Thinkpads Forum

Well, after a ton of hemming, hawing, and lamenting the jump from the classic ThinkPad hardware, I found a nicely equipped T430 for a pretty good price and pulled the trigger.

My ThinkPad history has been fairly constant from the T2x era(I still have my working T21 sitting on my desk!) up to my current T400 which has been getting too long in the tooth for what I want to do with a laptop. I haven't played with any newer ThinkPads since 2009 or so, but my refurbished T400 had a very long, rough history between myself and the friend I sold it to(and bought it back from). I did contemplate doing some upgrades to this old workhorse, but for my current needs(some mobile video editing/rendering among other things) it just didn't make sense.

So, what am I getting into, here? I know the feelings on the newer-style keyboard are mixed, but at the very least the Trackpoint buttons are still there. I was planning on tossing copious hardware into this chassis to include the quad-core CPU upgrade I've read up on, 16GB of RAM, and ultimately three SSDs for storage as I recently had a HDD failure on my Precision M6700... I'm kinda done with spinning drives on portables.

Unfortunately, this machine is coming stock with Win8(which I absolutely detest) but should be eligible for the Win10 upgrade(which I haven't tried yet). Is it worth the upgrade, or should I consider sticking with the tried and true Win7? I'm definitely not up to speed on the newer hardware, so would anyone be willing to school me a little bit?

If you can adapt to 6-row keyboard and live with a subpar LCD T430 will work well for you. An upgrade to QC is not something I'd be encouraging, though.

Yes, it's doable. Just bear in mind that you may end up with a portable black oven.

If you really need the power of an IB-era QC, there are better choices although they might not come in the 14" format.

I like them, I got used to the keyboard of am 11e and X130e.
The T420 was a nice laptop, I've got a T430 and T430s to play a little bit so I'd expect smooth sailings.

Windows 8 isnt fun but 8.1 is a BIG improvement.

ajkula66 wrote:An upgrade to QC is not something I'd be encouraging, though.

Yes, it's doable. Just bear in mind that you may end up with a portable black oven.

If you really need the power of an IB-era QC, there are better choices although they might not come in the 14" format.

There are 35w quad cores for ivy bridge, the i7-3612qm and the i7-3632qm

Which may not be as hot as a 45w quad core.

Thanks for the info! I was considering running some tests with the 3740QM that I've got in my M6700; the 35W CPUs seem like a better choice. I like tinkering around with my systems so it would give me an excuse to break out my screwdrivers.

I'm not too worried about the screen. As long as it's on par with the 1440x900 LED display on my current T400 it will be adequate. As before SSDs are already on the menu; I'm looking to max things out as far as I can. If I can get as much mileage out of this one as I have my T400 I will be quite happy.

it may be interesting to run some tests with the 3740qm you already have.

maybe you can run it with limited multiplier, .. while stress testing, gradually increase/decrease the maximum multiplier, using windows power options.

you can see how much wattage exactly can the heatsink dissipate.

it may also be possible to put nvidia's heatsink fan in the T430 models without nvidia, to increase cooling efficiency.

I am interested in this, so if you do get around doing those tests, please do post results.

LegendaryKA8 wrote:Unfortunately, this machine is coming stock with Win8(which I absolutely detest) but should be eligible for the Win10 upgrade(which I haven't tried yet). Is it worth the upgrade, or should I consider sticking with the tried and true Win7?

You can always go back if you don't like it.