T530 motherboard in T520 chassis

[LittleTinker]

Hi,
Is the layout of T520 and T530 similar enough for T520 chassis to maybe accept a T530 motherboard? Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question but I've never had chance to see both side by side to know if this is obviously a no go even from an external perspective of ports, audio connectors etc. If possible what other than the keyboard would I need from a T530 to make this work?
Thanks in advance

[LittleTinker]

From pictures on the internet it does look like motherboards are the same dimensions with external connectors in the same place, I suspect the T530 motherboard is mountable in the T520 case.
I believe I'd need the T530 keyboard for this swap to work? If so then this might be more an issue since the keyboard overall dimension look a bit different. Any thoughts greatly received.

[brchan]

The old keyboard will fit fine as long as the original keyboard palmrest/bezel is used. People have successfully fitted a T530 with the classic keyboard and palmrest from a T520, so I assume it would work for the other way around. Of course, any of the keys that are missing or remapped on the chiclet keyboard (from T530 generation) will stay the same on the classic keyboard.

[hhhd1]

There are some small differences in the connectors,

The T530 have moved to mini-display port, instead of the older display port.
There is also eSata/USB combo connection on the T520, which I think is replaced by USB only.
The VGA connection also became more covered by chassis to cover the screw holes.

I think it may work, the opposite may be harder, (that is T520 motherboard in T530 chassis)


I am curious whether the heatsink is interchangable between the:
T520 dedicated
T520 discrete
T530 dedicated
I think they should work, but never tested.

If you happen to test any heatsink on a different model, let me know please.

[LittleTinker]

Cheers for the info, I wouldn't mind too much enlarging or blanking off some plastic areas if easy enough. I heard also T520 has modem and T530 not so some blanking need for this a least. I've brought a T530 motherbord w/o nvidia but including the fan & HS assembly. Going to get t530 kboard and palm rest and then try things out, will look at the HS options to see if they will work, and when I get around to this I'll report back.

I had a T61p which went pop a few years ago and I ended up buying a r61 and swapping in the RAM CPU. I wanted to use the T61p frame and heatsink but it was a no for the Heatsink because R61 had other components in the way where nvidia chip sat on the T61p - hence in this case HS for discrete graphics was not usable on R61 motherboard with integrated graphics, potentially newer models may suffer the same way.