Thinkpads Forum

Question for everyone on this page

Is it possible to upgrade the T530 by replacing the integrated motherboard to a dedicated motherboard? (integrated meaning intel graphics only, dedicated meaning NVIDIA)

Thanks in advance

Yes. Note that the Intel-only heatsink is different from the one with nVidia GPU, it's recommended to buy a replacement board with the heatsink included.

Okay thank you

I was looking at getting both the motherboard and the heatsink to upgrade my T530.

IIRC it's possible to upgrade to a W530 board. Let's wait for other forum members to confirm.

One other question with regards to a change in motherboards. Would I have to make sure I use the serial number and product number of my current motherboard if going from integrated to discrete?

If your discrete mobo is a used one, it should already have a matching discrete MTM in its BIOS.
No need to modify that.

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 12, 2018 4:56 am

If your discrete mobo is a used one, it should already have a matching discrete MTM in its BIOS.
No need to modify that.

And a label maker can solve the MTM on the bottom of the machine.

T530 that comes with DGPU has internal structural differences in planar that differentiate it from T530 with IGPU. The heatsink mounts are in a different place.

T530 with DGPU has the heatsink holes in the same place as W530.

You are best to upgrade to a W530 board if wanting a DGPU.

I personally have the T530i with discrete Nvidia NVS 5400M. The performance of that thing is around a Skylake/Kaby lake iGPU after an OC. If you use high quality thermal compound (best if liquid metal), you are able to push the clock of that chip all the way to the maximum (you get around up to 20% of performance gain) allowed in MSi Afterburner and it was still stable for me. That said, I still feel like the heatsink struggles to keep up with my i7-3720qm and NVS 5400m at the same time, though most games today won't utilise all the CPU power anyways (NVS 5400m is a HUGE bottleneck) so it doesn't take the heatsink to its knees as much.

I recently did the upgrade however the board was a blank board with no serial number. I transferred the one on my system however there was also no dpk on the board so can no longer use the factory recovery discs. Is there any way around this?

You need the HMD to set MTM, S/N and UUID: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... tm38us.exe
Download and double-click that file.
It unpacks to: C:\DRIVERS\Maintenance Diskette\i7tm38us
At the end, read the Information screen that follows and scroll down to how to make a USB version.

Did use the hmd to set the numbers but for preinstalled license still says no dpk

Install the latest BIOS.
Also get SLIC_ToolKit_V3.2.EXE to see if you have Slic2.1 for Vista and W7 as standard in your BIOS.
Who cares about a W8 key...