Necessity of using the 170 watt charger? (SOLVED!)

[w0qj]

Just comparing notes here, and I don't pretend to be nearly as technical as you folks... (We tend to get 5yr warranties, and the most we do is swap out SSD/HDD & add in RAM):

1) We try to have a spare AC Adapter for each of our locations, so that we don't have to carry it around (it becomes heavy if you also have other non-computer stuff to carry also).

2a) We have both X1 Extreme (Gen 1) and X1 Extreme (Gen 3). Both uses the 135W AC Adapter (slim tip).

2b) Although both looks similar, X1 Extreme (Gen 1) and X1 Extreme (Gen 3) chassis is different, to the point that you cannot interchangeably swap the aluminum/carbon_fiber body panels.
~X1 Extreme Gen 3 got rid of the proprietary LAN dongle port, and 3.5mm audio jack location moved slightly as a result. There is no more Smart Card option, and a new option for WWAN LTE Modem with SIM Card slot where the Smart Card slot was.
~I've tried to swap the bottom cover of the X1 Extreme Gen 1 to use on the Gen 3, and it does not fit at all. Don't even try.
~I strongly suspect the same situation with P1 (Gen 1) vs P1 (Gen 3), as the latter also had dropped the Smart Card slot for WWAN LTE modem option.

3) If in a pinch and we do not have such a 135W AC Adapter around for our X1 Extreme, we can manage for a few hours with a T410 90W AC Adapter (7.7x5.5mm round tip) with the "round-tip-to-slim-tip-adapter" such as:
www.walmart.ca/en/ip/Purpleleaf-Tip-Ada ... 2GDC2YNT1K

Under low CPU/GPU usage conditions for our X1 Extreme + 90W AC Adapter, our battery level very slowly go down during a few hours of constant use.
But under high CPU/GPU usage, this above solution still drains the battery eventually.
But it's still better than having *no* AC Adapters around!

4) *IF* you have money to burn and you *must* get a 'smaller' AC Adapter:

4a) You can buy a P1 with i9 or Xeon CPU, and it should come with that '30% smaller' 230W AC Adapter (slim tip).

4b) OR you can buy the 40ANY230US ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Workstation Dock Gen 2, which comes with this same '30% smaller' 230W AC Adapter (slim tip).
This is the only other way that I know of to get this 'smaller' AC Adapter, without buying that glorious P1 laptop itself, as of Jan 2021:
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/PD500333

I believe the only 15" thinkpad without a numpad made since the w530 is the X1 Extreme. It is very recent...

I read that all the following Thinkpads use (almost?) identical aluminium bodies and keyboards:

- X1 Extreme (abbreviated as X1E)
- X1 Extreme gen 2 (abbreviated X1E2)
- P1
- P1 gen 2

The difference between X1E and P1 I understand is mostly in the supplied graphics card. Same for generation 2 of them. I also read those bodies aren't bad though definitely not as strong as W530. I have also noticed that gen 3 has come out at least for P1 but I have no clue if it's still same body as gen 1 and gen 2 or not. Another advantage of W530 is that with the right amount of tinkering it is possible to fit a classic keyboard from *20 generation. Just saying Read the manuals! You'd need to isolate certain pins, possibly fit a T520 palmrest and mess with flushing BIOS in such a manner so that to replace EC firmware. Caps lock led won't work w/o a further fancy mod and there but otherwise it will work. Also I believe X1E and P1 no longer have an easily swappable external battery, which can be viewed as an advantage for W530. On the other other X1E and P1 do support NVMe SSD-s..

