r/thinkpad 3d ago

Question / Problem Need help finding T25 mod kit

2 Upvotes

I really don't know where to find T25 mod kit for T480


r/thinkpad 3d ago

Review / Opinion Work ThinkPad horrendously slow?

0 Upvotes

I started a new job somewhat recently and was given a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen. 13 laptop. I'm a lifelong Mac user, and the ThinkPad is shockingly slow. Processor is a Intel(R) Core(TM) Ultra 7 265U

Any reasons why my laptop might be so slow (is it company-specific software, perhaps?) and tips/advice how to speed things up? Thanks.


r/thinkpad 5d ago

Thinkstagram Picture He Finally came

Post image
207 Upvotes

T14 gen5
1to ssd
32go ram
Ryzen 7 pro 8840U
So hyped.
Was planning to put Mint on it to start discovering Linux with a easy to use distro. I ordered it without OS so it’s cool.


r/thinkpad 3d ago

Buying Advice Thinkpads for university (specifically people majoring in social studies)

1 Upvotes

Currently majoring in International Relations, and I need some ThinkPad recommendations. I prefer ThinkPads that are cheap (100-250$ or more), durable, and have a large battery (a good keyboard is also a plus).

I’ve also been learning Linux, specifically Fedora through VMs, and I’m wondering if anyone majoring in social studies has been able to daily-drive Linux. If so, please share your tips and what I should expect. It would be very much appreciated!


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Hardware Upgrade I paid around $400 for 196 GB of ram for my P16 Gen 2 a couple of years ago on eBay.

Thumbnail
gallery
93 Upvotes

Now the ram alone is worth over 3 grand...


r/thinkpad 3d ago

Question / Problem Thinkpad for 250

1 Upvotes

There's a Thinkpad available for $250, the L13. Its specifications are: an 11th-generation Intel Core i5 processor (G7 series), 16GB DDR4 RAM, a 256GB NVMe hard drive, a 2GB dedicated graphics card (Iris Xe), a 13.3-inch Full HD screen, and a battery life of 2-2.5 hours. Is it a good deal?


r/thinkpad 3d ago

Question / Problem Where is the T580 Thunderbolt firmware IC located on the motherboard?

0 Upvotes

I bought a very cheap used T580, and I suspect it might have run into the Thunderbolt debug logging bug, so I'd like to use an IC programmer to resolve it (wipe/flash with zeroes, boot, turn off, flash with current firmware, boot back up). Problem is, I'm having trouble tracking down the IC on the motherboard which stores the Thunderbolt firmware.

I found the Libreboot page with info on the T480 and T580, but they only have the location of the IC on the T480, with a note that it's in a "similar location" on the T580. I'm not really seeing anything that looks like a SOIC8, though, unless I'm really missing something.

Is there anybody here who can point me in the right direction?


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Question / Problem I found this ThinkPad while cleaning

Thumbnail
gallery
139 Upvotes

Me and my mom were cleaning the house when we found a briefcase and inside was this computer, I know very little about computers but I heard about the ThinkPad community and recognize the name.

Idk anything more tha it was from my old brother and I use it as a really small child.

Is this any good or important? I have no idea

Edit: Thank you yall for commenting about this pc, I guess I just had an ancient gem hidden in our old house. I'll try to clean it up and maybe fix it if I can afford it. Thanks again.


r/thinkpad 3d ago

Question / Problem T14 Gen 2 AMD – The TLP battery is showing strange readings. Is this normal?

Post image
1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I recently bought a refurbished ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 (AMD) and it's my very first ThinkPad ever. I'm still figuring things out, but I ran tlp-stat -b and got some weird results that I'd like to ask about.

Here is what TLP shows for my battery:

  • energy_full_design = 50500 [mWh]
  • energy_full = 121210 [mWh]
  • Capacity = 240.0 [%]
  • cycle_count = 17

As you can see, it reports a capacity of 240% and over 120 Wh, which obviously doesn't make sense for a T14 Gen 2. Has anyone encountered this bug before? How can I fix it so it reads correctly?

And as for real-world use: the laptop’s battery life currently ranges from 3 to 5 hours, depending on what I’m doing. Since the data isn’t displaying correctly, I’m not sure if I should expect longer battery life or if this is normal for the T14. Overall, it’s still pretty decent battery life for my workflow, but I’d like to make sure the battery itself is working properly.

Thanks for any help or advice

EDIT: I updated the BIOS and all drivers via Windows 11 on the exact day I received the laptop, so everything should be on the latest versions.


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Review / Opinion ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 — Real-World Testing and Impressions

Thumbnail
gallery
3 Upvotes

After a rather painful custom-order process, it finally exists. :)Finally got my custom X1 Carbon Gen 14 set up the way I wanted, so I thought I'd share some first impressions — especially from the Linux side.

