I've been rebuilding ThinkPads since 2000. I've rebuilt well over 1000 of them. The T400 is STILL one of the most useful machines out there, and they last forever. I had one for a "DD" for three years, then went to a T420, then a T440p, and my current "DD" is a W540. I still have my T400, and I still use it. My older daughter has my old T420/nVidia machine, and she loves it. My younger daughter has my old T430s/nVidia machine, and loves it. My Pastor has one of my old, T400 machines, and he uses it every day. I use my W540/K2100m/i7-4900 for everything. Haswell Quad Cores just ROCK. My only hold out is my wife... She LOVES her HP15 budget touchscreens, and I built her (from barebones, and NIB) an HP15/A8 Extreme Quad Core/R5, with 16gb/RAM. I can't get her away from the budget HP15. Well, in all fairness, she takes good care of them, and they do serve her well. Gotta be one in every crowd. :^)

@FranciscoSilva-pd9wf

2 жыл бұрын

Bom dia, amigo sou do Brasil. Como faço para entrar em contato com você? Pois, tenho interesse nesse tipo de notebook.

@sovo1212

2 жыл бұрын

These thinkpads are ideal for a modular laptop design.

Thinkpads are literally the Tardigrades of laptops. As long as you have parts, they'll keep on working.

@pawanyadav9854

4 жыл бұрын

@@samanthatang9759 you are being sarcastic, right?

@sneekz07

4 жыл бұрын

@@samanthatang9759 Are you stupid?

@damian9303

4 жыл бұрын

But there's one thing that sets them apart; even if the black comes off from the cheap shit they put on the ThinkPads, it doesn't look like complete ass.

@squirlmy

3 жыл бұрын

They're cut like tardigrades too.

@ravenpluim9050

3 жыл бұрын

Dell Latitudes at least the older ones are this way as well.

A lot of these older ThinkPads are great for basic stuff. They're all super sturdy, I love them. If you're up for an adventure, you can rebuild the battery pack...

@mwbgaming28

5 жыл бұрын

Or do what I did www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/bqirur/thinkpad_with_custom_made_super_battery_almost/

its always fun to fix these older laptops up and keep them from going to the land fill.

@Pablus96

3 жыл бұрын

I had one Acer Extensa 5620 with a dead ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400XT on a box for more than one year. Some months ago I bought a second hand gpu, a more powerful cpu and more ram and now the laptop is useful again 😃

Your videos are like a little gold nugget dropping into my Subscriptions Feed! Thank you for this.

I rescued a T400 and R400 from an eWaste bin. Ended up having to pay $3 but still worth it in the end. Did all the same things you did, except I used (and still use) Windows 7 on these machines. I used the T400 laptop more than my $1000 daily driver for almost 3 years. I recently replaced it with a used T400s since it looks a lot more modern and costs practically nothing.

great video. found a t400 at a goodwill computer center for $11 today, super hyped to fix it up

I just subscribed because I love these thorough and detailed upgrade guides on Lenovo laptops. Awesome video.

Your Thinkpad videos inspire me to join the Thinkpad family. Starting from T430s in late 2018 (Maxed out with 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD) then upgraded to T470 (Will max out to 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD with existing 256GB M.2). T480 is too expensive (over $2000, new) whereas I got a T470 for $700 with 2 year warranty.

@SebisRandomTech

5 жыл бұрын

Crimson If you look around for good deals on eBay or check the Lenovo outlets you might be able to snag a T480 for fairly cheap. I’ve seen them going for as little as $500.

This looks like the perfect project for my CCNP Lab I'm setting up. Great video!

Semi-retiring my Acer laptop (which actually has a newer CPU) for a used T430. Can't wait to get into the Thinkpad master race.

I'm digging these step-by-step videos Braxton! This is my favorite channel on KZread! PLEASE make a full-fledged step-by-step windows web-server video, running Windows 10, with dynamic-IP and WordPress on WAMP stack! That would be a great complement and use case for these ThinkPad upgrades!

Recently got an X200t in near new condition for around $30 and threw a 240GB SSD into it. Man is it amazing. Great video as always!

@techgeek2994

3 жыл бұрын

where

@KingASE88

3 жыл бұрын

TechGeek eBay

@techgeek2994

3 жыл бұрын

@@KingASE88 i am looking now there is nothing under 90 usd

@KingASE88

3 жыл бұрын

TechGeek pricing changes. Keep an eye out and maybe you’ll find one some day

@comicsans1689

3 жыл бұрын

@@KingASE88 Yea, you can find some great Thinkpad listings on Ebay. I managed to snag an X201t for $100 and a W520 for $225. If I bought Thinkpads listed for parts, I could get them cheaper and possibly have to do very little to fix them up.

