.
The W510 cooler is sort of good enough for 45w CPU's (up to 840QM), just use good cooler paste and make sure the cooler fits right.
Hot weather can still cause trouble, but disabling hyper-threading might fix that as it reduces heat.
The W520 has a similar cooler to the W510, as there is the same amount of room for a cooler in both these machines.
Still Lenovo expects the W520 cooler to handle a 55w CPU AND a 55w GPU, if you have the fastest model, while the W510 struggles with a 45w CPU and 35w GPU.

If you don't believe me go test your system as described in the thread I linked to.

FurMark alone can be a good test too, just run it in extreme burning mode, open the task manager use the "set affinity" feature to test furmark on one core at the time, test all cores to see if all are stable under load while the GPU is under load.

Lenovo's stability tests are flawed, they don't put load on CPU and GPU simultaneously for an extended period of time.

Edit: and when testing with furmark, don't stop until the temperatures have stabilized.

So if you don't plan to overclock, does it make more sense to just get the 840QM? That has the same turbo-boost and cache as the 920XM but a slightly lower overall speed without turbo.

@sirfergy,

Get a W520 with a 2820qm CPU. My W520 + 2820qm runs faster than my former W510 + 920xm that was well overclocked.

thitiv wrote:@sirfergy,

Get a W520 with a 2820qm CPU. My W520 + 2820qm runs faster than my former W510 + 920xm that was well overclocked.

I agree that would probably be better, get one with a Quadro 1000m though.