The T430 has been my daily driver for about 7 years now. I bought it new from Lenovo's website with the i7 3540m, and immediately upgraded to 16GB RAM and a 250GB SSD (later upgraded to a larger SSD when prices came down.) I got the SATA drive bay you showed and stuck the factory standard 360GB HDD in it as backup / movie storage. I agree that this is a great laptop. It's been virtually trouble free for the entire time I've had it. It's suffered through drops and less than careful handling with barely a scratch, and was well worth the hefty price tag when new. Since these were so ubiquitous, I fully suspect I'll be able to milk another 5 useful years out of this thing with parts available for any minimal repairs that are needed. Here are some things I'd like to add, for people considering this laptop: - You have to come to terms with the screen. It's disappointing, considering the overall build quality of the machine. There are very few drop in upgrade options, and they're getting too expensive to be viable. - When you take the keyboard out, be very --- very --- careful with the ribbon cable. It's super fragile. I was able to get a replacement under warranty, but that's no longer an option. - The keyboard came in two flavors: with and without backlight. I've had the pleasure of using both, and while both feel good, the non-backlit option is much more clicky and responsive. If you can make due without a backlight, I'd seek out this option. This model still has the thinklight, which you can use to see the keyboard in the dark either way. - Don't forget that you can dock these as well! Docking this computer allows you to run up to four displays at once (including the built in screen) though you might want to seek out improved heat sinking options if you plan on making this a habit. Make sure you have the higher wattage adapter plugged into your docking station -- the one that comes with the computer won't cut it (this is the same as the W530 adapter.) - The DVD/SATA drive bay also had a battery made for it, allowing you to hot swap the main battery without being plugged in! I've never used this functionality, but it could be useful if you're on a transcontinental flight or something.
I have a T430 that's been at my side for about 2 years before I finally got myself a new laptop. It's liquid metal cooled, has the extended batter, has a secondary 1TB drive and primary 128gb SSD and runs like a dream. I still use it now and then with me on trips where I don't want to damage my newer, much more expensive laptop. I love the thing to death.
It’s almost 2022 and I bought a t430. Seriously this thing is awesome and brings out my inner geek to the max. And the budget of incrementing upgrades is so well put. Taking it apart and tinkering is so addictive. There’s a special charm to these old computers I can’t completely explain.
Hey I agree all of these are brilliant but why nobody's talking about GPUs? like if you can upgrade the laptop to that level, can you add some solid GPU to run engineering apps?
I remember when i had a T430 and i loved it so much. The design was great and it was very rugged too. Also that keyboard was a dream to type on. The fact that you can upgrade it is a huge bonus and it's something that you don't see these days on a laptop. Such a great laptop!
The best notebook ever. I have bought an used one for 200 bucks online, then upgrade with a ssd and 16gb of ram an now this machine os flying! Runs like a new computer. Lenovo make these thinkpad series in a way that you can totally dismount and change parts separately. Marvelous!
I've been running a T430 (i7-3520M, 16GB DDR3, 1TB SSD, X1 Carbon LCD mod, 9 cell battery, Ubuntu 16.04) for almost 6 years, and have found it to be the best all-around laptop I've ever owned. I might be one of the few longtime Thinkpad fans who prefer the new (at the time of the T430) chicklet keyboard. The original 1600x900 LCD was atrocious regarding color and contrast as were most laptop displays from that era, and as I do a lot of late night reading in dark rooms, the X1 Carbon display swap added immense value for me. With a fresh 9 cell battery, it can get 8 hours under moderate to low load. It is also extremely durable, relatively speaking, showing only scratches and finish wear and tear after all this time. My only reasons for upgrading in the near future (likely to the X1 Extreme), are a physically larger display, not needing a heat shield for my leg when the laptop is under heavy load, and weight. Better wifi performance, NVMe storage, and a trackpad which supports advanced multi-touch gestures will be a nice bonus. I'd highly recommend this laptop to anyone who might be in the market for such a device.
he said that he doesnt need the T430 heatshield which is... for protecting your legs from the heat? Because I have the T430 and if you get it heated up, I'd say my legs aren't protected :D
Yeah, typing this on a T430. I also bought it in 2018. Used it as my main computer for work for 1.5 years but as I had most of my software licenses to OS X I had to switch to mac as my work computer in 2019. Still use T430. A great computer.
I absolutely love the ThinkPad series❤. I have owned many ThinkPads (T61, T420, T450, X220i, W510, X250, X230i). This is the only laptop series I could rely on, never had let me down. Now I have bought T430s. I want to say that I personally think your channel is so much underrated. You deserve so much more subscribers and views. I watch your movies since December of 2019 and they are always full of information and they are fun to watch. Greetings from Poland 🇵🇱😄
Thank you so much for your kind words and being a fan through the years. It's people like you that make it fun. As a ThinkPad fan I hope you've enjoyed the interviews as well.
The ones with a discrete GPU are time bombs because the heatsink is not enough to cool the area enough. This then causes the hinge metal to break, turning it into a poor desktop replacement. Then the heat makes the chips themselves questionable.
I have one for work, it is two years past its service life (four years) but it has never let me down. Not replacing it for some plastic HP machine that has basically the same specs. The IT department understand.
Love mine. Travels well in a checked bag and still works fast Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Excel. - i7 3612QM -16 GB RAM - 500 GB SSD Favorite part is the keyboard light! I'll be sad when it becomes obsolete.
if it's speced out the way that it's listed above then you should get good performance so long as the project isn't super complex or is using incredibly high resolution video.
I went with a T420 last year, upgraded to an Ssd, plus an msata ssd, and A 3rd ssd in place of optical drive with an ultrabay caddy. Never have had a single issue. Awesome video!
Medeiros I've seen expresscard usb 3.0 cards (2 ports) but I've not tried that yet. As for the screen I don't disagree but mine is okay for my usage. Cheers.
@@LaptopRetrospective Runs like a champ. All my school work, music production, small gaming, with only BIOS settings changed to go from a balanced power/battery to full power of course being plugged in. Shes loud to be honest. Overall very good
Just bought two T430s Thinkpads for $100 each! i5-3320M, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD. Using one of them now as my daily driver, replacing the Macbook Air 13 from 2013, I bought new. I plan to upgrade the chip & RAM in the next month & put a SSD in the optical drive bay. Came with Windows 10 but on my daily driver, I replaced it with a distro of Linux. It's an amazing machine!
wow nice, where did you get them? I just saw them as refurbished laps on a dutch site, for 300euros. Kinda way to much i guess. Its the t430s i5, 8gb and 180 ssd.
On one right now, bought it in 2017 for about $150 refurbished, to have something to use while travelling when I'm not at my desktop. It's a very nice laptop IMO.
I am still using a T530 as a main computer. This thing never gets old. I cloned the HDD to 1Tb SSD, and use the old HDD in the DVD Bay for storage. 16gb RAM. It is as fast as new machines. With I7. Screen is HD+ with an awesome resolution and format, not glossy. Replaced the keyboard as the fire ants chew the original... Sticky and yummy. I still don't feel the need for a new one.
+Laptop Retrospective yes. Red, tiny but painful ants. I use the laptop deep in the jungle, in very humid environment. In a certain moment I realized that some keys were not responding anymore. I took it out, checked it, cleaned it. It was full of crumbs, sticky, dusty. Only then I realized those ants really liked to chew on the silicone taps under the keys, and eat the contacts. After a week, they did the same to my wife's ThinkPad. I had to smoke the ants out of the house and replace both keyboards.
@@jefferymillerjr8572 Since the laptops tend to come with smaller SSD's, you can easily upgrade to a bigger drive using Acronis or another migration tool.
Just sold my T420 ThinkPad. Had it for 4 years and installed an SSD. It never let me down, was fast and did what I wanted it to do. Was using 8.1 Windows. Love Lenovo
My friend inspired me to get a T430 and I love it, though it's not as durable as I expected it to be. Hinges and bowed lids seem to be a high failure point for these machines I've noticed and mine came with the lid ruined, ruining the hinges shortly afterwards and broke a few tabs on the bezel. My ultrabay got destroyed by the laptop's weight, the laptop was sitting in my bag at an angle and the weight of the laptop pushing down on the ultrabay managed to break the locking tap piece. On the flip side, the machine performs well and after a thermal paste change it stays damn cool and quitet at idle and even under small loads. Keyboard feels great too despite what most ThinkPad enthusiasts say. Absolutely love the servicebility and the price. Lovely machines.
I also had my Thinkpad T430 from 2022, still has it, it's a beast and with every optimization i did, it came out SOO GOOD! Sadly, it died on 11th july 2024 because it wasnt starting like i press the power button but it's fan spins to the max for one second and then it shuts off with no signs of display or life, i targeted my RAM because I have 8gb (2 stick 4gb each) of ram and one stick may have died BUT the processor wont even clock it too! So i went to a repair shop and the repair guy replaced my i5 3320M with i7 so it started good! But as i am a gamer especially Minecraft, so the money i can spend on it, i can just get a w540 with even a nvidia card! So yeah i loved my beastpad but salute to it. I'll sell it to the market for good price then add some more money to get the W540.
