Thinkpads Forum

Hello thinkpad fans! Greetings from Colombia, and excuse me for any grammar mistakes. . In Colombian "Craigslist" i found a good Thinkpad W540 for about US$380, this are the specs:

Intel Core i7-4800MQ QuadCore 2.70Ghz

Ram DDR3L de 16 Gb

SSD NVMe de 180 Gb

6 months of warranty? (acording to the owner)

15.6 "FHD 1080p

GPU Intel HD 4600

GPU Nvidia Quadro K1100M

original charger.

Is this a good price? i want to change my old samsung NP700. i have the money but need to make a good choice, i always wanted a Thinkpad as my main machine, and i want to use a eGPU in the future. (W540 has the expresscard slot to do that).

Thank you all for the advice.

If the ram is 2X 8GB modules, it's a fair price. If it's 4x 4GB modules and you want to go to 32GB, try to talk them down a little. You will likely want to budget for a larger SSD and possibly a replacement screen.

Why a replacement screen? It is already an FHD screen.

eGPU is an external GPU for use in the same laptop, not a replacement LCD.
(similar to an extra graphics card in a desktop)

Thank you all for the advice. I don't now if it has 2x8GB or 4X4GB RAM, i have to ask, but 16GB will be good for me. Yes, the next upgrade will be a 1TB SSD, the screen can wait, i don't need the 3K screen, but changing to a FHD IPS (W540 has FHD TN panel) will be cool. I use mostly my current samsung NP700 (2nd gen core I5 2.4, 6 GB RAM, 14.1" 1440x900 TN panel, 1TB mech DD, radeon 6750M) for heavy web browsing, HD movies, youtube and Netflix, casual gaming (old games of course) and electronics CAD/simulation and some light mechanical CAD. I want to experiment with eGPU setups for better gaming with a external monitor, i know that i can't have the same performace of modern desktops but if i can ran the recent version of DOOM i will be happy.

The other thinkpads in mind are some t430's for about $143, but those are basic systems that need processsor, RAM and hard disk upgrades, no to mention that FHD screens upgrades on the T430 has issues.

So, i think the w540 is a good option, on reddit, they said that is too much for a system without the K2100 quadro chip, but here in Colombia to find good thinkpads is difficult.