[atagunov]

with ... ebike battery packs ... there's no way for the bms to know the wattage of the charger, on most packs at least, the battery just sucks as much as it can ... feed the battery pack a higher wattage and it'll gladly suck it up too. So clearly there's something in the charger that's limiting it's output and not just redlining because the battery pack is capable of accepting more power. Seems odd that these Thinkpad chargers wouldn't be able to similarly self regulate? Not saying they can or can't, would just be surprising to me

Hiya, I'm not sure I fully understood you, however what I know is

- there is a microcontroller inside the W530 battery with its own EEPROM programmed by battery maker (it's not Lenovo btw, Sanyo, LGC, etc are, "sudo tlp-stat -b" gets this info out from the battery under Linux)
- there is a pretty smart chip that is part of BMS too, it's not a microcontroller but it is pretty smart (never heard of it being programmable though)
- this chip that is part of BMS is talking to the microcontroller in the battery, the protocol is known as SMBus, it's similar to I2C, there are a couple of extra wires in the battery connector just for that
- the microcontroller inside the battery does tell the BMS chip about its preferences, it does tell the BMS chip to what voltage exactly and with what maximum current it prefers to be charged
- the BMS chip controls MOSFET-s on Thinkpad motherboard and thus has authority to decide how much current is sent to charge the battery, yes the charger does decide how to charge the battery but it also listens to what battery asks for
- I really don't know about this but there might be a way for EC to provide an extra input to this chip telling it to charge the battery faster or slower - but again I don't know - maybe yes maybe no
- finally there are a couple of MOSFET-s inside the battery too (opened T60 batt, saw them) and the microcontroller inside the battery has the power to shut them off; it will probably only do this if it thinks there is danger and battery needs to shut itself off; it may well be that this battery will never work again after this - unless you use an external tool to reset this microcontroller; however it's not true that the battery cannot do anything.. it can shut itself off completely; these MOSFET-s are capable of preventing the battery from either charging or discharging I think

Lastly these e-bike packs, I would think it is not a good idea to charge them too fast is it?.. Charging does heat up the battery too. If the infrastructure to prevent too fast charging is absent, well it just means one layer of protection is missing..

[wrybread]

If the infrastructure to prevent too fast charging is absent, well it just means one layer of protection is missing..

The eBike battery packs all have a BMS, and I think those BMS's have a max charge rate that they'll allow. But that's not the interesting part for this discussion, to me at least. What's interesting is that the chargers themselves don't overheat when charging a battery pack that has no idea about the capacity of the charger. Kind of like a Thinkpad with the charger identification disabled via the mod described above...

Again not saying there's surely no downside to not identifying the charger to the Thinkpad, but I think it's interesting that ebike battery packs get along just fine without that information.

[wrybread]

Interesting detail: the 65w charger isn't strong enough to power the W530 while using it. And the way it fails is interesting too: it stays on for maybe 30 seconds, then shuts off for about 30 seconds and repeats. And it gets really warm. So I'm guessing some kind of thermal protection is kicking in?

I've been meaning to get rid of my 65w chargers anyway.

[moofish2842]

I'm curious, does turning on airplane power mode in lenovo vantage change anything when working with a charger that is too small? Also the battery saver?

[wrybread]

Just thought I'd post an update after a couple of weeks of very heavy use including video rendering, the 90 watt charger has been working perfectly with my W530. Doesn't seem to get any warmer than with my T530. And I always have my screen at max brightness and Windows power mode set to "best performance".

And sorry @moofish, just saw your question, but I don't have the 65 watt charger anymore. I'd imagine not though, I can't imagine the wifi card takes that much power, but it would be interesting to see.

[moofish2842]

You may be confusing airplane mode with airplane power mode. There is a function in lenovo vantage that is supposed to prepare the laptop for the power delivery climate of an airplane outlet, which would seem to make it more prepared for power outages and low wattage caps during charging. I thought that might make a difference in a situation where a machine wasn't getting enough power from its charger. Anyway I'm glad you're doing well with it as it is.