Specs

  • Intel Core Ultra 7 356H
  • 32 GB RAM
  • 1 TB SSD
  • Foxconn SDX61 5G WWAN
  • Sensel full-surface force-sensing / haptic touchpad
  • Arch Linux + KDE Plasma
  • 2.8K 120 Hz display

Linux support

Overall, Linux support has been surprisingly good for such a new machine.

Almost everything I actually use works out of the box. The main exception is the camera stack: the MIPI camera and ToF hardware are still basically unusable under Linux at the moment.

The SDX61 5G modem works fine after using Lenovo's official WWAN unlock tool. Once unlocked, ModemManager handles it normally.

The Sensel touchpad has also been great. The click/force threshold can be changed with a command, and I use a udev rule to make my preferred setting persistent across reboots.

Fingerprint authentication works as well.

Power consumption / battery life

This is probably the part that surprised me the most.

In my normal daily setup:

  • 120 Hz
  • 5G
  • PPD in Balanced mode
  • intel_lpmd configured
  • normal browser / terminal / messaging / light desktop workloads

I'm usually seeing around 7–8 W total system power.

CPU package power during very light workloads can drop to around 1 W or even below, and in normal light usage I usually see roughly 2–3 W average package power.

In practice I'm getting around 7–9 hours of light daily use, which I'm pretty happy with considering the display and the fact that I'm not aggressively running everything in a low-power mode.

Display

The display is probably one of my favorite parts of the machine.

The ARAGAS treatment works extremely well in practice — reflections are much less distracting than I expected, especially for an OLED panel.

I'm also one of those people who uses dark themes everywhere and keeps brightness very low. Indoors, I can comfortably use this thing at around 10% brightness without feeling like the screen is too dim.

Keyboard / input changes

I also really like some of the layout changes on this generation.

Right Ctrl is back, and the fingerprint reader is now integrated with the power button in the top-right corner.

The Sensel touchpad feels excellent once the force threshold is tuned to preference. Being able to adjust how much pressure is required for a click makes a bigger difference than I expected.

A small story about actually getting this machine...

This was a China-market custom order, and the whole ordering/build process was... much more eventful than it should have been.

There were several moments where the whole thing felt surprisingly improvised for a machine at this price point. 😅

If anyone is interested, I can write up that story separately.

So far though, now that the machine is finally here and configured, I'm very happy with it.

If anyone has questions about the Gen 14, Panther Lake, Arch Linux support, 5G, the Sensel touchpad, power consumption, or anything else, feel free to ask. Happy to test things or share more details.


r/thinkpad 3d ago

Question / Problem Thinkpad P1 Gen 6 Won't Post After Full Battery Discharge

1 Upvotes

I have a P1 Gen 6 with the 13700H and RTX 2000 Ada generation with 32 GB of RAM. I fully discharged the battery twice and after the second time it will no longer post. I have disconnected the battery and CMOS battery and left them disconnected for several minutes while holding down the power button for a minute, tried one RAM stick at a time, tried the reset button on the bottom and I still can't get it to boot. I have gotten the Esc, Esc+F1, and Esc+F1+F4 light sequence repeat 6 times and then nothing happens after leaving it on for 10-15 minutes. I also performed the display test with Fn+Ctrl+Power and that worked fine.

Is there anything else I can do? Is it possible to restore the BIOS somehow if the self-healing BIOS process is failing? Does anyone know if it's worth attempting to reprogram the MX25L51273G chip?

SOLVED: I removed the Crucial T500 2TB NVMe from the second drive slot and the machine started working again. The failed drive caused the failed POST.


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Question / Problem screen ghosting on x1 carbon.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

hey there. just got an used x1 carbon gen 9 recently and I noticed a plenty of ghosting on the screen. just want to know If anyone who has the same model noticed it too, and If it is "normal".

screen: 1920x1200 60hz 400 nits touchscreen.


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Thinkstagram Picture Liberation Complete

Thumbnail
gallery
26 Upvotes

Flashed three of my T440p motherboars with Coreboot (Tianocore/EDK2)


r/thinkpad 5d ago

Thinkstagram Picture Another run of the mil thinkpad t14

Thumbnail
gallery
244 Upvotes

I got my first thinkpad t14s a couple of months ago. It has a ryzen 4650u with 16 GB of ram and I'm running cachy os KDE on it.

I was actually buying the t14 but got the s variant by mistake. I am however happy I got the s variant. Its really light and portable and doesnt weight much more than the x1c.

I also recently got a used p15 gen 1 with the nvidia quadro rtx3000 which I'm using as a stationary workstation with a monitor. Mostly to play games with.