Bought mine 3 years ago for £349 U.K. used. It's still running just fine with original 8GB RAM and 240GB SSD. The built-in display is not up to much but I do all my Photoshop editing and watch huge amounts of RUclips - all on a 24-inch Dell Ultrasharp permanently connected to the Mini Display Port. The USB 3 ports are great for USB3 Western Digital MyPassport external drives. Who needs expensive Macs?
Laptop Retrospective - You sound like a chap who knows his stuff. I'll coming back to you for reccommendations when I want to get my next Laptop. This one is good for now. My brother upgraded his Dell to a T450S with more RAM and the top of the range touch screen after seeing how reliable my T430 has been.
I have a T430 since late 2016. I upgraded to an i7-3540M and 16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM. I honestly really recommend it to pretty much anyone. Reliable, (in my opinion) nice, and can be really snappy.
Laptop Retrospective Sadly, I have just a 6 cell battery. But it's till pretty much new, so it does the job just fine. While I edit documents, and browse the web, I get around ~4 hours of battery life.
Dan Brown Well... It's not an easy questin... A 3610QM is way faster than my 3540M, BUT the TDP of that quad core is 45W. All of the "official" CPUs, wich were installed in this motherboard are not using more than 35 watts of power. Using a more power-hungry CPU is problematic, because it's generating more heat (and the heatsink is only designed to handle 35W CPUs), and also the circuitry on the board isn't designed to andle this much power. I've heard about several T430s that they are able to run stable with a quad core CPU, but I personally do not recommend it.
I topped up my T430 with 16 GB of ram, Msata SSD, an i7 3720QM (didn't need so much horse power more than threads) and this machine is still a beast that can pull off quite a load of work. I couldn't find a better heatsink, but decided to use better thermal paste, and lower the CPU performance in power management to avoid turboboost (gets near the 100°c quite often that way). I can produce on protools and with a lot of stuff going on, from plugins to virtual instruments, a firewire interface with an xpresscard expansion. This machine is a dream. The only disadvantage, is that doesn't come with thunderbolt, no even the first generation. If an expresscard adaptor coud give us that, it would be amazing and make this laptop even more futureproof.
You might be surprised to know that the Express card slot on the t430 has a whopping two pcie data lanes! I used a GTX 780 with mine for a while and it worked great, only lost about 15% performance compared to stock 780's thanks to Nvidias amazing pcie compression on laptops
my love with t430 is not going to end , according to my company policy my laptop has been expired a long time back and they are giving t480 these days to new comers. I.T has sent me many reminders to replace it but still i want this and not responding to them. In 5 years i have replaced batteries 3 times and screen one time. :P
The T430 is still my daily driver I'm actually getting ready to replace the palm rest. I have a new Latitude laptop and I still find myself using my ThinkPad.
I like my T430. It's running less demanding stuff and I can sit at it for hours. The keyboard (like in this video with back light) was what made me buy it and I enjoy the whole thing with a few upgrades last year.
I love Thinkpads. Wife has T500. We upgraded memory from 8 to 16gb and installed a 500gb SSD. It is running Linux Mint and is very fast. My Thinkpad is a W520, 32gb, 500gb SSD w/Mint, I put a 2tb HDD in the DVD bay, and use it for video editing. It is my 5th Thinkpad ... a bit bulky but just run flawlessly. So sturdy you can leave them to your grandchildren.
I've got an X250 that I love to death, and an X61T sitting around while I fight to make it think it's a Chromebook. If my job ever gets around to selling off the stack of old ThinkPads in the back closet, I may find myself in possession of a T420 and/or a T430. Basically, I'm hooked. ...although I do slightly prefer the Latitude line for the first two generations of Core i architecture. You'll never convince me that there is a laptop out there more beautiful than an E6420.
Thanks for this man! Music to my ears! I do have my own T430 currently at i5-3320M and 8 GB RAM and be upgrading soonest! Loving and enjoying this beast so far and he's my bestest work bud! All the best to your channel!
i have t400,i am writing and watching your video on it right now,and it works just fine.i bought 3 of them for 100$...one MB is dead,other one ihave sold for 150$ and the third is this one....so....thank you Lenovo for real quality laptops that made me earn money and have one for free
Still using mine, upgraded to a 3x3 5 GHz wifi card, i7-3632qm, and 16 GB of RAM with an SSD. I recently also discovered that the exact FRU number for the keyboard can make a pretty significant difference. There are 3 manufacturers for this laptop's keyboard going by the FRU BOM list - LiteOn, Chicony, and Sunrex. You want the LiteOn if you can live without the keyboard backlight (they do not manufacture a backlit part). I had the Chicony backlit one but the keys constantly looked smudged. This does not happen on the LiteOn part (FRU 04X1277) as the keycaps are nicely textured, and the tactility of the rubber domes themselves are improved over the slightly mushy Chicony. From what I have read, flat out avoid the Sunrex parts.
Yeah it isn't as well know as it should be that there are several keyboard manufacturers and they have different materials and some different switch mechanisms. One model has five different versions.
Hi there I see you changed the CPU. I've got i5 did you see a significant difference when upgrading. I'm trying to do the same but very much out my depth with the lingo.
@@johnjohnston1086 since modern applications commonly take advantage of more than 4 logical cores, yes. The 3632qm is as high as you can go without blowing the TDP rating of the heatsink, to my knowledge. You will gain total performance by having 4 physical, 8 logical cores, but the performance of each core will be slightly less. Overall it is a gain in most workloads in my experience. I needed it because I write software for a living and compiling code to executable format is heavily multithreaded.
I didn't understand too many words, but the pictures explained perfectly, why I love this notebook so much and use it since over 10 years. In this notebook I can insert an update of my last 1:1-HD-copy - and it works in between 5 minutes including handling time.
This is one of my all time favourite post-IBM ThinkPads. I use one as my daily laptop for the last 3 years or so with 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, Windows 8.1 Pro and hardly any complaints yet. My biggest issue with Lenovo is the lackluster screen resolutions but that can be easily replaced later.
It’s a great little machine that’s for sure. The best post-IBM ThinkPad imo (now I haven’t had anything past the x40 series) is the T400. The C2D is getting to be unusable now but as a general purpose word processing, email, web browsing machine it is still amazing and my son and husband haven’t had a complaint about it.
here it is 2022 and I use this exact laptop daily running Linux Mint. Linux will run WAY faster than Windows and makes most older laptops very usable again. But a tip if you install Linux Mint/Ubuntu. If I go into suspend automatically (close lid or low battery) the system is unusable after that until I reboot, usually hard shutdown. But run "sudo pm_suspend" once right after booting and that problem completely goes away. You just have to remember to run suspend manually from the command prompt once. That is the only issue I've had. I run Musescore, darktable, libreoffice, brave browser, inkscape, scribus, Gimp, etc etc. Everything great. I left Windows on (dual boot) but never use it.
@@LaptopRetrospective perhaps it is the version of linux I'm running. I will be upgrading my version soon....lets see if the suspend problem goes away.
My T430 was with me for 10 years now. I just bought a T530 and swapped all upgrades to that machine: CPU, RAM mSata, main SSD, caddy SSD, battery, snap on battery and it's ready to serve me another 10 years. Worth every penny
@LaptopRetrospective my main office work machine Most word, excel ... some light programming with pycharm. OTT like viber, WhatsApp, zoom, msTeam. The T430 I reassigned it as linux environment now. As for entertainment I?have anothe T470
@@LaptopRetrospective Hi L.R. question on batteries for the T430, do you use OEM or 3rd party? I'm thinking of purchasing an OEM from Lenovo because I don't want to mess around with the BIOS. Do you use 3rd party batteries? If so have you had problems and had to modify the BIOS? What brands of 3rd party do you recommend from eBay /Amazon?
Lenovo batteries tend to be the highest capacity, but expensive and sometimes hard to find. No BIOS modding was needed for these, not sure what kind of batteries are being rejected. My biggest advice is but reputable and read carefully that the capacity you buy is what you get.
I used to use the T430s, I used it for around 4 years, when the screen was really starting to bother me. I had the one with core i5-3320m and Nvidia NVS 5200m. I used to overclock it, and found that removing they keyboard while the fan was at full blast helped it move more air. The vent on the back never blew out any air, dont know why, but that one vent blew out lots of air. I switched to a T480s now. The screen is a night and day difference.
i bought lenovo t430s 4 months ago, secondhand, and i tell you what, this is the best decision I've ever made, the price only $280 with 320gb hdd, i7 3rd gen, 4gb ram, backlit keyboard holyshit this machine is insane. i install win 10 in it and it works just well. i really recommend to buy this laptop, its cheap nowadays and can do almost everything.
