Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I recently picked up a nice 2nd hand Thinkpad X1 Carbon (3448). It came with an i5 and 4GB of RAM, and I'm considering swapping the motherboard with an i7 and 8GB model. I've been studying the parts list found here and have a couple of questions:

1) Will the planars that are indicated in the parts list as "for MultiTouch" work on my machine, which is the plain X1 Carbon and not the X1 Carbon Touch? I realize that I will not magically gain touchscreen capabilities, but I just want to know if it will work (or *is* there the possibility of magically gaining touchscreen possibilities, i.e. also replacing the LCD, etc.?)

2) I note that the parts are distinguished by the OS, e.g. "W8-PRO", "W8-STD", "W7/N-OS"... I actually plan to just install Linux on this machine. Is this just an issue of the software license associated with the motherboard, or should I be concerned about some technical issue, e.g. UEFI firmware and whatnot?

Many thanks in advance!

The touch is gained by replacing the LCD with the touch FRU. The FRU is the entire LCD assembly which is plug and play. Nothing other than that is required for the touch magic.

The OS license will allow activation of the specified OS with recovery media. In my experience there is no other technical issue.

Based on your listed model stay with any X1 carbon 1st gen motherboard and you should have no trouble swapping. The X1 carbon 2nd gen motherboard will not fit in the X1 carbon 1st gen chassis.

Brad

Thanks for clearing things up for me, Brad!

So it does appear that with the appropriate choice of replacement FRUs, a plain X1C can be turned into an X1C Touch. That's good to know, although I really am not bothered with touch functionality in a laptop form factor.