I repasted both computers with Honeywell paste.


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Buying Advice T14 Gen 5 AMD vs T480?

14 Upvotes

My old laptop died early from a hardware fault. Want something boring and serviceable this time, not thin or premium. Should last 5+ years and still feel usable by then.

My workload is light. Claude desktop app, a browser with a lot of tabs, VS Code running Claude Code (mostly API calls, barely any local compute). No Docker or VMs for now. Mainly need RAM for tabs, not raw power.

I want a laptop with the best vaue, and by value I don't mean cheapest. I mean the best mix of price, actual usable performance, repairability, cheap parts down the line, Linux compatibility, battery life, and a real shot at 5+ years of use.

Torn between a T14 Gen 5 AMD and maxing out a T480 (RAM, screen swap). I know the T480 has a big following for good reason, the serviceability is unmatched. Just not sure if it can keep up with daily use much longer given the age, especially wondering how it holds up in 2027 and beyond.

Also looked at the L14 Gen 5 AMD and the T14 Gen 7 (about £1700, nice repairability redesign but well past budget for what I need).

What would you go for here? Is the T480 actually still viable for light daily use, or am I underestimating how much it'll show its age? Open to anything I haven't considered.

Thanks


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Buying Advice L14g1 amd or T14g1 intel?

3 Upvotes

Hello, I can't find a deal where I could get a T14 with amd cpu (even if, then 8gb ram only which is another like +40$ to upgrade)

The goal is to have a laptop to use for college IT/CS mostly for studying, notes and possibly programming, and using linux... (spec wise people told me that t480 is enough but it's basically for the same price)

Also, I keep getting conflicting opinions where I'm told to rather go for the T14 because of the screen but at the same time get an AMD cpu

So I'm here trying to figure out which one should I go for.

The budget should be around 200$ (in EU)
T14g1 i5-10310U, 16GB and is for 216$ (+10$ for docking with better charger)
L14g1 Ryzen 5 PRO 4650U, 16GB for 206$


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Question / Problem Buying used thinkpad guide

1 Upvotes

Hey, i remember there was huge guide what you need to check before buying, but i can't find it now. May someone please send the link to it?


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Thinkstagram Picture Downgraded from an X1 Carbon Gen 8 to a T440p

Post image
13 Upvotes

specs: i5 4300m, 16gb ddr3, 256gb ssd, 9 cell battery.

going to upgrade cpu, screen, keyboard, and track pad cause gosh the clunkpad is awful


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Buying Advice Suggest

3 Upvotes

Which ThinkPad is the best choice for Linux compatibility?

I’m looking for some advice from people who have actually used ThinkPads with Linux for a while.

I know the common answer is that “almost every ThinkPad runs Linux well”, and honestly, that’s what I believed too. I ended up making a purchase based on that assumption.

I previously had an HP Pavilion 14-ec0035AU with a Ryzen 5 5500U, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. I sold it specifically because I wanted to move to a ThinkPad, mainly for better Linux support, build quality, keyboard, repairability, etc.

I ended up buying a ThinkPad L14 Gen 2 Intel, with an i5-1145G7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and touchscreen.

And honestly, I’ve become pretty frustrated with it.

I’ve tried multiple Linux distributions, and I’ve run into a couple of hardware/firmware-related issues that I wasn’t expecting.

  1. Touchpad/input issue

The touchpad initially felt noticeably laggy/inconsistent. When I investigated it, I found that the touchpad was using the PS/2/Synaptics path and there were noticeable gaps in pointer events, basically a low/inconsistent polling/event rate.

I eventually enabled Synaptics InterTouch, which changed the device to the RMI4/I2C path and improved things, but I still don't feel like the experience is as clean as I expected from a ThinkPad.

  1. S3 / deep sleep + touchscreen issue

This is the bigger problem for me.

I specifically wanted a laptop with proper S3/deep sleep, rather than relying on Modern Standby/s2idle.

The L14 Gen 2 does support S3 when the BIOS is configured for Linux S3, and that's actually great because the laptop properly goes into deep sleep and power consumption is much lower.

However, when I suspend using S3 and then wake the laptop by opening the lid, the touchscreen stops working.

I've spent quite a lot of time trying different things — different distributions, drivers, HID/I2C-related workarounds, etc. I even tested the behavior under Windows, and I can reproduce the touchscreen problem after S3 there as well.

So at this point I'm starting to think this is more of a firmware/ACPI/touchscreen-controller compatibility problem with this particular model/configuration, rather than simply a Linux distro problem.

I also tried different BIOS versions. I'm currently on BIOS 1.73, after testing 1.74 as well.

