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I won the ebay bidding war at 100€ +p&p for a Thinkpad p14s gen 1 with broken graphics and/or screen.

No ssd (but I have a 256GB spare) and 32GB ram and a hub.

After tinkering yesterday (sometimes it'd boot, all up to a linux on a usb stick before freezing, sometimes not at all) I let it be and continued today. Screen totally black, not a sign except the fan spinning for a second or two at power. No sign on the external screen. Nothing to do it seemed. So I opened it, removed the battery and ran on usb power. No change. Removed the 16GB (the other 16GB is soldered) and lo and behold, it's the ram socket!

So I'm a happy laptop user now 😁!

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[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 month ago

test the sodimm. could have been (and more likely to be) bad ram, not a bad slot.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

Did try with a 2666 8GB ok stick, same conundrum.

The interesting part is that according to the manual, the soldered ram is 3200 but runs at 2600 (or 2666 I don't remember). So maybe it has to be 3200 ram for some bizarre reason, and the 16GB one is faulty. Or the slot is bad.

[-] 87Six@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Now you sell that stick of ram and make back the whole price of the laptop lul

Have you tried cleaning the ram socket with a soft brush and 99% alcohol? Then let try before resocketing for a while of course

[-] papalonian@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Please test that stick before selling it to someone (or at least sell it cheap and say it's untested). It's much more likely the ram is bad than the slot.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

I wouldn't sell it untested of course ( sell it as such would only attract buyers that would resell it as good).

I did test with an ok 8GB 2666 stick (the manual says the soldered is 3200 but runs at 2666 ?!), I might investigate further one day...

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Awesome. I love it when a plan eventually comes together.

this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
77 points (98.7% liked)

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