After seeing your dock setup, I Got a t430 with a dock and monitor and peripherals. Its so powerful and so space efficient for my tiny room. I love it more than any surface pro or Asus laptop I have owned.

@mwbgaming28

5 жыл бұрын

I have a T420S that I have completely maxed out, so I decided to add a giant battery (since il probably never need to open it again) so i can brag about having more battery life than anything on the market www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/bqirur/thinkpad_with_custom_made_super_battery_almost/ The gen 2 battery (only gen 1 is in the reddit post) is 297wh, covers the entire bottom of the machine and I can get a full days use out of it (including games) full day as in morning to bedtime (and most of the time il still have charge remaining)

Thanks for the tips and suggestions! I'm currently upgrading a T400 which I pulled out of an e-waste bin. So far, it's got an SSD and 8 GB of RAM and it's feeling great. It's a joy to work on and use. The one glaring exception is the Esc key being on its own row, which has me constantly opening the help file when using Vim.

Nice to see a new vid, especially about the Thinkpad T400 series! I just recently 'downgraded' a non-powering up, red blinking light T420 to a T410. Swapped batteries, snagged the lone 4GB stick (the T420 has 4GB sautered on, and the T410 2GB) and just got the HDD door off of eBay. A little sluiggish on Win 10, and I'm assuming very limited on Steam games. Viva la CheapPad!

Thank you for doing this video, It answered some questions I had. Just picked up a x230t and am going to change the hard drive to a 500gb ssd and add some ram.

Thanks for this video! Thanks to you, I have ordered myself a T420 and am looking forward to messing around with it!

I had a T400 with the ATI Radeon graphics and this thing was a beast, though it ran a little hot, but that's to be expected. I sold it, together with my X61s, and got a X200 instead of those two. Even without upgrades it's snappy enough (runs dual channel 4 gigs and a HDD), and the keyboard is out of this world. I still want to do the upgrades and get a new battery, since it's a bulletproof machine.

I absolutely adore older Thinkpads. Their modularity and upgradability are what make them so unique. I've got a T60 with an upgraded 2.0GHz C2D T7200, 240GB SSD, and 2GBs of RAM running Manjaro XFCE. It's fantastic for most basic tasks. Even 720P KZread playback is possible on Chromium with hardware acceleration and H264ify limiting videos to 30FPS. Unfortunately I have one of those 3rd party batteries and only get about an hour's worth of battery life. That aside though, the keyboard is fantastic, and after getting used to the trackpoint a touchpad feels almost alien.

I'm still using t400 thinkpad and it gets the job done. Thx for this upgrade vids 👍

@anishemmanuel5916

4 жыл бұрын

Can you ran video editing software and what about gaming?

@chezcake8607

4 жыл бұрын

Anish Emmanuel these things are for business if you want gaming you could build a pc for cheap

That is actually much snappier than I was expecting to see!

The t400 Is an amazing laptop for any student attending college that needs something cheap and reliable.

It is so cool people do vids like this. I had to subscribe!

I got my uncle an old ThinkPad that was due to be sent for recycling, can't remember the exact model but it was quite old and had a Pentium processor. I put more RAM in, SSD and a fresh battery(refurbed) and it runs linux now and he's quite happy with it. He just checks his bank, daily browsing/buying and maybe some solitaire if he's bored but it's all he needs and it's great.

PSA: You don't have to buy a drive caddy cover; you can just use the one from the original drive.

@milesrout

Жыл бұрын

As he said, the laptop was missing the drive bay cover when he got it.

I remember when I really wanted T400 when it came out. But I can tell it had quite a bit different price tag back then than $34...

Got pretty much the same upgrades in my old T400. Just upgraded it to Linux Mint 19.2 today, great spare machine. Make sure the you get the "thin" ultra bay caddy...first one I got was slightly too thick. 👍

actually i got this same model with 4GB ram and 120 GB hdd , it is a great laptop build like a tank ,i will surely upgrade it in a near future .

Great video. Great example of reusing perfectly good computer hardware.

Jeez it has been a long time since the last time you uploaded !

@AAComputersandTechnology

5 жыл бұрын

I know, it's been very hard to find time to push videos out lately. Don't worry though, i'll keep them coming! It might just take longer than usual.

I have this laptop and trust me this is the most durable laptop ever created. I lost it one day and then found it after 11 years in my drawer and it was working perfectly. For 34$ this is a really good deal

its amazing how easy it is to upgrade these machines.

You've got to put the libreboot bios on that thing, it's a great project and vid that tons of people would want to see and follow along with. Only 14 and put libreboot on two of my supported ThinkPad, t400 and t500. You should definitely do it.