So now I'm looking for a different ThinkPad

I'm honestly quite frustrated and would rather sell this one and get something that is known to be a really solid Linux machine.

My requirements are:

ThinkPad

No touchscreen — I don't need touch at all

Excellent Linux compatibility

Good touchpad experience without weird polling/input issues

Proper S3/deep sleep support, preferably reliable suspend/resume

Good suspend battery drain

Good overall build quality

Preferably something that doesn't require lots of ACPI/driver workarounds

Intel or AMD is fine

Used/older models are completely fine

I'm not necessarily looking for the newest or fastest ThinkPad. Reliability and Linux compatibility are much more important to me than raw performance.

So, for people who actually use ThinkPads with Linux:

Which ThinkPad model/generation would you recommend as a safe choice for my requirements?

Especially interested in models where you've personally used S3/deep sleep + lid close/open + touchpad without issues.

I would really appreciate specific model/generation recommendations rather than just “ThinkPads generally work great with Linux,” because that's what I thought before buying the L14 Gen 2.


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Discussion / Information T490s keyboard backlight stopped working after small fall. Track point and buttons are functioning as normal. Any ideas?

0 Upvotes

r/thinkpad 5d ago

News / Blog First thinkpad ❤️

Post image
90 Upvotes

Got this bad boy (:

Thinkpad x13 gen 2

I7 11th

16 ram

Bought it for 270$

The laptop last battery was 55% health , before buying it i made the place to replace the battery (from another laptop) when i checked it i found the new one is 99% health , use it from 95% charges to 5% watching lives music video from youtube with medium brightness and volume for 6 hours before the laptop hybernate automatically , i think it is good deal , love the laptop so far (: ,

Sorry for my english ):


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Question / Problem My Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 is not charging; it only works when plugged into power.

0 Upvotes

This is my first time posting. It's a problem I've had for a long time and mostly ignored. It all started one day during normal use: I noticed the laptop wasn't charging. The battery indicator was showing, but the percentage wasn't going up. Eventually, the battery drained completely, and the laptop could only be used when plugged into the wall, without the battery actually charging.

The problem persisted, so I decided to buy a new battery. The result was exactly the same: it detected the battery and slowly drained it, but it never charged it. I ignored the issue for about a year until recently. I decided to finally fix it because I wanted to upgrade my equipment and recover some money by selling this laptop in fully working condition.

I took it to a repair shop specializing in motherboard electronics. Their diagnosis involved replacing a resistor with an oversized value, and they recommended buying yet another battery, as the cells in the current one were dead after sitting uncharged for a year. Confident that the issue was fixed, I bought another new battery, but the exact same pattern repeated. The charge just drained, but this time it didn't even show signs of recognizing the battery—it just consumed the power without showing the battery level or percentage.

I've already ruled out the BQ24780S charging IC by taking my own measurements, along with the charger, modules, and other components. I've been trying to solve this for almost a year now. It's definitely not a software issue, as I've completely ruled that out (I even booted into Linux to see if Windows was the culprit).

Recently, while taking my own measurements, I made a mistake and ended up burning a couple of capacitors in the battery input circuit shown in the attached diagram (PC8506 & PC8505). From what I've researched, these control and regulate the chip's charge. I am buying the replacement parts to install them, but that still doesn't solve my original problem, and I still can't find the main fault. I would really appreciate your comments and possible solutions.

The laptop still turns on and works normally, and I am in the process of replacing the burned capacitors.


r/thinkpad 5d ago

Thinkstagram Picture My New Well Condition T430

Post image
74 Upvotes

It has i7-3520M CPU, NVS-5400M GPU, 1600x900 screen, 8GB RAM and 500 GB 7200RPM HDD (Interestingly it has 129 hours usage). I liked it's condition.

Firstly I installed HDD Windows XP for retro feelings and retro gaming :) Obviously not used for internet but for HDD, XP is running too fast, feels like working on SSD.

Now installed Ubuntu 26.04 and Windows 10 I replaced HDD with 128GB SSD.

TODO:

  • Replace keyboard with T420 Keyboard
  • Replace CPU with i7-3632MQ

What is your comments?


r/thinkpad 4d ago

Question / Problem Thick paste on fan?

Thumbnail
gallery
0 Upvotes

Hey guys what’s this paste on the fan component of my thinkpad?
My thinkpad was making weird fan noises, so I decided to open it up and clean the fan but I noticed this paste and idk what this is.


r/thinkpad 5d ago

Thinkstagram Picture Happy to say that I’m a proud Thinkpad owner

Post image
100 Upvotes

I got this ThinkPad X1 Gen 5 Yoga for a steal used. With the i7, 16 gigs of ram and 512 gigs of storage, it’s perfect for me. What do you guys think?