Laptop Retrospective I use it for designing program such photoshop, Rhino3D even Keyshot for rendering that use all 100% cpu usage, its a bit hot even after i replaced the thermal paste but still can do all those things flawlessly.
Just picked up a refurbed T430s from ebay for $250 with 6 months warranty. This is going to be my 3rd laptop and the only one that will hopefully be functional for some time to come! My old 13 year old toshiba Portege can't perform in today's world. Acer Aspire decided to call quits. And the current "laptop" I'm typing from has a broken hinge and keyboard. I love the fact that you can repair almost every part of this laptop as highlighted in your video. Hopefully, this bad boy will hold up for a couple more years for uni/travel purposes!
I enjoyed your video, I purchased one for $25.00 and upon examination I wondered what the socket next to the 2 USB connection was and I didn't make out what you said about it, all I got was " .......display connection", but beyond that your review was excellent, Thank you very much.
Hi Boss, your video is awesome, I do have my old lenovo x220 recently upgraded last year to a 256SSD with 16GB ram, now im planning for a MSATA and FULL HD Display(if I can find one in my country), what is more interesting here is reading all the comments one by one and seeing how other users mod their laptops. Good job on the author of the video and all the users here who has modified their laptops, now I know what to find for future buys. I Susbscribe now to your channel, Thumbs up.
if you want that to look like new, scrub the lid lightly with a damp Mr Clean Magic Eraser and buff if dry with a micro fiber. I've sold more than a few of these and the other X,T and W series.
These are great. I've compared it to a much newer T450 and it is similar CPU performance despite being older. Graphics performance on the T450 is only slightly better and you get no optical drive, no LED light, etc.. It's better than most new $500 laptops from the big box stores.
I'm watching this on a T430 that I've done a few upgrades to so far: - Brought the RAM to 12GB with the sticks I had on hand - Swapped the original chicklet KB for a backlit one What I hope to do next is swap out the LCD, change the 2nd 4GB stick to an 8GB, get a SATA drive bay for a 2nd SSD. I'll still keep the DVD burner to swap out on the fly. I'm good w/ the i7 3520M that's in it currently, don't need the Quad Core. I enjoy your content, especially on the AMAZING ThinkPads! Thanks for sharing!
This is probably my laptop of choice, I need to replace my current laptop and I was really attracted to the thinkpad style and the moddability of this thing. It's also on Amazon with 8gb for like 200 usd. I know I could probably get it cheaper on ebay, but I'd like something decent over a complete project build. Since I don't game as much as I used to, it can run AoE 2, Rome, Fable, and some other classics which is all I need nowadays (and Rimworld!). Also your advice on the pi is grand, but I think most people should get one! The zero, the one I have, is a fantastic little machine and it was like 10 bucks or something.
Due to the better power efficiency and Intel graphics capability, it is significantly faster. With an SSD and a new battery, it's on par with brand new laptops.
Have bought t430 for only 150 euro 5 years ago. It's still running like a charm ! I added easly 8gb Ram for 50euro. Only problème is the screen quality.
Yeah i got mine 2 weeks ago (october 2018) and i love it. Had to choose between newer models also, and yet still i got this one. Didn't pay anything for it, but at our store it goes out for 200EUR with 12 month guarantee
Ex lease Lenovo Think pad laptops have been the best kept secret for years. I have had the T42, T43, T60, T61, T420, and T520. They never wore out they were just so cheap I kept upgrading. You just cannot get better value for money.
I have gotten myself the T430 with the i5 but with the Nvidia Nvs 5400m upgraded to 16gb 9cl ram, light up keyboard, upgraded to the i7 3740qm, SSD 850evo m.2 converted cady in a standard HDD slot and 450mbs dual-band wifi 3 antenna. plays Arma 3 at low to med settings and that says something for that game
This Laptop isn't that old.. I still use this Notebook, have two hard drives in it and upgraded the WiFi chip two times during the last four years. Definitely very decent ThinkPad and after so many years of every day use, the battery is still in excellent condition.
What really helps the t430 is its M-series CPU, with significantly higher clocks it competes well with U-series chips up to 5th gen. The integrated graphics aren't the quickest but it won't drop frames on 1080p HTML video, plus they support directx11. Take the price into consideration and this little monster is an all around great buy.
I kinda like my t440p.. I have it decked out with a i7-4900mq.. msata 240gb.. 16 gb ram.. 1080p ips screen.. changed the touch pad to original style.. I bought about 10 of these and then gutted the memory ,Hard drive, and cpu sold those on ebay.. and kept those laptops gutted for future upgrades..
The T430 is one of the latest real ThinkPads which allows you to do some heavily modding, thanks to community which were interested and involved in that process. (Like some old days with T61 modding) For mine stock T430 with i5-2520m I did next list of modding: 1. CPU swap -> i7-3632qm 2. Heatsink swap, to NVidia model, with extra heatpipe (my T430 doesn't have NVidia card, so extra pipe help alot in cooling) 3. Memory upgrade -> HyperX 2133Mhz DDR3L 16GB 4. Classic keyboard upgrade 5. Screen upgrade to IPS WQHD (the hardest part) 6. SSD for main SATA slot, HDD replaced the optical drive, and some m2 sata SSD... ...and what I got after all of that? I'v got an extremely fast machine for my software developing purposes with amazing IPS display and amazing keyboard. The only one drawback in T430 series is that main SATA slot located very close up to palmrest, it's mean that after heavily laptop usage it causes left side of palmrest be more hot in comparsion with right side. Swapping HDD to SSD decreases heating, but not removes it completelly...Anyway, this is a great machine.
I’m an electrical engineer and I use a w530 for cad work, programming and in the office work everyday. I run my old x201t I got freshman year of college when I need portable toughness on job sites. Modded a t430s as much as possible for my wife. I just love these machines and still haven’t seen a reason to upgrade. They just don’t make them like they used to!
Ah, the 30 series. The last real ThinkPads. I've decked the whole office out in these, they've become the standard (though I now go for the t430s, the slim, lighter version). Last ThinkPad to have LEDs, touchpad buttons, and to be actually built like a ThinkPad. After that, it was all jet-setting executive MacBook-derived garbage. :( 3:43 I frikin died when the video cut away without mentioning the 2nd stick is under the keyboard, 2 screws away from where you were.
I just bought a ThinkPad to use for less demanding staff and as a mobile Thin Client: I can perform the majority of my tasks (frontend web developement, Internet surfing, Office...) directly on the laptop, when I need more power (I.E. for Visual Studio, Hyper-V, GNS3...) I connect it to my Fujitsu workstation through Microsoft RDP.
I bought 3 last year in a lot for $175, no batteries or drives but with 8GB in each one. Wonderful machines for playing around with different Linux distros.
Please forgive me for bringing up my newly acquired T410s my first Think Pad, I bought it on a whim and can’t tell you how happy I am with it, it is fast and runs like a striped assed ape after increasing the ram, and adding two SSD’s one in the dvd bay. Modifying one makes you feel like Superman, especially when it works well, and when you are working on something with some body and they go. “Goddam this machine is fast”. It makes me smile. Cheers All
These are great machines. Even if you don't use it daily, these are great for for putting a 2T HHD in the SATA bay where the optical drive was and keeping a copy of all your files on the computer you use daily. Then if something happens to your daily computer or you have to evacuate, you can grab this laptop and be up and running anywhere. With a SSD, they are plenty fast.
This was the last good Lenovo laptop they made. I buy, open and modify, at least 10 Lenovo T-series laptops a month, and have been doing so from way back when they were still IBM's. I have reconfigured the insides of around 500 T-series. The T440 paved the way for an ever increasingly poor design. The T470 and now the T480 are just horrible to work on. Oh and don't forget the X240 that takes at least an hour to do a keyboard-swap. Hail the third-gen - last of the best.
I disagree. The T440p, is a fantastic, tough, and easily upgradable machine. I own four of them. Three with nVidia GT730m graphics. IMHO, the best ThinkPad, ever produced, and a decent gamer. I consider the T430, to be the second best ThinkPad ever produced, followed by the T430s w/i7/nVidia, and the T400/T500 with Radeon graphics. I own all these machines and find them ALL excellent!
@@LaptopRetrospective Nope. I don't care for them. I don't care for the "u" processor, or being limited to 12gb/RAM. MAYBE if I found a working one in good condition for around $60, I'd consider it.
I am still using a T440s FullHD Screen with i5 4300u, 512GB SSD, 12GB Ram. I editing and rendering video on trips and i dont have any problem's with that. 2 battery they allow me for 6 hours job. I'm must replace only TouchPad from T450 becouse this on T440s is really crappy.
