New-to-Me T430s ...... Schweet!

[Scorpion8]

After fiddling with the X120e's at the recommendation of YouTuber "Logcabinlooms". I wanted a big one. Watched a bunch of YouTube videos, and decided on a T430. Well, I pulled the trigger too fast and didn't notice it was a T430s. But no-hey, it showed up today and is sweet. Came with a Win10 load on a Lenovo 128GB SSD with 4GB RAM, and for the truth of it booted pretty fast and ran fine. Of course.... in goes 8GB of RAM that I had on hand and 16GB is on order. The 8GB machine in truth is probably plenty fast for what I'm going to use it for, but everything goes better with more RAM. Please nobody tell me that the machine supports more, the RAM upgrade cycle-of-wallet-death on the X120e's already put me in the poor house.

Mine came with an SD card reader, and DVD drive tray. Both work great. Whomever let this go for a pittance must either know something that I don't, or be a power gamer or summin' like dat.

Should I replace the Lenovo 128GB SSD with a newer model? I have a Samsung 840 250GB or a WD Green 240GB SSD drives handy.

What other upgrades are possible, smart, or truly necessary?

[TPFanatic]

Fortunately for you, 16GB is the max that laptop will take. In practice Windows seems to enjoy the extra RAM more than I do.

128GB works fine for me, granted it is low and fills fast, and that's just with programs as my machine (T420) uses a second internal drive for storage.

[kfzhu1229]

You can always replace your SSD with a msata one so that you can add more HDD storage at will

[Scorpion8]

You can always replace your SSD with ...

Does anyone know where Lenovo SSDs ranked, or who was the OEM for Lenovo devices? Both the SSD drives I mentioned that I have available are much newer and probably (I would assume) much faster.

[RealBlackStuff]

Most Lenovo-branded SSDs rank near the bottom, and are/were sold at heavily exaggerated prices.
Samsung EVO 850/860/etc. come highly recommended, as does Sandisk Extreme Pro.

You can update the LCD to FHD or WQHD.
You can remove wifi-whitelist and unlock BIOS settings via Ivyprep/1vyrain.
See more info here: viewforum.php?f=45

[Scorpion8]

I just cloned the tired, old Toshiba 128GB SSD onto a new Samsung 840EVO 250GB SSD Drive using Samsung's software. Simple and fast. Upgrade #2 accomplished.

Is the T430s afflicted with the same Lenovo-only whitelist battery issue? My battery (of course) doesn't hold a charge very long and genuine Lenovo batteries seem to be in short supply.

[TPFanatic]

Check out 1vyrain that RBS mentioned, it will remove the battery check. Unfortunately T430s will never get good battery life, I got maybe 2.5 hours tops out of my mostly healthy 6 cell actually using the laptop.

[RealBlackStuff]

People, read the documentation!
1vyrain does NOT remove the battery check!
1vyrain ONLY updates the BIOS section, but leaves the EC-section alone (where the battery and keyboard mods are).

[Scorpion8]

System updated to 16Gb. Very nice! Upgrade #3 finished (for the 2nd time). Now, about those 81+ batteries.....