submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by FireWire400@lemmy.world to c/thinkpad@lemmy.ml

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Some of you might remember the T540p I got for free from work a couple of years back - after its mainboard died I rebuilt my older personal T540p with the the remaining good components and a donor W541 I bought on eBay.

I'm quite pleased with the result. Its revised specs are: i7 4930MX, Quadro K2100M, 32GB DDR3L RAM, AUO B156HAN01.2, an HP Blu-Ray drive and an Intel AX210 WIFI card.

And a few stickers obviously.

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[-] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago

What a perfectly good thinkpad ruined by subpar software 😔 /j

(jk use whatever you want :3)

[-] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago

nice setup. how's the temperature on these machines? i guess you also have the dgpu enabled?

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The temps are not too bad, about 40-50 Celsius idle and 80-ish under load. I used Thermal Grizzly Duronaut paste that I had left over from a PC build I did for a mate.

I'm kinda disappointed by the K2100M to be honest, it's not that much better than my original T540p's GT730M IMO.

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 17 hours ago

Optimus or have you forced Nvidia only? The higher end the card (and higher res the screen) the worse the Optimus penalty will be. But yeah by modern standards neither are super powerful beasts.

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

I'm just using Optimus through the Geforce drivers I installed with NVcleanstall

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago

Are the Geforce drivers much better? I still have my W540 somewhere around here and I want to find a good use for it.

Last game I tried running on it was AOE 4 an it was pretty dire.

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

You get more recent security patches and game enhancements, but I'm not sure if it really makes that much of a difference.

I did something similar with the GT730M where I installed desktop Kepler drivers, that gave me two years of security patches extra but didn't really do a lot for performance

[-] eldavi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

how did you come to learn that a w541 would physically match your t540p?

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 17 hours ago

The T___P thinkpads were just W series but GeForce instead of Quadro. And why make two computer when 1 good enough? Lenovo does this all the time.

It’s even funnier now because the T16 machines are literally T14 boards with an extension cable for the ports. And the P16s is just a T16 but Quadro.

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I looked it up I guess

[-] eldavi@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

that's what i'm getting at; i've been wanting to do something similar, but i can't find any source to could help

[-] Micromot@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago

When I did my switch I just looked up which mobos were shipped with the same case that my current thinkpad had. There are some websites that have whole datasheets about this kind of stuff

[-] eldavi@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

that's what i was hoping you'd share; which website(s) did you use?

[-] Micromot@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

The Thinkwiki or Thinkpad wiki are helpful for every aspect of the laptop

Reddit was also pretty helpful as well

It helps to look for compatible cpus for the model because they are sometimes dependent on a specific Motherboard but that is just somtimes helpful

[-] Micromot@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I did that too with my thinkpad, which is now my mediaserver. The mobo switch was surprisingly easy but the fan didn't fit so I had to order a fitting one which was a bit confusing. Overall it was pretty cheap and not that difficult though

I also needed to get a different Charger for the higher wattage and I had to change the serial numbers in the bios so it was able to indentify the other components, this was only needed to remove a warning on every boot

[-] faizalr@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

So the motherboard fitted perfectly?

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Yes, it did. Even the heatsink.

[-] Micromot@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Were you able to use the same fan from the t540p motherboard on the W541 or did it come with a fan? Also where is the battery from? mine came with a 6 cell and not a 9 cell

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

The mainboard came from a complete system that was in not so good condition, but it came with the fitting heatsink. I bought the 9 cell battery as new old stock on ebay a year or so ago.

this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026

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