Hey! I have the same laptop. May I ask what fan you bought and if now your laptop is silent? Cause I am having issue with the fan noise... Other than that I love T430!
Got T400 for free from my office. Its in bad condition tho, scratched up, no battery, no storage. I put 240GB SSD and 4GB DDR3 RAM in it. It has overheating problem so I had to clean the heatsink and put new thermal paste. Runs well. I use it for document processing, photoshop, light video editing with sony vegas and browsing
I just picked up one of these for super cheap off eBay (I’m only 14 so I’m just using it for hooking up my arduino to as well as do some basic coding and penetration testing) so it was a steal
This is still great laptop. Much better than new laptops around same price. Build quality is much higher than that funny plastic laptops in shops today.
Any part that isn't in the Whitelist of the BIOS will require some tweaks. RAM, CPU and SSD should be drop in so long as the motherboard supports them. WiFi cards need to be on the approved list or you need to modify the BIOS.
Thanks! - I for one am hooked on the T410s. Fantastic, except of run-time on battery. I have a bunch of cheap docks, in these days available from USD 10 onwards. So I can carry my 3 T410s around, have the manuals, some spare parts. And blow out the fan with compressed air from time to time. Just to think that you have a 10-year-old machine that easily compares with a 'modern' one - with the exception of gaming, of course. But I'm not a gamer, just some 1,8-inch SSDs thrown in, 8 GB of RAM, and all running *buntu with double-boot to some Windows on disks on the bays, swappable easily with DVD-RW.
Hey! So I bought this laptop a month ago. So far I am very pleased with it. My only issue is the fan noise. Do you have any suggestions on how I can reduce the noise?
still using my i7 one since 2015. upgraded to twin 256gb samsung ssd's and 12gb ram. win10 still runs like a dream. using it daily and even playing some asphalt 9 on the built in intel gfx :-)
Me too. Mostly Sandy Bridge followed by Westmere and Ivy Bridge (mostly i5, a few i3 and i7). For office work, those are plenty adequate, and I/O matters a lot more. Have installed a number of SSDs over the last couple years, and the odd RAM stick. Recently got the very first legit complaint about CPU performance... sheesh, impatient young colleagues and their web stuff. It's only an i3-2310M and those never struck me as very fast, so I hope dropping in an i5-2540M is going to get this sorted.
The T430 has been my daily driver for about 7 years now. I bought it new from Lenovo's website with the i7 3540m, and immediately upgraded to 16GB RAM and a 250GB SSD (later upgraded to a larger SSD when prices came down.) I got the SATA drive bay you showed and stuck the factory standard 360GB HDD in it as backup / movie storage.
I agree that this is a great laptop. It's been virtually trouble free for the entire time I've had it. It's suffered through drops and less than careful handling with barely a scratch, and was well worth the hefty price tag when new. Since these were so ubiquitous, I fully suspect I'll be able to milk another 5 useful years out of this thing with parts available for any minimal repairs that are needed.
Here are some things I'd like to add, for people considering this laptop:
- You have to come to terms with the screen. It's disappointing, considering the overall build quality of the machine. There are very few drop in upgrade options, and they're getting too expensive to be viable.
- When you take the keyboard out, be very --- very --- careful with the ribbon cable. It's super fragile. I was able to get a replacement under warranty, but that's no longer an option.
- The keyboard came in two flavors: with and without backlight. I've had the pleasure of using both, and while both feel good, the non-backlit option is much more clicky and responsive. If you can make due without a backlight, I'd seek out this option. This model still has the thinklight, which you can use to see the keyboard in the dark either way.
- Don't forget that you can dock these as well! Docking this computer allows you to run up to four displays at once (including the built in screen) though you might want to seek out improved heat sinking options if you plan on making this a habit. Make sure you have the higher wattage adapter plugged into your docking station -- the one that comes with the computer won't cut it (this is the same as the W530 adapter.)
- The DVD/SATA drive bay also had a battery made for it, allowing you to hot swap the main battery without being plugged in! I've never used this functionality, but it could be useful if you're on a transcontinental flight or something.
Great points! The Ultrabay batteries are pretty darn rare and fetch high prices since no third party companies seemed to make them.
I have a spare T460 internal battery. Was hoping to stick it into this refurbished T430 that I just acquired.
I think you're out of luck. Pretty your battery will have no where to go in that machine.
Thank you, Subscribed!
@@chatbud thanks for your support. I hope you enjoy working with and on your T430.
I have a T430 that's been at my side for about 2 years before I finally got myself a new laptop.
It's liquid metal cooled, has the extended batter, has a secondary 1TB drive and primary 128gb SSD and runs like a dream. I still use it now and then with me on trips where I don't want to damage my newer, much more expensive laptop.
I love the thing to death.
Awesome setup. Thanks for sharing.
It’s almost 2022 and I bought a t430. Seriously this thing is awesome and brings out my inner geek to the max.
And the budget of incrementing upgrades is so well put.
Taking it apart and tinkering is so addictive. There’s a special charm to these old computers I can’t completely explain.
Very true Josh.
Hey I agree all of these are brilliant but why nobody's talking about GPUs? like if you can upgrade the laptop to that level, can you add some solid GPU to run engineering apps?
I remember when i had a T430 and i loved it so much. The design was great and it was very rugged too. Also that keyboard was a dream to type on. The fact that you can upgrade it is a huge bonus and it's something that you don't see these days on a laptop. Such a great laptop!
The best notebook ever. I have bought an used one for 200 bucks online, then upgrade with a ssd and 16gb of ram an now this machine os flying! Runs like a new computer. Lenovo make these thinkpad series in a way that you can totally dismount and change parts separately. Marvelous!
Yes, a good chunk of them are made to be taken apart.
Hey, idk if you’ll reply bc you’re like a year old comment buuut when you upgraded to 16gb of ram could you play Minecraft?
Ram helps but it isn't the only requirement.
I've been running a T430 (i7-3520M, 16GB DDR3, 1TB SSD, X1 Carbon LCD mod, 9 cell battery, Ubuntu 16.04) for almost 6 years, and have found it to be the best all-around laptop I've ever owned. I might be one of the few longtime Thinkpad fans who prefer the new (at the time of the T430) chicklet keyboard. The original 1600x900 LCD was atrocious regarding color and contrast as were most laptop displays from that era, and as I do a lot of late night reading in dark rooms, the X1 Carbon display swap added immense value for me. With a fresh 9 cell battery, it can get 8 hours under moderate to low load. It is also extremely durable, relatively speaking, showing only scratches and finish wear and tear after all this time. My only reasons for upgrading in the near future (likely to the X1 Extreme), are a physically larger display, not needing a heat shield for my leg when the laptop is under heavy load, and weight. Better wifi performance, NVMe storage, and a trackpad which supports advanced multi-touch gestures will be a nice bonus. I'd highly recommend this laptop to anyone who might be in the market for such a device.
Well said and thanks for sharing your configuration.
What's that heatshield thing?
Which?
he said that he doesnt need the T430 heatshield which is... for protecting your legs from the heat? Because I have the T430 and if you get it heated up, I'd say my legs aren't protected :D
Ah gotcha.
Yeah, typing this on a T430. I also bought it in 2018. Used it as my main computer for work for 1.5 years but as I had most of my software licenses to OS X I had to switch to mac as my work computer in 2019.
Still use T430. A great computer.
Nice!
I recently found a T520 with a broken screen in the bottom of a dumpster behind a strip mall. Installed new screen and SSD, works great!
Nice find. Hope it didn't smell.
Strange as it may sound, I've lost track how many stories I've heard about ThinkPads being found there...
I absolutely love the ThinkPad series❤. I have owned many ThinkPads (T61, T420, T450, X220i, W510, X250, X230i). This is the only laptop series I could rely on, never had let me down. Now I have bought T430s. I want to say that I personally think your channel is so much underrated. You deserve so much more subscribers and views. I watch your movies since December of 2019 and they are always full of information and they are fun to watch. Greetings from Poland 🇵🇱😄
Thank you so much for your kind words and being a fan through the years. It's people like you that make it fun. As a ThinkPad fan I hope you've enjoyed the interviews as well.
The ones with a discrete GPU are time bombs because the heatsink is not enough to cool the area enough. This then causes the hinge metal to break, turning it into a poor desktop replacement. Then the heat makes the chips themselves questionable.
I have one for work, it is two years past its service life (four years) but it has never let me down. Not replacing it for some plastic HP machine that has basically the same specs. The IT department understand.
Makes sense to me.
The T430 is the school laptop I'm currently using, I actually love the keyboard and how durable it is. (dropped once)
Nice! Glad to hear there are fans of the newer keyboard too, I don't actually mind it.
I looked over one of these, but it has 4GB Ram and 320HDD and core i5 third gen, is that an old one? The owner asked 185$
Oldish, but still a great platform. Especially for tinkering.
