So i'm going to be attending college for the second two years of my CS degree and will be using my laptop more often now(just for school programming and projects). I decided it would be a fun project to upgrade the thing a bit. The builds look like this:
CURRENT: CPU: i5-3320M 2c/4t @2.6GHz RAM: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM (@ 1600Mhz) OS: W10 (It was a podcast recorder primarily) HDD: 250GB I think @7200RPM DISPLAY: God AWFUL 1366x768 boi
UPGRADES: CPU: Not sure yet. Looking at i7-3540M or 3632QM (Not sure if extra heat will be an issue). RAM: Not sure if worth the money, probably will keep at 8GB. OS: Thinking Solus. Something smooth running that wont give me a headache. Productivity here. SSD: Was going to drop in a 2.5" SSD, whatever I can find SATAIII for a good price and 250GB-500GB DISPLAY: LP140WD2, matte preferably unless install is easier with something else. HD+ cable with that. BATTERY: Not sure what is best here for weight/bulk vs. duration.
Pretty much I'm looking for input mostly on the CPU and DISPLAY and anything i'm overlooking since I've never modified a laptop before. These seem to be really easy to modify which is why I bought it in the first place but I know with the display for example its not exactly plug and play. Also looking for upgrade ideas I may not have thought of, maybe something that would be compatible and cool or useful to have. I saw you can upgrade to 3G connectivity for example. Anyways any input especially from people who may have some of these upgrades would be appreciated.
>I've never modified a laptop before state of Jow Forums
Jackson Brown
Firstly, get your ass back to thinkpad general. >Something smooth running that wont give me a headache Go for Debian. If you've never modified a laptop maybe take it easy on upgrading CPUs, you'll do well with an SSD upgrade and maybe a little extra ram. >BATTERY: Not sure what is best here for weight/bulk vs. duration. The bigger the better, you won't be far from a power outlet anyways
Angel Jones
Both will work as long you dont have the CAD version (the one that comes with the NVS 5400) Get a cheap SSD like the BX500 or save for a 860 EVO. >Battery a 9 cell battery that isnt Chinese.
Also study CE or EE, avoid CS.
Hunter Sanders
Biggest difference hands down will be putting an mSATA SSD into the mSATA slot. Install the OS on this. Then fuck off the optical drive, by a HDD caddy for the bay then either put another 2.5" SSD in that or a standard 2.5" drive if you want more cheap storage space. 8GB-16GB RAM you will notice the least unless you do workloads that actually need it, and on a t430 I'm guessing you're not. CPU up to an i7 will help a bit but not night-and-day difference like the SSD. Better display would also be great as 1366x768 can eat a dick, but I've never tried it.
Zachary Morris
Does T430 have SATAIII in the mSATA slot? Because X230 does not.
Connor Price
Just put Arch on it, you're going to end up there anyway. Every single laptop user starts off using one of those meme distro designed to showcase a desktop environment like Mint, Deepin or the (#)Ubuntus. They use it for a bit, then finally try out i3wm/sway or another tiling manager and realize this is how laptops are meant to be fucking used. After that they stop being a brainlet and start using terminal applications because they have better usage of the limited hardware the laptop affords. If you start off right now using a WM and terminal applications you wont need to upgrade anything other than the screen and HDD.
Chase Harris
I sure love making schematics and flowcharts in a terminal.
Jace Perez
>a 2c4t 2.6 GHz processor with 8 gigabytes of memory is "limited hardware" that is only usable with a barebones text terminal
Obviously there are certain activity that cannot be done in a terminal effectively. This goes without saying; the point of using terminal applications is to prevent yourself from wasting precious RAM and CPU cycles for the applications that truly need it. There is absolutely no fucking point in running music program that takes up 1gb ram because its electron garbage when you can get by with mpd+ncmpcpp or mpv+youtube-dl which run about a dozen megabytes or so.
Carter Garcia
>There is absolutely no fucking point in running music program that takes up 1gb ram
It makes no difference whether I dedicate 1GB of memory to a music player, or leave that 1GB of memory free. It does make a difference, however, when I can look at album art and track listing for a more complete experience, and not break my immersion in lyrics by having to type words. Although I admit that these concepts are a bit on the artistic side and thus might be difficult to grasp for an archfag.
Brayden Butler
Free RAM is wasted RAM
Dominic Martin
>attending college for the second two years of my CS degree Then how about your first? Stay at home and attend ((((((((((Open University))))))))))?
Brayden Parker
>CPU: Not sure yet. Looking at i7-3540M or 3632QM (Not sure if extra heat will be an issue). There is a bigger heatsink for the quad cores iirc. You might need to upgrade your heatsink too.
>RAM: Not sure if worth the money, probably will keep at 8GB. DDR3 is still worth something.
