T530 CPU Upgrade

[eMBe17]

My TP T530 has an Intel I5-2520m processor. Which models of I5 and i7 can I replace that CPU ?
I read that 2520m and other CPUs have different sockets, so I don't know if every model will fit into my model.
Please help and regards, MB

[RealBlackStuff]

Download this PDF and see the list of T530 CPUs: https://download.lenovo.com/parts/Think ... 131007.pdf

[kfzhu1229]

First, make sure you are actually working with a T530, not a T520 with a T530 badge as both supports i5-2520m CPU but only the latter supports 3rd gen I series processors as well.
Depending on the price and the amount of heat and battery you are comfortable working with, the recommendations are different. I upgraded my T530i from a 2nd gen i3 to i7-3720qm engineering sample and I have no regrets with this upgrade, though I ended up using liquid metal to keep the i7-3720qm cool when the NVS 5400m is also stressed. The best solution is to get a new cooler that is designed for 45W CPUs (and with or without dedicated graphics cooling is up to your current motherboard ofc).

[wrybread]

Did you notice a big speed improvement with the upgraded CPU?

[Brandon0623]

When I did the upgrade from a Core I5-3230M to i7-3940xm, there was a speed increase however, the power consumption of the extreme edition caused me to upgrade both my power supply and my battery (90W power with 9-Cell battery).

[WizardOfBoz]

If you use your serial number and the lenovo website, you can generate the spec list for your exact machine. Once you know your exact machine, you could check the spec for a list of CPUs that are likely compatible with that exact machine.

If you go to the website cpu-upgrade.com, and type in your current processor, it generates a list of pin compatible CPUs. If you cross-reference that list with the Lenovo specs, the intersection (that is, Lenovo's materials indicate they built machines with that CPU, and the cpu-upgrade side indicates those processors that will fit the same socket and that might work the same - you are looking for CPUs on both lists).

This gives you an indication based upon a pretty conservative paradigm. If you want to stretch things a bit to see if you can really hot-rod your machine, you should also check out the TDP (Thermal Design Power) that the highest wattage CPU on the list generates. This number tells you how much power Lenovo was comfortable with a CPU generating in that box. Then you can look at the CPU upgrade list to see if there's any more powerful CPUs (for example, a more recent model) that might work. As a rough guide, you can use cpubenchmark.com to check out how powerful each CPU is. Then off to ebay to figure what's available, and how much it costs. A lot of surplus CPUs are from China, so that might delay shipment, what with COVID-19.

Good luck.

On edit: The cpubenchmark site just changed versions (to v10) for the software that they use for benchmarks (passmark). The new version gives signficantly different numbers than the old program and they changed all the numbers on their site, which was pretty disconcerting to me. They've actually acknowledged that they probably did this wrong and will be changing back to v9 numbers, and will change their new software by a scaling factor. Just don't get confused (like I did!) when you look at how much of a performance boost you should expect.