The 3rd gen of Intel i series is still very capable for gaming and other functions, and you can upgrade to a quadcore i7 if the i5 dualcore fails you.
Definitely plusses.
Love mine. Travels well in a checked bag and still works fast Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Excel.
- i7 3612QM
-16 GB RAM
- 500 GB SSD
Favorite part is the keyboard light! I'll be sad when it becomes obsolete.
Obsolete is more the use case of the user.
if it's speced out the way that it's listed above then you should get good performance so long as the project isn't super complex or is using incredibly high resolution video.
I went with a T420 last year, upgraded to an Ssd, plus an msata ssd, and A 3rd ssd in place of optical drive with an ultrabay caddy. Never have had a single issue. Awesome video!
T420 is no slouch to be sure and has that keyboard many prefer.
Wes the only issue with mine is the screen. :(
Washed out colors, low resolution...
Also usb 2.0 only
Medeiros I've seen expresscard usb 3.0 cards (2 ports) but I've not tried that yet. As for the screen I don't disagree but mine is okay for my usage. Cheers.
Check the upgrade guide for screen options.
That is funny because Im watching a thinkpad t430 video on a thinkpad t430
That's so meta. How is it?
@@LaptopRetrospective Runs like a champ. All my school work, music production, small gaming, with only BIOS settings changed to go from a balanced power/battery to full power of course being plugged in. Shes loud to be honest. Overall very good
Very nice!
Same, but on a T430s.
Padception.
Just bought two T430s Thinkpads for $100 each! i5-3320M, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD. Using one of them now as my daily driver, replacing the Macbook Air 13 from 2013, I bought new. I plan to upgrade the chip & RAM in the next month & put a SSD in the optical drive bay. Came with Windows 10 but on my daily driver, I replaced it with a distro of Linux. It's an amazing machine!
Nice! Thanks for sharing.
wow nice, where did you get them? I just saw them as refurbished laps on a dutch site, for 300euros. Kinda way to much i guess. Its the t430s i5, 8gb and 180 ssd.
On one right now, bought it in 2017 for about $150 refurbished, to have something to use while travelling when I'm not at my desktop.
It's a very nice laptop IMO.
To be sure, what battery do you have?
I am still using a T530 as a main computer. This thing never gets old. I cloned the HDD to 1Tb SSD, and use the old HDD in the DVD Bay for storage. 16gb RAM. It is as fast as new machines. With I7. Screen is HD+ with an awesome resolution and format, not glossy. Replaced the keyboard as the fire ants chew the original... Sticky and yummy. I still don't feel the need for a new one.
Nice. The fire ants sound like an interesting story...
+Laptop Retrospective yes. Red, tiny but painful ants. I use the laptop deep in the jungle, in very humid environment.
In a certain moment I realized that some keys were not responding anymore. I took it out, checked it, cleaned it. It was full of crumbs, sticky, dusty. Only then I realized those ants really liked to chew on the silicone taps under the keys, and eat the contacts.
After a week, they did the same to my wife's ThinkPad. I had to smoke the ants out of the house and replace both keyboards.
Now that's a real story of some serious use.
Picked up my T430 about a year ago for $220. Added 16gb of ram and a 500gb SSD. Super solid machine!
Nice. Lots of RAM to go around.
If i add 500gb ssd do i have to reinstall windows ?
Depends if you replace the original drive or not. If so, then yes, you'll either need to clone the original drive or reinstall.
@@jefferymillerjr8572 Since the laptops tend to come with smaller SSD's, you can easily upgrade to a bigger drive using Acronis or another migration tool.
@@dskribe9598 what you be the difference and would I have to reinstall windows?
Got the t420 with SSD. Works perfect and fast for Browsing, Office, GIMP and smooth programming. Best decision to buy it used for 200€ 6 months ago.
Sounds solid to me alright.
Just sold my T420 ThinkPad. Had it for 4 years and installed an SSD. It never let me down, was fast and did what I wanted it to do. Was using 8.1 Windows. Love Lenovo
What did you replace it with?
My friend inspired me to get a T430 and I love it, though it's not as durable as I expected it to be. Hinges and bowed lids seem to be a high failure point for these machines I've noticed and mine came with the lid ruined, ruining the hinges shortly afterwards and broke a few tabs on the bezel. My ultrabay got destroyed by the laptop's weight, the laptop was sitting in my bag at an angle and the weight of the laptop pushing down on the ultrabay managed to break the locking tap piece. On the flip side, the machine performs well and after a thermal paste change it stays damn cool and quitet at idle and even under small loads. Keyboard feels great too despite what most ThinkPad enthusiasts say. Absolutely love the servicebility and the price. Lovely machines.
Sounds like yours might have had a tough life before you got it. Thankfully parts are easy to come by.
Laptop Retrospective I believe it got scarred during shipping, the keyboard had very little wear and there's no dings or signs of wear anywhere
Could have been an old demo unit or perhaps saw previous service repairs.
I also had my Thinkpad T430 from 2022, still has it, it's a beast and with every optimization i did, it came out SOO GOOD! Sadly, it died on 11th july 2024 because it wasnt starting like i press the power button but it's fan spins to the max for one second and then it shuts off with no signs of display or life, i targeted my RAM because I have 8gb (2 stick 4gb each) of ram and one stick may have died BUT the processor wont even clock it too! So i went to a repair shop and the repair guy replaced my i5 3320M with i7 so it started good! But as i am a gamer especially Minecraft, so the money i can spend on it, i can just get a w540 with even a nvidia card! So yeah i loved my beastpad but salute to it. I'll sell it to the market for good price then add some more money to get the W540.
It's a strange day when a ThinkPad is finally replaced.
I got a T430 in 2017 after my previous laptop died and I'm loving mine.
They're reliable to be sure.
Bought mine 3 years ago for £349 U.K. used. It's still running just fine with original 8GB RAM and 240GB SSD. The built-in display is not up to much but I do all my Photoshop editing and watch huge amounts of RUclips - all on a 24-inch Dell Ultrasharp permanently connected to the Mini Display Port. The USB 3 ports are great for USB3 Western Digital MyPassport external drives. Who needs expensive Macs?
Definitely sounds like a solid setup to me. Especially that monitor.
Laptop Retrospective - You sound like a chap who knows his stuff. I'll coming back to you for reccommendations when I want to get my next Laptop. This one is good for now.
My brother upgraded his Dell to a T450S with more RAM and the top of the range touch screen after seeing how reliable my T430 has been.
Cheers, always glad to have a viewer benefit the content.
T430 is my daily driver I am really happy with it especially after preforming these upgrades for the first time.
Awesome stuff. What was your favourite upgrade?
Ssd and ram it’s crazy fast now I was happy with the existing processor changing it seemed like a hassle.
Many find the SSD the most significant upgrade with these units. So I'm not surprised by that assessment.
I bought this beast on july 2012, and it still running well. I maxed out the ram, swaped the cpu with 3632qm.
Very nice setup.
I have a T430 since late 2016. I upgraded to an i7-3540M and 16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM. I honestly really recommend it to pretty much anyone. Reliable, (in my opinion) nice, and can be really snappy.
Sounds like quite the power house. You rocking a 9 cell or 6? What kind of life do you get?
Hello, I was thinking of doing the same as you but with a i7-3610QM. which is better?
Laptop Retrospective Sadly, I have just a 6 cell battery. But it's till pretty much new, so it does the job just fine. While I edit documents, and browse the web, I get around ~4 hours of battery life.
Dan Brown Well... It's not an easy questin... A 3610QM is way faster than my 3540M, BUT the TDP of that quad core is 45W. All of the "official" CPUs, wich were installed in this motherboard are not using more than 35 watts of power. Using a more power-hungry CPU is problematic, because it's generating more heat (and the heatsink is only designed to handle 35W CPUs), and also the circuitry on the board isn't designed to andle this much power. I've heard about several T430s that they are able to run stable with a quad core CPU, but I personally do not recommend it.
Very nice for an older power house.
I topped up my T430 with 16 GB of ram, Msata SSD, an i7 3720QM (didn't need so much horse power more than threads) and this machine is still a beast that can pull off quite a load of work. I couldn't find a better heatsink, but decided to use better thermal paste, and lower the CPU performance in power management to avoid turboboost (gets near the 100°c quite often that way).
I can produce on protools and with a lot of stuff going on, from plugins to virtual instruments, a firewire interface with an xpresscard expansion. This machine is a dream.
The only disadvantage, is that doesn't come with thunderbolt, no even the first generation. If an expresscard adaptor coud give us that, it would be amazing and make this laptop even more futureproof.
Thunderbolt via ExpressCard would be something to see...
