W530 - for 280$ worth it ?

[Wiking]

Found a local seller that sells his w530 2438-2lu.
Has 256gb msata + 1T hdd. 32gb ram.
Is it a good deal ? Battery last couple of hours by his words. Both disk formatted.
How can I quickly checked it with dok or something ? Want to be sure that screen has no dead pixels, hdd in good health and everything is working properly. I have t420 now and want something bigger and a little bit powerful.
Thanks for helping.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[RealBlackStuff]

That's about the current going price (on eBay) for such machines.
Yours has a bit more RAM and HD/SSD space than most.
If everything works to your liking, you'll be very happy with it.
Even more so after you put in the keyboard from a T420/T520/W520/X220 with this EC-mod: https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=120776

[ThinkTwinki]

It's an amazing deal.

The RAM alone is worth $250-$300 if it's good.

[Wiking]

Sorry for not updating the thread earlier.
Bought it from local seller.
The machine itself in great condition and looks 95% new. He used it to test linux or something.
After buying it, I cleaned it and replaced the thermal paste.
About a month ago ( bought it in March) I swithed to it from my beloved t420.
The perfomance is great and after fitting it with sandisk x300 512gb, leaved msata as the second and replaced the dvd drive with hdd caddy with wd blue 1T it is a monter.

Down sides: once in 2-3 days it freezes (happens almost everytime when I play video (vlc, bsplayer) and I have to power it off with the button. The freeze is whashed picture with zero response. Searched few solutions and didn't recognize absolute one. Ran memory test (32gb ram and all stucks are the same) with zero error.
Updated the video drivers but it didn't help.
Want to update bios to the newest (mine is 2.50) but have concern.
I ran win7 ult on it and did a clean install.
Msata drive can do such a freeze ?

Is there any software that can record activity and make log when it freezes so I would narrow the problem?

The second down side is the screen, I just can't get use to it. Tried all the color profiles on net and still not right (I don't have color sensor).

Last is the keyboard. It is noisy (compared to t420) and not as good.

What do you think ?

[RealBlackStuff]

Put your T420 keyboard (or duplicate) in the W530.

[Wiking]

Is it possible to switch between T420 and W530 keyboards ? Straight forward ?

[RealBlackStuff]

This'll keep you busy for a while: https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=120776

[Wiking]

Too much modification. I can't risk my main thinkpad because of everyday use.

Another thought: is it worth to jump to W541 ? Does ot has good keyboard ?

I can sell mine, add some cash and buy w541.

[ThinkTwinki]

Too much modification. I can't risk my main thinkpad because of everyday use.

Another thought: is it worth to jump to W541 ? Does ot has good keyboard ?

I can sell mine, add some cash and buy w541.

If you really like the W530, not really. If you need a better display and your maxed out W530 doesn't have enough horsepower, I've heard the P50 would be the right way to go.

The W541 always seemed like the middle child. Where the W530 was the first real foray into a new design paradigm -- for better or worse -- and the P50 was the final product of years of revisions, the W541 is in a limbo of growing pains. The screen is flimsy, the keyboard's been squished to make room for the numpad, and the trackpad's been nixed to hell.

If you really need a new ThinkPad, save a couple hundred bucks more and get a P50.

And if you do decide to sell your old W530, let me know. If I won't be able to fix my own, I'll happily buy yours.

[jursky]

I am having a similar strange problem with my W530 when I am using only dGPU (nvidia k1000m), set via BIOS. From what I observed, when I or computer itself tries to alter brightness of the LCD, W530 immediately hangs. When I set it back to Optimus (iGPU+dGPU), there is no problem at all. I am using Windows 10, I don't know if it would affect Linux systems aswell - did not try. As for the nvidia dgpu, I dare to say that there cannot be problem, because the gpu itself runs perfectly. I can game on it, watch movies, do android development (emulator is set to run on nvidia gpu, performance is awesome - no stuttering whatsoever which I experience when I try to use internal intel HD graphics). But being forced to use Optimus is not really a bad thing, so no complains. Just saying that you could check what setting you have set under the Bios > Video. Maybe you could try to switch between igpu only, dgpu only and optimus.

[Wiking]

I set optimus (my sits on win7 ult) and as far as I understand this the better option.
I really don't push graphics to the limit. Very average use - sometimes movies in 720p.
I'm not playing games at all.
Till now, I really can't say what give these hangs. It can do 3 days without any problem and than 2 hangs per day.
About selling: I will try to get use to the screen (I think maybe this is also because I came from 1600x900 t420) and if still be not pleasent, i will sell it.