[atagunov]

It seems the elusive newer-generation (rectangular tip, smaller size, lighter weight) 135Wt chargers are available on UK ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/373213269082 for £25 inclusive delivery to UK. If the OP felt 90W charger was somehow not sufficient he could have used this - but he would have needed to cut off the tip and re-attach the round one and he would have still needed to do the mod inside W530 to short those two wires to make W530 aware this is a 135W charger. This is because the round tip that we can cut off a different charger will have a wrong resistor in it and the square-to-round adapters are likely to have a wrong one as well (I'd probably guess these adapters just don't have centre pin connected meaning "90W" but who knows..)

[cadillacmike68]

The weight of even the 170W AC Adapter is nothing compared to the weight of full body armor and field gear, etc, so carrying it in a briefcase from the car to an office is trivial to me. That said, I prefer my T61 6463 because of the taller screen. Now the Boss Lady - she has a different opinion, so her travel machine is a T61 6463 with a 65W adapter.

I got a total of three of the 170W big boys. One for each mini dock and one for the W530. I like to have spares. I also trimmed the insides of them so they will work in T530s as well.

[wrybread]

That said, I prefer my T61 6463 because of the taller screen.

I like that screen too. Are you able to run Win10 on that?

I also trimmed the insides of them so they will work in T530s as well.

Good idea!

[theterminator93]

I'm late to the party, but I did some testing with my W520 and its 170W adapter not long after I got it. Quoted below...

Got the A/C adapter this afternoon and have been running the usual suite of tests and benchmarks on it as I would any "new" machine. As it turns out, it will draw about 150W from the wall outlet at full load (Furmark running while encoding video in 8 threads), and the temps will pretty quickly shoot up into the mid 90s. I think it may need some fresh (better) thermal paste since I recall there being a few degrees difference in peak temps when I re-pasted the T420.

For the curious, it draws just under 90W with all four cores pegged, and about 120W with a single CPU core and the GPU pegged. If it was charging the battery at full load... I can clearly see where the need for the 170W adapter comes into play. I'm not certain how efficient the adapters are but I figure with 150W wall draw the laptop is actually consuming at least 135W, so that leaves a healthy 35 additional watts for battery charging at full load.

As far as running Windows 10 on a T61, sure. I use my T601F at work on a regular basis and reluctantly made the switch to 10 about a year ago. It runs better on Windows 7 but it does work well enough to use regularly on 10.

[cadillacmike68]

That said, I prefer my T61 6463 because of the taller screen.

I like that screen too. Are you able to run Win10 on that?

I also trimmed the insides of them so they will work in T530s as well.

Good idea!

I upgraded several T61s to w10, five back in 2017 or so and a few last year. No real issues besides what everyone has with w10 in general. I really hate the forced "updates" on w10, so I only keep one W10 system running.

What I did was I backed up the W7 system using Acronis True Image and restored that image onto another HDD. Then I took out the W7 HDD and booted the system with the w10 HDD. This keeps me original W7 HDD unmolested and usable.

[wrybread]

Good to know. I'm an extremely reluctant Win10 user too, and use Win7 on all my Windows machines, but I decided to put Win10 on my W530. I have to say I'm not hating it. With Classic Shell (now called Open Shell) it's mostly painless:

https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

But yeah things like the forced updates drive me nuts.

Runs really well on my W530 though. I'd say it runs better than Win7 did on my T530, but that might just be because this is a fresh install. And having 32 gigs of RAM doesn't hurt.

[wrybread]

Thought I'd update this thread in case anyone is considering doing this mod. I've been using two W530's with Lenovo 90 watt power supplies for about 10 months now without any issue at all. Haven't burned out any power supplies or overheated them, no battery issues, no issue running Windows or Ubuntu. And I often have 30+ tabs open and watch a lot of video. And do video editing and other processor intensive tasks.

Anyway I'm pretty confident in saying there's no downside to the mod, but of course that's just my experience and opinion and it's at your own risk.

The only issue I've found is that the smaller power supplies, which I think are 60 watts don't work. But I was meaning to get rid of those anyway.