Awesome video just subscribed! I love my old T410 that I run Manjaro KDE on.

Just got a 14" Dell Latitude E6410, 2.67GHz Intel Core i5-560M, 240GB SSD, 8GB RAM for $4O bucks on eBay shipping included, the guy didn't know how to install windows 10 drivers for the graphics card and sold it as is for parts. I upgraded the bios and looked up the driver on intel and am up and running right now as I type this comment! His loss my gain;)

I enjoy the unique design features of the T400. I think that the removable battery is designed like this (away from the main body) so that it is not overheated by the heat produced by the processor, and the way the fan sucks the air is from the back to the side and the hot air is pushed from the side to the left! This helps not to think about whether air is coming from below if it is on your feet or on a non-flat surface. Also another advantage is that the fan is very quiet! in its cooling system there is so much copper (3 pipes run to the heat sinks, apart from the thick copper plates!) which makes it almost passively cooled! I wish the new designs came out like this again!

laptop is so clean than i thought.

Excellent video as always!

You're a bad influence on me. Your videos make me want to update, improve, and fix things. 8)

I did similar upgrades to my T430 and it worked just amazing! The only pity was the heat sink, as I was about to get a >=45w CPU if there was a fan that can keep the temperature under control...

Watching on my T430, good vid!

I cannot wait to build it!

T430 Screen upgrade to IPS 1080 it´s will be a brutal new episode!

Nice video, I'm a Thinkpad fanboy. The CD drive caddy comes in handy, I've used it to clone the installed drive to an SSD and install a 2TB second drive to use a T420 as a poor mans server.

I actually just bought a 2120, do t regret a thing

The older UltraBay HDD trays used to have a holder that would simply snap in place to hold the HDD. Made it do you could readily switch drives in & out. And I wouldn't break the DVD drive, the purpose of the ultrabay is to let you swap between drive types, and you may still want the DVD capability.

Come to think of it, that some of these old laptops they do have amazing display.

i got one of this thinkpad t400 and now i will upgrade it with more ram and an extra ssd , this is a great computer , i use it with zorin os

The older xx00 series are still packing a punch for productivity stuff. Guess I’m about to buy the X200 again

@Fishgod1216

5 жыл бұрын

Web browsing has shown age the most on those machines, however. I feel it to a minor extent on my W510.

Love to see a quick productivity benchmark. Chrome as well since thier is a ram limitations. Otherwise loved the vid

thank you so much, helped me out a lot please Keep It UP!

Lol I had the same exact issue with that hdd faceplate. I ended up cutting out a small piece from the plastic there, so now it fits perfectly.

Thank you, just got a 680 RMB (about 100usd) T430, with i5 3320m , 64g ssd, 6g ram, 500g hdd , 1600*900 screen, 90w power adpter. WORKS LIKE CHARM . Think i'll sell my acer swift3 that i got last year

Guides like this are all over KZread. I think it's more interesting to do a guide how to max upgrade those old machines and how they perform in comparaison to today's ones. 8Gb of RAM is limit, 16Gb or 32Gb gives you even more horse power. Some of the T models has also mSATA internal slots and you can have 3 drives in total (standard HDD Bay + the optical drive bay + internal mSATA). The CPU upgrade cannot be ignored because gives the maximum upgrade power. And the last one is the display replacement with Led one at a higher resolution. You add all the prices and see if it worth in comparison to today's models. Thst would be really helpful.

Great video. Got a free T400. Ordered a replacement screen, sata Barracuda 500gig HD, also HD caddy with screws, new CMOS battery. Original dock and power supply and 8 gigs of memory for around $70.00 bucks. It will rock with Libretto MX23.2

@oussama4629

20 күн бұрын

why libretto ?

Wow! The "questions, comments, concerns" at the end gave me STRONG Nuke A-school vibes! Lol!

Thanks for this video, really help me alot! ;)

Great machines. First time Lenovo got it right. Much snappier with 2x4GB DDR3 PC 12800 Hynix for 8GB. It seems the chipset upclocks it to 10600 from stock 8500. Doesn't work with all 4gb modules, but many do.

Great video, but a bit of constructive criticism: When you were demonstrating that the HDD was locked in place, you shook it pretty darn hard. Hard drives are vulnerable to damage from excessive jostling or vibration, so that may have had to do with why it stopped working later on.

You can get those hard drive caddy/cover bundles on amazon for about $8 and if you have prime thy can ship in 2 days. Just got one for a x220t iv been fixing

Can you do a T410 with “before and after benchmarks”? Upgrade the T410 to a Core i7, have an SSD, and then a 1TB drive in the optical bay? That’s a dream setup right there.

