T420 upgrades.

[ronintron]

This probably fall sinto the realm of noone cares anymore but I have rcently decided to pimp out my tpad 420. Basic stuff so far....from 4 gig ram to 16, and I have an ssd on theway. Anyway I just thought Id open this thread to introduce myself on this forum and see if anyone else has done much more with any real effect to this model.

I plan to switch OS to ubuntu 12.04 next....not sure how that will go with the SSD. a quad core proccessor seems way too ambitious, expensive and troublesome.

Anyway, bien everybody.

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

Is hacking the machine with a quad-core CPU your next step?



We do hope you enjoy both your T420 and your stay at TPF.

[jayton4]

Welcome!

Another pimp move would be to add one of these: http://amzn.com/B00HWHVNUU

[wolfman]

This probably fall sinto the realm of noone cares anymore but I have rcently decided to pimp out my tpad 420. Basic stuff so far....from 4 gig ram to 16, and I have an ssd on theway. Anyway I just thought Id open this thread to introduce myself on this forum and see if anyone else has done much more with any real effect to this model.

I plan to switch OS to ubuntu 12.04 next....not sure how that will go with the SSD. a quad core proccessor seems way too ambitious, expensive and troublesome.

Anyway, bien everybody.

Welcome! I have a pimped out T420 myself (check my sig below) - you'll be pleased with that machine using an SSD and Ubuntu 12.04 - that's what I've used since I bought the T420 new!

[bit_twiddler]

I have a T-420, which I keep pimping out. I need to be able to switch between different
Linux distributions for work, so I put all of my data on an HGST 5k1500 as the first drive,
and boot off the second drive. I'm mostly booting SL 6.5 from an ssd. I haven't gotten around
to putting an msata drive in - perhaps when I get a kernel which supports bcache, I'll get
around to it. 16 Gbytes really helps when I'm running 2 or 3 VMs.

I don't think that I've ever had a machine this solid.

I plan to keep running this machine until about 2020, which is EOL for RHEL 6 and W7, which
I run under VMware.

[larso]

I highly reccomend ubuntu 14.04 LTS over 12.04 LTS, because of better power manegement, easier to install bumblebee (if you have the nvidia graphics).
The new ubuntu just feels less "beta". Less tinkering to get everything to work properly.

[sktn77a]

Another pimp move would be to add one of these: http://amzn.com/B00HWHVNUU

Just ordered an 80Gb Intel mSATA SSD for my T420 "play" computer (actually the family backup when one of their computers is in for repairs/rebuilds/updates).

Should arrive today. I'll report back in a couple of days.

[sktn77a]

Well, after some (significant) startup hiccups (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 85#p739685), I got the drive up and running and it DOES seem to be quite a bit faster. However, I would recommend anyone considering this upgrade to get, minimum, a 120Gb drive and, ideally, 240Gb or greater. There's not much space left for programs after loading Win 7, Updates, Lenovo apps and the Lenovo recovery partition.

Onward and Upward!

[ajkula66]

There's not much space left for programs after loading Win 7, Updates, Lenovo apps and the Lenovo recovery partition.

Onward and Upward!

Honestly, one should nuke the recovery partition from the SSD if they want optimal performance.

There's also a bunch of Lenovo apps which are quite expendable IMO.

All of that said, I'd agree that a 128GB is a comfortable minimum for a boot drive nowadays.

[sktn77a]

Yes, given that I have the recovery DVDs, I think I can get rid of the recovery partition.

[Temetka]

I have a 128GB Samsung 840 PRO in my T410 and I would agree, get a larger drive. I picked up a 256GB EVO for $150 at Fry's a few months back. That's the minimum size I would recommend for a boot drive these days.

I would be concerned about adding a quad core CPU to such a machine as it might stress the cooling system a bit much, especially if you have the Nvidia GPU in there as well. Other than that, it sounds like a good machine you've got.

With regards to your comment about "falling into the realm of nobody cares", this is the TPF son. Of course we care. We take these machines to places they were never meant and in some cases, never designed, to go. So hack away, but remember to to post back so we can read all about it. Oh and of course to contribute to the growing abundance of knowledge here on these boards.

Finally, welcome to the TPF!