R51 Upgrade Worth it?

[2Mourty]

I have an almost mint condition R51 laptop. It has a 1 gig of ram, a 1.7 ghz centrino processor, 32mb Mobility 9000 graphics chip, and a 15" 1400x1050 flexview display.

I have the opportunity to buy a t43 motherboard for 25 bucks. It comes with a 2.0 ghz processor, x300 gpu and includes the fan. I also have 2gb of ddr2 ram I could throw in it.

I have no problem switching out motherboards, done it before. Is the 25 dollars worth the upgrade? How much of a performance boost would I get? Would the motherboard fit? From everything I've read it seems like the motherboard should fit no problem.

Thank you for your time guys!

[RealBlackStuff]

You'd have no problem swapping those motherboards, they are a drop-in replacement.
There won't be a firewire port on your T43 mobo, so if your R51 had it, that will be a (small) open space.
Everything else will fit like a glove and work.
And for $25.- it is a steal!
You will have to reinstall Windows (or any other OS), because the hardware is quite different between R51 and T43.
W7 runs quite happily on that, and a TTAV134 BIOS update will improve that T43 quite a bit.
You may also want to check out the link in my signature about SATA mods

[2Mourty]

Thank you for the quick reply. I went ahead and purchased the motherboard package. Should have it in a few days. Nice bonus, that x300 chip though not a performance chip can run aero in vista or 7!

I use this thinkpad mostly for work and to run games in dosbox that favor a 4:3 screen aspect. They look great on that 15" flexview!

When I am done with the motherboard transfer I will post and let you know how everything is working.

[ajkula66]

Thank you for the quick reply. I went ahead and purchased the motherboard package. Should have it in a few days. Nice bonus, that x300 chip though not a performance chip can run aero in vista or 7!

I use this thinkpad mostly for work and to run games in dosbox that favor a 4:3 screen aspect. They look great on that 15" flexview!

When I am done with the motherboard transfer I will post and let you know how everything is working.

Let's just pray that the board is good because the purchase price was ridiculous to say the very least...

Best of luck with your upcoming FrankenPad!

[jronald]

6 to 9 mos ago I picked up 3 R51 Mobos, for $20.00 shipped. ($15.00 and $5.00) Bottom of the line boards, no fire wire and minimal ATI graphics, but at that price they were very hard to beat.

Ron

[2Mourty]

Performed the operation on Saturday night. I had forgotten how many screws there are in a thinkpad chasis. Even after I had it back together I still had 4 or 5 extra screws. I will look at the service manual and try to find where they are supposed to go. The other tricky part was figuring out how to take the battery bracket off of the t43 motherboard. It wasn't to bad, just took a bit of thinking.

Everything works fine. I installed Windows 7 and everything is running great! The cpu seemed like it was getting to warm so I installed Notebook Hardware Control and undervolted the CPU. Everything is fine now. I just purchased a pc card cage on ebay so I will open it up again next weekend and install that. All in all I am extremely pleased. I am happy to have this r51 frankenpad. I love th t60p as well, but I just love the look and feel of the thinkpads before Lenovo took over.

Now I just need to save my pennies to convert my 14" t60p into a 15" with a flexview. The flexview on the r51 has spoiled me and it hurts my eyes that the display on the t60p is so poor (excepting refresh rate) in comparison.

[hlyh1230]

hi...i'm from malaysia...since i gt problem to get DDR ram nowadays(sigh)...do u hv extra DDR RAM ~~?