You might be surprised to know that the Express card slot on the t430 has a whopping two pcie data lanes! I used a GTX 780 with mine for a while and it worked great, only lost about 15% performance compared to stock 780's thanks to Nvidias amazing pcie compression on laptops
my love with t430 is not going to end , according to my company policy my laptop has been expired a long time back and they are giving t480 these days to new comers. I.T has sent me many reminders to replace it but still i want this and not responding to them. In 5 years i have replaced batteries 3 times and screen one time. :P
There is a lot of like, that's for sure.
Watching this on my T430...still rocking with no issues all these years.
Awesome!
The T430 is still my daily driver I'm actually getting ready to replace the palm rest. I have a new Latitude laptop and I still find myself using my ThinkPad.
They are special aren't they?
i got a thinkpad t400 since 5 years ago and i am more than happy with it ,it is made like a tank and since then i got no problems with it
Great units for long term use.
I like my T430. It's running less demanding stuff and I can sit at it for hours. The keyboard (like in this video with back light) was what made me buy it and I enjoy the whole thing with a few upgrades last year.
Very nice. What's your workload like with it?
I love Thinkpads. Wife has T500. We upgraded memory from 8 to 16gb and installed a 500gb SSD. It is running Linux Mint and is very fast. My Thinkpad is a W520, 32gb, 500gb SSD w/Mint, I put a 2tb HDD in the DVD bay, and use it for video editing. It is my 5th Thinkpad ... a bit bulky but just run flawlessly. So sturdy you can leave them to your grandchildren.
Haha yeah, pretty much. I've read as lot of comments on how they get handed down.
☺
I've got an X250 that I love to death, and an X61T sitting around while I fight to make it think it's a Chromebook. If my job ever gets around to selling off the stack of old ThinkPads in the back closet, I may find myself in possession of a T420 and/or a T430. Basically, I'm hooked.
...although I do slightly prefer the Latitude line for the first two generations of Core i architecture. You'll never convince me that there is a laptop out there more beautiful than an E6420.
Haha, fair enough. ThinkPads are many things but beautiful is not often a word you hear with them.
I used a T430 for a long time before switching to its cousin, the X230. :)
Great choices all around.
I've been thinking about that too :)
Thanks for this man! Music to my ears! I do have my own T430 currently at i5-3320M and 8 GB RAM and be upgrading soonest! Loving and enjoying this beast so far and he's my bestest work bud!
All the best to your channel!
Thanks for the well wishes! Good luck on your upgrades.
Bro ... Did you upgraded your laptop ?. I have Thinkpad T430i so i need that i5 3320M processor
@@guru9189 not yet. didn't proceed to upgrading.
i have t400,i am writing and watching your video on it right now,and it works just fine.i bought 3 of them for 100$...one MB is dead,other one ihave sold for 150$ and the third is this one....so....thank you Lenovo for real quality laptops that made me earn money and have one for free
Very cool story.
Still using mine, upgraded to a 3x3 5 GHz wifi card, i7-3632qm, and 16 GB of RAM with an SSD.
I recently also discovered that the exact FRU number for the keyboard can make a pretty significant difference. There are 3 manufacturers for this laptop's keyboard going by the FRU BOM list - LiteOn, Chicony, and Sunrex. You want the LiteOn if you can live without the keyboard backlight (they do not manufacture a backlit part). I had the Chicony backlit one but the keys constantly looked smudged. This does not happen on the LiteOn part (FRU 04X1277) as the keycaps are nicely textured, and the tactility of the rubber domes themselves are improved over the slightly mushy Chicony. From what I have read, flat out avoid the Sunrex parts.
Yeah it isn't as well know as it should be that there are several keyboard manufacturers and they have different materials and some different switch mechanisms. One model has five different versions.
Hi there I see you changed the CPU. I've got i5 did you see a significant difference when upgrading. I'm trying to do the same but very much out my depth with the lingo.
@@johnjohnston1086 since modern applications commonly take advantage of more than 4 logical cores, yes. The 3632qm is as high as you can go without blowing the TDP rating of the heatsink, to my knowledge. You will gain total performance by having 4 physical, 8 logical cores, but the performance of each core will be slightly less. Overall it is a gain in most workloads in my experience. I needed it because I write software for a living and compiling code to executable format is heavily multithreaded.
@@metal571 ok thanks for reply. I'm running bot traffic through software but just wanting to speed tasks up get done more in day.
I didn't understand too many words, but the pictures explained perfectly, why I love this notebook so much and use it since over 10 years.
In this notebook I can insert an update of my last 1:1-HD-copy - and it works in between 5 minutes including handling time.
Glad you liked the video!
This is one of my all time favourite post-IBM ThinkPads. I use one as my daily laptop for the last 3 years or so with 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, Windows 8.1 Pro and hardly any complaints yet. My biggest issue with Lenovo is the lackluster screen resolutions but that can be easily replaced later.
Nice to hear you've gotten so much life it if it so far.
It’s a great little machine that’s for sure. The best post-IBM ThinkPad imo (now I haven’t had anything past the x40 series) is the T400. The C2D is getting to be unusable now but as a general purpose word processing, email, web browsing machine it is still amazing and my son and husband haven’t had a complaint about it.
Very cool. I'm just rendering another ThinkPad video I've had on the back burner. Hope you enjoy it.
here it is 2022 and I use this exact laptop daily running Linux Mint. Linux will run WAY faster than Windows and makes most older laptops very usable again. But a tip if you install Linux Mint/Ubuntu. If I go into suspend automatically (close lid or low battery) the system is unusable after that until I reboot, usually hard shutdown. But run "sudo pm_suspend" once right after booting and that problem completely goes away. You just have to remember to run suspend manually from the command prompt once. That is the only issue I've had. I run Musescore, darktable, libreoffice, brave browser, inkscape, scribus, Gimp, etc etc. Everything great. I left Windows on (dual boot) but never use it.
Very strange issue, can't say I've experienced it myself.
@@LaptopRetrospective perhaps it is the version of linux I'm running. I will be upgrading my version soon....lets see if the suspend problem goes away.
Best of luck!
Still love this product T430 that I'm using right now
Can't Sell this Laptop for other laptop out there Love my Laptop
It's a nice unit. No doubt.
Laptop Retrospective Yeah Still using this
My T430 was with me for 10 years now. I just bought a T530 and swapped all upgrades to that machine: CPU, RAM mSata, main SSD, caddy SSD, battery, snap on battery and it's ready to serve me another 10 years. Worth every penny
That's awesome John! What do you use it for?
@LaptopRetrospective my main office work machine
Most word, excel ... some light programming with pycharm. OTT like viber, WhatsApp, zoom, msTeam.
The T430 I reassigned it as linux environment now. As for entertainment I?have anothe T470
Nice fleet of machines.
Just picked a T430 and the dock today. Really happy with the unit. Its such a TANK and feels so premium.
-Cheers
Very cool.
@@LaptopRetrospective Hi L.R. question on batteries for the T430, do you use OEM or 3rd party?
I'm thinking of purchasing an OEM from Lenovo because I don't want to mess around with the BIOS. Do you use 3rd party batteries? If so have you had problems and had to modify the BIOS? What brands of 3rd party do you recommend from eBay /Amazon?
Lenovo batteries tend to be the highest capacity, but expensive and sometimes hard to find. No BIOS modding was needed for these, not sure what kind of batteries are being rejected. My biggest advice is but reputable and read carefully that the capacity you buy is what you get.
@@LaptopRetrospective thanks for the advice.
You're most welcome.
I used to use the T430s, I used it for around 4 years, when the screen was really starting to bother me. I had the one with core i5-3320m and Nvidia NVS 5200m. I used to overclock it, and found that removing they keyboard while the fan was at full blast helped it move more air. The vent on the back never blew out any air, dont know why, but that one vent blew out lots of air.
I switched to a T480s now. The screen is a night and day difference.
I can imagine a huge difference in screen quality for sure!
i bought lenovo t430s 4 months ago, secondhand, and i tell you what, this is the best decision I've ever made, the price only $280 with 320gb hdd, i7 3rd gen, 4gb ram, backlit keyboard holyshit this machine is insane. i install win 10 in it and it works just well. i really recommend to buy this laptop, its cheap nowadays and can do almost everything.
For many, it's all the computer they need. Might not be power efficient but it gets the job done.
Laptop Retrospective I use it for designing program such photoshop, Rhino3D even Keyshot for rendering that use all 100% cpu usage, its a bit hot even after i replaced the thermal paste but still can do all those things flawlessly.
Yeah, they have a reputation for running hot.
I had that same computer for almost 4 years, is THE BEST for hard work! I changed for a T470!
How is the newer one?
I've a T430 and a L570 (offered by my job), but, despite the T430 be old, I prefer the T model because it's more comfortable, robust and expandable
Very nice!