Thanks. I think it best pc in you hands

Yeah I spent $70 for a Lenovo battery for my Thinkpad T420 when I got it so yeah it was expensive to replace it. The one in the 420 was one of the recalled ones so yeah it had to be replaced

Ah sata II, core2's were a bit toasty but for 34 bucks one can't complain. The slim models, much more of a pain to work on.

Glad to see that you are releasing videos again! Any chance you might try upgrades on an HP Elitebook? I find that they are comparable to Thinkpads in terms of upgrade ability and availability.

@surrealmemes3518

5 жыл бұрын

Also some Elitebook models have MXM slots. And they are cheap. I upgraded the Quadro in my elitebook 8540p

@SebisRandomTech

5 жыл бұрын

I picked up a ProBook 640 G1 along with a ThinkPad T450, the ProBook is more equivalent to a T440p in terms of specs and upgrades. Decent performance and good serviceability, but the keyboard is junk and overall the ThinkPads are still better machines. I’ve seen a few decent EliteBooks though.

Dude you should run a benchmark on these systems after you upgrade them. I use Passmark. I would love to be able to add your results to my benchmark list.

Excellent video! How’s KZread video playback on this laptop? Can you watch videos in 720p?

Cool I’m early I can say something hmmmm Keep doing the good work you do it’s very good

@AAComputersandTechnology

5 жыл бұрын

thanks!

@gertraba4484

5 жыл бұрын

@@AAComputersandTechnology did this come with the power supply does it have bluetooth ??? Great vid

Waiting for a T420 guide :)

I plan on doing the same thing soon, though I’ll be using an X220

CPU Upgrades for the T400/500 Series (or LS series as well) are actually pretty easy and really useful. A Core2Duo T9600 is currently the best CPU from a Price/Performance point since you can get those on ebay or aliexpress for around $10-15. On the contrary the highest Core2Duo, the T9900, is around $45 currently but it sure as hell hasn't 300% of the Performance of a T9600. I actually put the CPU in multiple LS510 and T500 so far and never had any problems. It's mostly just plug and play. Would recommend a CPU upgrade for these machines anytime.

@SebisRandomTech

5 жыл бұрын

Scitch87 I would love to modify a T400 to support the Core 2 Extreme X9000 just for kicks.

@jenda386

5 жыл бұрын

That's exactly the CPU I put in my R400 a few years ago. I've had it now for over 10 years and it still works rather well. The only problem is that the drivers for Windows 10 are not particularly good, e.g. the integrated GPU does not support hardware acceleration of 3D graphics. So I will probably relegate this laptop to a Linux server and buy a T480 or a T480s.

The cheapest possible third party Lenovo replacement parts usually have problems. A "genuine copy" hard drive sled just uses a black plastic cam, no screwdriver needed. These kind of hints tell you to expect problems.

I have a T-400 with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. It is a great workhorse with Arch Linux on it. I added a new battery, memory, a new charge cord and hard drive. Right now I am having issues with the AC plug. It seems loose but I cant figure out where.

For the ODD bay: Can you pop the panel off the old disk drive, and put it on the new tray?

Got rid of my thinkpads long ago,I wonder if I can upgrade this "Trash" 80,a relic of the past!

You don't need a dedicated ultra-bay caddy for it to look nice, you can use the front panel and any other non-standard part from existing ultra-bay optical drive :).

great tutorial thankyou

Hi, your videos are excelents and plenty of very useful information. I have a very simple question: My R400 usb ports are not functioning. ¿do you know if the integrated circuit that rules them are welded to the mother or is it an exctractable card? thank´s.

I really want to see how to swap a laptops CPU and what other laptops can we do this too .. thought this was just for desktop

Dude, i have the same machine, except that mine didnt came with the fingerprint reader. I believe this is from 2009 and i bought it used in 2010. My battery doesnt work anymore. I upgraded the main drive to OCZ SSD in 2011 and bought the DVD adapter to put my mechanical drive in it. My adapter works fine although it is different than yours. I've been rockin 8GBytes of RAM since the beginning (2x4GB). Recently, I bought an Intel SSD 128 GB for the main drive and upgrade the mechanical hard drive to Kingston 480GB SSD. Do note that this is a SATA II device. Windows 10 Pro x64 runs fine, Office 365, Adobe Acrobat CC too. However, this device cannot play 4K videos. This device now perfect for me to use for lectures, running powerpoint, word, etc. This is in 2020, after more than 10 years. Of course this is no longer my main device but look forward for another Thinkpad in future.

