Quad core i7 or ivy bridge cpu upgrade in T420

T400/410/420 and T500/510/520 series specific matters only
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bense
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Quad core i7 or ivy bridge cpu upgrade in T420

#1 Post by bense » Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:46 pm

Hi, I have a Lenovo T420, that I pieced together using parts off of eBay. I am interested in purchasing a better CPU for it. I am currently using an i3-2310M. But I want to upgrade to a more powerful quad core i7, such as one of the i7-2xx0QM CPUs listed here

When I originally 'built' this laptop, I tried to use an i7-2820QM that I was ONLY able to get working by disabling multi-core in the uefi/bios. I realize that this is one of the higher end quad core i7s, being that it has 8MB of cache rather than 6MB like some of the others.

I was just curious if anyone has successfully been able to get a quad core working in their T420.

Alternatively, has anyone tried putting a Socket G2 Ivy Bridge in their T420 and achieved successful results?

Yes, I do realize that the quad cores have a greater TDP (thermal design power) of 45w, and that the most powerful CPU that Lenovo officially offered was an i7-2640M which has a TDP of 35w. Yes, I realize that this is a 28.6% increase in heat. However for the sake of this discussion, heat does not concern me.

ajkula66
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Re: Quad core i7 or ivy bridge cpu upgrade in T420

#2 Post by ajkula66 » Sun Oct 12, 2014 5:58 pm

bense wrote:

I was just curious if anyone has successfully been able to get a quad core working in their T420.
Yes, according to this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo/ ... ssful.html
Alternatively, has anyone tried putting a Socket G2 Ivy Bridge in their T420 and achieved successful results?
AFAIK, there's no support in T420's BIOS for Ivy Bridge CPUs.
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