The Thinkpad line of laptops, originally from IBM, and then from Lenovo, have long been the choice of many in our community. They offer a level of robustness and reliability missing in many cheaper machines. You may not be surprised to find that this article is being written on one. With such a following, it’s not surprising that a significant effort has gone into upgrading older models. For example, we have [Franck Deng]’s new motherboard for the Thinkpad X200 and X201. These models from the end of the 2000s shipped as far as we can remember with Core 2 Duo processors, so we can imagine they would be starting to feel their age.
It’s fair to say the new board isn’t a cheap option, but it does come with a new Core Ultra 7 CPU, DDR5 memory, M.2 interfaces for SSDs alongside the original 2.5″ device, and USB-C with Thunderbolt support. There are a range of screen upgrade options. For an even more hefty price, you can buy a completely rebuilt laptop featuring the new board. We’re impressed with the work, but we have to wonder how it would stack up against a newer Thinkpad for the price.
If you’re curious to see more of the same, this isn’t the first such upgrade we’ve seen.
Thanks [Max] for the tip.
I just purchased @ T14 gen 1
The great X200 was a Core2 Duo based machine, but the not so great X201waswas already a 1St gen Core (Arrancare)
I recently acquired a P15 Gen 1. It came with some extras added. It’s a machine I never imagined I’d own. Or appreciate owning, for that matter. Just…amazing. I’m running Fedora 42 on it and it’s blazing. Plan on having it for some time. Nice to know rebuilding these is an option.
Has anyone tried putting a small raspberry pi into an older ThinkPad? I love the feel and keyboard of my very old ThinkPad and the power of a pi would be sufficient for what I use that machine for.
Something i learned during the pandemic shortage: A pi4 is about 1/2 as fast as a midline Lenovo from 2012.
While there’s a Pi 5 now, it’s not broadly competitive with a PC.
Damn auto correction… Arrandale! not Arrancare
I still love my X200, but it just got too slow, relatively speaking. It’s still in service and remains a backup, but my daily driver is now a X390: slightly larger, a little thinner, different ports, but great battery life. (aside: (Objectively the X390 is better than the X200 in all respects except the replaceable battery).
This motherboard swap looks like it would be great, but for the cost… The X390 is cheaper than the X200 motherboard upgrade offered here.
And the replaceable battery honestly isn’t an issue: Genuine X200 batteries are unobtainium, and afermarket ones are junk. The X390 battery is replaceable with a screwdriver in 2 minutes, so replacement is actually trivial. 3 years of abuse on mine and it still logs 102% of factory spec though, so I have not needed a replacement.
No, not better by all respect.
The X390 has still the idiotic 16/9 display that infected the IT world for a decade, thanks God in the last few years 16/10 (and 5/3) displays are coming back
Agreed the squarer displays are better for some things, but I would not call the 16:9 “idiotic”. It’s a fine aspect ratio for a small laptop: permits a full-size keyboard with a full-width display, while keeping the depth and overall volume of the device still reasonable.
(he says, typing away on a 3440×1440 ultrawide at the moment…)
Nothing wrong with 16:9, or the even wider ultrawide ratios – the real issue on smaller devices is the screen vertically has to be sufficient for your needs – so pick the right size screen really and you are golden. After that it can be very handy to have even a thin sliver of extra width from the wider ratio screens – you can put your messaging program, taskbar, media controls type stuff, and if you have more width still you can then have side by side windows of a decent width so your work and the reference you are using can both be on screen at once etc.
4:3 type very square displays really don’t do anything particularly wonderful in the small sizes, but they work fine, and all my portables but the steamdeck are still 4:3 (with the most used one being a core2duo). But especially as during the ‘infected’ era as you are calling it machines get larger and yet lighter as a rule so instead of a 10.1″ square display you get a machine that weighs the same or less while coming with a 15″ or so diagonal so effectively just free extra screen in the width…
Add an SSD, max the ram and install Linux (not with GNOME or btrfs) and these will outperform most chromebooks.
I upgraded from T61 (8GB DDR2 ram, 2 core) to a T420 (16GB DDR3, 4 core) to reduce power and its paid for itself over a year.
Yeah these old machine are still very capable, though outperform chromebooks for most users is probably not true – these days video media seems to be the most important things and these older chips don’t have the accelerators for the modern file formats, if they have the graphical potential to really handle video at all, where the chromebook will probably handle those videos. But otherwise…
Yep, exactly what I did to the X201 I’m still using (web and office on at my remote work site) and what I did as well to the X60s my wife is still using for the same purpose…
These machines offer a really attractive form factor and if treated decently are kind of immortal :D
Also both of these machines have the possibility for alternative MB that offer wonderful upgrade path, the price is just out of any economical sense. A pity !
T480s for me is my daily driver always..
If only Lemovo could fix their fans – have 2 X60 and 2 X200 and now 3 X1 carbons all second hand and do what is requured easily but the fans mostly work but are noisy and can stop and stutter
That’s odd. X40,x41,x200,x390, 2x X1 here, with cumulative 60+ years of operation. Not a single fan failure among them. Maybe environmental factors for your failures? One of our X1s collects a lot of lint because its user loves to leave it on the couch, pillows, etc., and I have to vacuum it out every year or two.
i feel like about 10 years ago the amount of processing power you can get in the cheapest ‘laptop CPU’ became sufficient for my purposes. i’m thinking of like a first generation ARM chromebook with samsung exynos ARM and 2GB of RAM. i still run exactly the same software on my laptop.
but i haven’t seen battery life and heat improve much. and since i don’t want any greater power, i think it’s not unreasonable for me to hope for continuing improvement in other specs. i think what i’m looking for is a genuine cellphone cpu in an SBC. not an ARM designed for laptops or for TVs, but an actual cellphone cpu where idle and lightly-loaded consumption was the overriding design consideration to the point where it doesn’t even get warm if you don’t run a videogame or browser.
that’s the kind of thing i dream of when i imagine replacing a laptop mainboard.