Just picked up a refurbed T430s from ebay for $250 with 6 months warranty. This is going to be my 3rd laptop and the only one that will hopefully be functional for some time to come! My old 13 year old toshiba Portege can't perform in today's world. Acer Aspire decided to call quits. And the current "laptop" I'm typing from has a broken hinge and keyboard. I love the fact that you can repair almost every part of this laptop as highlighted in your video. Hopefully, this bad boy will hold up for a couple more years for uni/travel purposes!
It should be able to, hope you enjoy it!
I enjoyed your video, I purchased one for $25.00 and upon examination I wondered what the socket next to the 2 USB connection was and I didn't make out what you said about it, all I got was " .......display connection", but beyond that your review was excellent, Thank you very much.
Must be the display port? Glad you enjoyed it!
@@LaptopRetrospective Indeed, it is, I looked it up online, just ordered an adapter cable from Prime Cables.
Right on! Hope everything works out and you enjoy it for years to come.
Very good review and assessment, informative. And you are not annoying or overly snarky in your delivery. sound trustworthy too. good job.
Thanks Mario, I try to be the real deal.
@@LaptopRetrospective Do you have any more for sale
I don't sell them, sorry.
Hi Boss, your video is awesome, I do have my old lenovo x220 recently upgraded last year to a 256SSD with 16GB ram, now im planning for a MSATA and FULL HD Display(if I can find one in my country), what is more interesting here is reading all the comments one by one and seeing how other users mod their laptops. Good job on the author of the video and all the users here who has modified their laptops, now I know what to find for future buys.
I Susbscribe now to your channel, Thumbs up.
Cheers man, I'm glad you recognize the talent we have in the comments. Glad to have your support.
if you want that to look like new, scrub the lid lightly with a damp Mr Clean Magic Eraser and buff if dry with a micro fiber. I've sold more than a few of these and the other X,T and W series.
I've actually got a few videos on the channel doing exactly that. 👍
These are great. I've compared it to a much newer T450 and it is similar CPU performance despite being older. Graphics performance on the T450 is only slightly better and you get no optical drive, no LED light, etc.. It's better than most new $500 laptops from the big box stores.
Most big box stores that still sell laptops around here don't offer much at all.
I'm watching this on a T430 that I've done a few upgrades to so far:
- Brought the RAM to 12GB with the sticks I had on hand
- Swapped the original chicklet KB for a backlit one
What I hope to do next is swap out the LCD, change the 2nd 4GB stick to an 8GB, get a SATA drive bay for a 2nd SSD. I'll still keep the DVD burner to swap out on the fly.
I'm good w/ the i7 3520M that's in it currently, don't need the Quad Core.
I enjoy your content, especially on the AMAZING ThinkPads! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the update Ryan on your upgrade history. Eager to hear how your LCD panel work goes.
This is probably my laptop of choice, I need to replace my current laptop and I was really attracted to the thinkpad style and the moddability of this thing. It's also on Amazon with 8gb for like 200 usd. I know I could probably get it cheaper on ebay, but I'd like something decent over a complete project build. Since I don't game as much as I used to, it can run AoE 2, Rome, Fable, and some other classics which is all I need nowadays (and Rimworld!).
Also your advice on the pi is grand, but I think most people should get one! The zero, the one I have, is a fantastic little machine and it was like 10 bucks or something.
Very nice. Lots of options out there.
Hey, do you know if this laptop could run football manager 2020? That's all I'd really want to play plus the ones you mentioned!
System requirements for it are fairly low so you can probably manage. Not sure how well since I've never played it.
Great video. I did buy a 410 3 years ago and installed Lubuntu. Works great. Now you have me interested in the 430.
It has some trade offs from the older models but is still a contender.
Due to the better power efficiency and Intel graphics capability, it is significantly faster. With an SSD and a new battery, it's on par with brand new laptops.
I'm getting this ThinkPad in my birthday and to be honest, I've been having these dreams where I get the ThinkPad. Good Video tho!
Thank you! Hope you enjoy it.
You getting the nvs or the intel? Its pretty good regardless (coming from the guy who uses a 2007 macbook pro)
How much ?
Cost will vary from region to region.
Have bought t430 for only 150 euro 5 years ago. It's still running like a charm ! I added easly 8gb Ram for 50euro. Only problème is the screen quality.
Nice find. The older ThinkPads aren't known for their screens. That's why that's are so many mods.
I have exactly the same ThinkPad and I bought it in 2018. ;)
Hope it was a good deal.
@@LaptopRetrospective Yeah it was, I am satisfied with it.
@@ping01ping66 I just received mine yesterday I paid $200 for it .
Nice. Welcome to the club. 😎
Yeah i got mine 2 weeks ago (october 2018) and i love it. Had to choose between newer models also, and yet still i got this one. Didn't pay anything for it, but at our store it goes out for 200EUR with 12 month guarantee
Ex lease Lenovo Think pad laptops have been the best kept secret for years.
I have had the T42, T43, T60, T61, T420, and T520. They never wore out they were just so cheap I kept upgrading. You just cannot get better value for money.
That is a huge draw for me recommending them to people who need a simple computer.
I have gotten myself the T430 with the i5 but with the Nvidia Nvs 5400m upgraded to 16gb 9cl ram, light up keyboard, upgraded to the i7 3740qm, SSD 850evo m.2 converted cady in a standard HDD slot and 450mbs dual-band wifi 3 antenna. plays Arma 3 at low to med settings and that says something for that game
Yep, any laptop that can handle Arma and not turn into a cooking surface is an achievement.
I picked up a T430s off eBay recently and I love it. 8GB of ram and SSD makes it the best laptop that I have ever owned even though it is 6 years old.
Nice. What CPU are you rocking?
**Checks**
Core i5 3320M
Not too shabby. Going to do any upgrades?
This Laptop isn't that old.. I still use this Notebook, have two hard drives in it and upgraded the WiFi chip two times during the last four years.
Definitely very decent ThinkPad and after so many years of every day use, the battery is still in excellent condition.
Glad to hear it's going strong.
What really helps the t430 is its M-series CPU, with significantly higher clocks it competes well with U-series chips up to 5th gen. The integrated graphics aren't the quickest but it won't drop frames on 1080p HTML video, plus they support directx11.
Take the price into consideration and this little monster is an all around great buy.
Agreed.
Please talk about the t440p!!! These vids are AMAZINGGG
I've covered the T540p previously. Haven't had the chance to do the T440.
@@LaptopRetrospective ooooh
Totally agree even in 2019
i got my t430 last week, im fascinated with this laptop, works very good on graphic design projects
Tell us more! Many people ask if it's a good machine for that work and first hand knowledge is always best.
@@MikoErrante can I run Adobe premiere on Lenovo t430?
It will run, your limitations will come in the complexity of the projects you wish to create.
@@LaptopRetrospective i want to create a 2d cartoons and also can i rin Adobe Character animator? Thanks for the reply.
I kinda like my t440p.. I have it decked out with a i7-4900mq.. msata 240gb.. 16 gb ram.. 1080p ips screen.. changed the touch pad to original style.. I bought about 10 of these and then gutted the memory ,Hard drive, and cpu sold those on ebay.. and kept those laptops gutted for future upgrades..
Now that is planning ahead!
The T430 is one of the latest real ThinkPads which allows you to do some heavily modding,
thanks to community which were interested and involved in that process. (Like some old days with T61 modding)
For mine stock T430 with i5-2520m I did next list of modding:
1. CPU swap -> i7-3632qm
2. Heatsink swap, to NVidia model, with extra heatpipe (my T430 doesn't have NVidia card, so extra pipe help alot in cooling)
3. Memory upgrade -> HyperX 2133Mhz DDR3L 16GB
4. Classic keyboard upgrade
5. Screen upgrade to IPS WQHD (the hardest part)
6. SSD for main SATA slot, HDD replaced the optical drive, and some m2 sata SSD...
...and what I got after all of that? I'v got an extremely fast machine for my software developing purposes with amazing IPS display
and amazing keyboard.
The only one drawback in T430 series is that main SATA slot located very close up to palmrest, it's mean that after
heavily laptop usage it causes left side of palmrest be more hot in comparsion with right side. Swapping HDD to SSD decreases heating, but
not removes it completelly...Anyway, this is a great machine.
Excellent upgrade list!
T440p and W540P have some serious upgradability too.
For sure!
What about its battery, I'm going to buy one so I will be happy to know that it has a good battery.
Battery if used will probably need to be replaced. I suggest a 9 cell.
I’m an electrical engineer and I use a w530 for cad work, programming and in the office work everyday. I run my old x201t I got freshman year of college when I need portable toughness on job sites. Modded a t430s as much as possible for my wife. I just love these machines and still haven’t seen a reason to upgrade. They just don’t make them like they used to!
That's an awesome story, thanks for sharing it here!