@wangmat9219

4 жыл бұрын

... and I also had a Dell XPS bought in 2009 with identical processor. And that Dell had poor mechanical design although beautiful. My point is, this T400 is sturdy and someone said to me it was design to withstand airbag deployment in a car. That Dell wont even survived daily use. Hope Thinkpad still have the same quality today.

I got a t400 from a goodwill in NC for $5. Double PCMCIA model with 2.4 GHz CPU. It had a pretty beat up screen so I got a new one off a guy on ebay for $35. Battery, Ram, Hard Drive caddy/cover, and SSD ran me around $100. Took it apart to libreboot it, had a nest of bedbugs inside. Was it worth it? definately.

Perhaps, while you have the computer open, you could replace the CMOS battery as well? The T400 is soon to be 10 years old?

O wish I never sold my t400. God I loved that laptop so much

Good stuff!

I have one with windows 10 and 150GB hard drive 3GB RAM Core 2 Duo it runs quite well just my battery needs replaceing.

Seems like a nice unit, especiallywith the capacity to upgrade CPU. I just can't bear taking a keyboard off - never have, prob never will...

Hey man! Big fan of your Thinkpad videos. Question for you. Trying to get my T520 to output 4k at 60 Hz for a cheap 4k monitor I just bought. I understand with this T520s onboard Intel Graphics 3000 GPU I'm limited to a maximum supported resolution of 2560x1600 at 60 Hz through DisplayPort. If I bought one of those 250310U docking stations with the built in graphics cards, could I get the full 4k resolution I'm looking for? Thanks if you or anyone else knows!

Amaaaazing

Another great video, I recently did a Dell Precision M6500 i7 machine for myself for a little project. Will you be doing anymore videos on the Crown Victoria?

@AAComputersandTechnology

5 жыл бұрын

Yes I will, I have a bunch of clips on hold for the next crown vic video. I just have not had the time to finish it.

Great video. Do you know what's the maximum capacity for the SSD drive I can put on? 500GB or 1000GB?

Its just like the Dell Presicion m4300 laptop that I have. Seems like it was released in June 28th, 2007, however on mine, I have in a 160 gb intel SSD with 4 gb ddr2 ram and its cpu is a 2.5 ghz Core 2 Duo and I have it running the 2019 version of Windows 10 pro 64 bit and it runs fine at least for browsing the internet, watching KZread videos in 720p, checking e-mail, facebook, ebay, and other online shopping, doing office work, and also even some light gaming like playing candy crush, solitaire, slots, and other casual games as well as some old 3d games like the original Deus Ex.

Can you make a used PC from prebuilts that you purchased from a liquidation website, u can get current gen prebuilt for 100 or less if u buy 10 or more untested. Sometimes even a pallet for a few hundred dollars

The most important advantage of this machine is : it defends against full disk encryption virus/trojan, because it does not have aes-ni feature.

@pnnytx

2 жыл бұрын

and intel management engine isn't exists on older machines

Great video and thank you. Quick question. I have the same cpu as you which does not seem to offer a 64 bit option for the OS. All of the windows versions I see at 32 bit cap the ram at 4G. My computer sees the 8G but is only using 4G. How did I get it to work ? Did I miss a step ?

Hi, I have same machine, I am curious, what about temperature overheating problems..? I have constantly problem with that, already gave new thermal paste, cleaned heatsink, drilled hole under fan, and thinking about to drill more holes in bottom cover to reduce heat. Sometimes, specially when summer time is, and quite heat in the air, this is really annoying.. Cooling pad does also job, but looks that its not enough. I have bought also external ultrabay battery, to there is an option. Also faster wifi card, and docking station with support PCMCIA X16.. take care..

so i have a spare mini pcie slot in my laptop(latitude e5500) and i was wondering if there is other things i can put it in there other than wifi, bluetooth, ssd and 4g card i'm curios probably gonna puta usb 3.0 card in the express slot thing

That is amazing ! Great job there. I have T430 and I'm so happy with it. And about the caddy cover, can't you just cut off this little piece with tiny wire handsaw ? Because using some high speed cutter could melt the plastic. Cheers !

I like the upgrades you made to that ThinkPad and the computer is in nice condition, but I am surprised that it is able to run Windows 10 though. I have a Dell Inspiron and a ThinkPad which I got used and they both came with Windows 10 on them and I personally don't like it and put other OS' on them. The Thinkpad has ArcaOS 5 on it since it will take advantage of the resources of that latop and is running just fine where it struggled under Windows 10. On the Dell the computer just locked up after the setup was complete.

Can you do the dell inspiron b130. I know it's antiquated but I would love to see an ssd and the crome os or windows 10 as a guide to see If I could revive my old system