>SSD: Was going to drop in a 2.5" SSD, whatever I can find SATAIII for a good price and 250GB-500GB Avoid QLC SSDs
Christian Jackson
Not sure on the speed, but it transformed my t430 from a piece of shit to something usable
Jacob Collins
W10 is hard on disks and old HDDs are painfully slow compared to even a cheap SSD. Do the SSD upgrade and install debian stable with i3wm or XFCE and see how that feels.
Sebastian Ramirez
i7 is a waste, SSD improves noise level and heat considerably, display is probably worth it. If it has Optimus then definitely get the 9 cell battery, otherwise 6 cell is probably fine.
Josiah Gray
mSATA is SATA 2.0, but I mean it shouldn't be significantly slower than 3.0
Lincoln Edwards
3 vs 6Gbps
Angel Robinson
that i5 CPU is fine, the quad cores are firehouses and the dual core i7 is basically not worth the upgrade unless you get it for reaaaaly cheap. Keep the 8GB of RAM and definitely upgrade the display to the best one available.
Aiden Evans
t430 owner here Stock i5 is more than good enough unless you have other heavy usage, in which case you should have gotten a 15 in thinkpad anyway. Performance increase from quad core is negligible and if you plan on using it as a carry-around laptop then I'd advise against upgrading. The increased heat output and battery usage isn't worth it not to mention you will have to buy a 135w adapter and probably the GPU version heatsink with Toshiba fan to tame it. Perhaps a faster duo core?
8GB RAM is more than enough. Definitely swap out optical drive for a HDD caddy then stick your large hard drive in there and use the actual hard drive bay for an SSD. Display wise a drop in replacement at 1600x900 will suffice. Rewiring shit will give you even more headache. Lastly 9 cell battery or slice battery. Make sure you buy OEM.
Blake Long
Hello. I'm a T430 owner who bought his T430 new in 2012. I've been a longtime Jow Forums browser and it's the first I purchased. I bought it for college and am still using it for that. I have a few good tips.
1. The display makes a big difference. The 1600x900 is way better, though I ordered that with mine originally. I used to get compliments on it back then even though it's a TN and absolute dogshit by today's standards. 2. The SSD is going to make a huge difference. I have a PNY CS900 myself, which is a $20 120GB disk. I originally had a Seagate 320GB which was original to the laptop. It of course died being a Seagate, though this laptop went through hell. If you want a 250+GB SSD it'll cost you at least $40. 3. The CPU is probably not as big of a deal as you think. Might not be worth upgrading. I haven't found myself maxing out the CPU in normal usage. 4. Bigger battery is always better. Put down the onions and go big. 5. 8GB is probably enough. I paid $120 for 16GB recently and that was pretty cool. 6. I'd advise you check the thermal paste to ensure temperatures are doing fine. I had to redo it on my T430. 7. See next reply.
7. As far as operating systems go, I found that the Windows 7 it came with was good for a while, then it seemed to just degrade, there was one instance where I was trying to start it up to take notes on it and it took like 20 fucking minutes to startup for some goddamn reason, I had a free Windows 8 upgrade and upgraded to that, and then after a while that went stupid on me too. I have used Gentoo, Ubuntu(and Mint), Arch, and Debian, and for me I suggest Kubuntu or Manjaro if you want something easy and stable. In my case it was a bit different because I have the Bumblebee driver for NVIDIA Optimus. When this PC was new, Ubuntu, Arch, and Gentoo had the drivers I needed, but Debian didn't. A T430 is a 5+ year old piece of hardware so Debian might work now, but I've learned that Debian is a waste of time if it doesn't support your hardware, and some of the old packages are pretty buggy, namely KDE and Transmission when I tried it around 2013 on another piece of hardware. Gentoo was nice but I had some issue with portage and moved to something else. Ubuntu worked fine, but I wanted the AUR and moved to Arch. I've been using Arch on this machine since the days before systemd when Arch had an installer, and it has ran with no issues. In fact, I can't say I've ever had an Arch install where the disk didn't fail before the installation did, like when the stock Seagate drive died. I did notice that the performance of The NVIDIA and Intel graphics both improved when I moved from Ubuntu to Arch too, likely due to newest drivers. Back when I was a teen, I used to have friends to play Minecraft with, and I'd use the clitmouse to play Minecraft on the loo. Originally It was necessary to use the NVIDIA graphics on Minecraft as the Intel integrated weren't up to it. Over time the drivers improved to where I can play Minecraft on this with just the Intel graphics no problem. I don't talk to any of my Minecraft friends but that's another story for another reply.
Josiah Long
>is quad core worth it? are you going to use that? if you are not sure, you do not need it. you do not need any beefy adapters, nor does it heat up more than the dual core >screen upgrade get 1080p, it is abaolutely amazing and i can not do without it now >ram 16GB is an overkill, i never use it >ultrabay having a second hdd is nice >ssd best purchase of my life
also do coreboot, me_cleaner and all that. it works like a charm