Ah, the 30 series. The last real ThinkPads. I've decked the whole office out in these, they've become the standard (though I now go for the t430s, the slim, lighter version). Last ThinkPad to have LEDs, touchpad buttons, and to be actually built like a ThinkPad. After that, it was all jet-setting executive MacBook-derived garbage. :(
3:43 I frikin died when the video cut away without mentioning the 2nd stick is under the keyboard, 2 screws away from where you were.
thanks for the info, I might buy a t430 or t530 sometime when I'm on my own money because I'm a sucker for vintage :D
I just bought a ThinkPad to use for less demanding staff and as a mobile Thin Client: I can perform the majority of my tasks (frontend web developement, Internet surfing, Office...) directly on the laptop, when I need more power (I.E. for Visual Studio, Hyper-V, GNS3...) I connect it to my Fujitsu workstation through Microsoft RDP.
Nice solution!
I have both W520 and T430 and prefer the keyboard on T430. Both are great though.
Just bought a x230 tablet can't wait to get it up and running
Woot! Let me know how that goes.
Wow! Great video. Thanks to you my friend now I have the reason to buy a T430. So I subscribed to your channel :)
Thanks for the sub and I'm glad you enjoyed the video.
YES! You won't go wrong with it!
I bought 3 last year in a lot for $175, no batteries or drives but with 8GB in each one. Wonderful machines for playing around with different Linux distros.
Excellent use!
Got mine off Craigslist for $60 in 2016. I still love it. I was really tickled at the backlight keyboard.
Nice catch at $60.
Just bought one on eBay a couple days ago. Should be in today and still thoroughly enjoy the incremental upgrading
Awesome! It can be a rewarding process.
@@LaptopRetrospective Well I enjoy a good challenge and I meet this one with frothing anticipation! Keep checking the tracking number 😅
@@riverlefae2047 Keep us posted!
@@LaptopRetrospective Just got it and throwing on a fresh Arch install as we speak!
@@riverlefae2047 Nice! How's the condition?
Got my T430 year ago for about £300 with 8GB ram and 240GB SSD and it's my main work laptop now.
Nice, I'd feel cramped on a drive that size, but nothing to mock either.
Please forgive me for bringing up my newly acquired T410s my first Think Pad, I bought it on a whim and can’t tell you how happy I am with it, it is fast and runs like a striped assed ape after increasing the ram, and adding two SSD’s one in the dvd bay. Modifying one makes you feel like Superman, especially when it works well, and when you are working on something with some body and they go. “Goddam this machine is fast”. It makes me smile.
Cheers All
Thanks for sharing your story. If you have pictures, feel free to tag me on Twitter.
nobody ever mentions the docking station you can get for this. must have in my book.
Agreed, super handy. Home office or media centre.
Hey, can you give more details to which docking station is it? Would love to have one for my beast!
These are great machines. Even if you don't use it daily, these are great for for putting a 2T HHD in the SATA bay where the optical drive was and keeping a copy of all your files on the computer you use daily. Then if something happens to your daily computer or you have to evacuate, you can grab this laptop and be up and running anywhere. With a SSD, they are plenty fast.
Great units, no doubt about it.
This was the last good Lenovo laptop they made. I buy, open and modify, at least 10 Lenovo T-series laptops a month, and have been doing so from way back when they were still IBM's. I have reconfigured the insides of around 500 T-series. The T440 paved the way for an ever increasingly poor design. The T470 and now the T480 are just horrible to work on. Oh and don't forget the X240 that takes at least an hour to do a keyboard-swap. Hail the third-gen - last of the best.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's awesome to hear these stories of how the hardware lives on.
I disagree. The T440p, is a fantastic, tough, and easily upgradable machine. I own four of them. Three with nVidia GT730m graphics. IMHO, the best ThinkPad, ever produced, and a decent gamer.
I consider the T430, to be the second best ThinkPad ever produced, followed by the T430s w/i7/nVidia, and the T400/T500 with Radeon graphics. I own all these machines and find them ALL excellent!
Might need to try and find a 440 one day.
@@LaptopRetrospective Nope. I don't care for them. I don't care for the "u" processor, or being limited to 12gb/RAM. MAYBE if I found a working one in good condition for around $60, I'd consider it.
@@dragunovbushcraft152 The t440p had an M series processor that was replaceable, much like the t430.
I have a t430 and i just upgrade to i7-3632QM and using arctic mx4 every things is good so far. Running everything i need smoothly
Very nice. What do you use it for?
Laptop Retrospective I use this laptop in the university.^^
Laptop Retrospective And i use a ssd drive with a caddy bay have hdd in it.
Cool! Thanks for sharing.
I am still using a T440s FullHD Screen with i5 4300u, 512GB SSD, 12GB Ram. I editing and rendering video on trips and i dont have any problem's with that. 2 battery they allow me for 6 hours job. I'm must replace only TouchPad from T450 becouse this on T440s is really crappy.
Nice, glad to hear you have the HD screen.
FullHD* :D
Quite right.
for me this FullHD is really ok, i dont have any problems with that. On windows 10 i use 100% scalling not 125 or 150
True. Replacing the panel is a solution, but better still is a purpose built display.
I bought my T430 2 weeks ago for about 50$ usd. I've added 4GB of ram and ssd, replaced the fan. It's my main laptop now. Works great. :-)
Nice buy!
@@LaptopRetrospective i bought mine for 230usd, i5-3320m, 8gb ram, 1366x768, 500gb HDD did i overpay?
Sounds good.
Hey! I have the same laptop. May I ask what fan you bought and if now your laptop is silent? Cause I am having issue with the fan noise... Other than that I love T430!
Ah I see you're exploring the fan situation. Check the maintenance manual in the description for part numbers. eBay is great.
Upgraded chip would cost far more than what I paid for the T430.
If you're referring to the CPU then yes, depending on availability that can be the case.
Got T400 for free from my office. Its in bad condition tho, scratched up, no battery, no storage. I put 240GB SSD and 4GB DDR3 RAM in it. It has overheating problem so I had to clean the heatsink and put new thermal paste. Runs well. I use it for document processing, photoshop, light video editing with sony vegas and browsing
That's a respectable work load.
The T400, is a very strong little computer! Fast, with a good processor, and 8gb/RAM! Great little workhorse!
Can it run newer updates of windows?
Yes.
I just picked up one of these for super cheap off eBay (I’m only 14 so I’m just using it for hooking up my arduino to as well as do some basic coding and penetration testing) so it was a steal
Very cool! Hope you enjoy it.
Get T420, it is the last _real_ thinkpad with blue enter key!
without blue enter key might as well get any other laptop.
Lol. Might be more to it than the colour of a key, but I understand what you're saying.
This is still great laptop. Much better than new laptops around same price. Build quality is much higher than that funny plastic laptops in shops today.
Yeah, plastic laptops make me sad.
Are bios required when replacing parts like the ram, cpu, ssd, or the WiFi card?
Any part that isn't in the Whitelist of the BIOS will require some tweaks. RAM, CPU and SSD should be drop in so long as the motherboard supports them. WiFi cards need to be on the approved list or you need to modify the BIOS.
Thanks! - I for one am hooked on the T410s. Fantastic, except of run-time on battery. I have a bunch of cheap docks, in these days available from USD 10 onwards. So I can carry my 3 T410s around, have the manuals, some spare parts. And blow out the fan with compressed air from time to time.
Just to think that you have a 10-year-old machine that easily compares with a 'modern' one - with the exception of gaming, of course. But I'm not a gamer, just some 1,8-inch SSDs thrown in, 8 GB of RAM, and all running *buntu with double-boot to some Windows on disks on the bays, swappable easily with DVD-RW.
Agreed. Very versatile.
Hey! So I bought this laptop a month ago. So far I am very pleased with it. My only issue is the fan noise. Do you have any suggestions on how I can reduce the noise?
Check your thermals. Your fan shouldn't be running that loud. If the temperature is fine, your fan ball bearings might be worn out.
@@LaptopRetrospective how can I check my temperature?
@@Laura-lg1tb SpeedFan does a good job.
How did you solve the fan issue? As far as I understand, it just needs to be replaced with another Delta fan
still using my i7 one since 2015. upgraded to twin 256gb samsung ssd's and 12gb ram. win10 still runs like a dream. using it daily and even playing some asphalt 9 on the built in intel gfx :-)
Excellent!
You better buy a used T430 than a brandnew supermarket laptop made of plastic and with no chance to replace parts for about 400, 500, maybe 600 euros.
There are certainly advantages, it all depends on what you need the computer to do.
This has been my best laptop for what it is.
The T430 is well loved.
4:09 thats an hp ssd, as a former hp employee that micron ssd will probably fail on you. dont store anything valuable on it
It was replaced, thanks for the heads up.
Heavy user of T400 in 2018. Thinkpad rocks!
Nice! What do you use it for?
@@LaptopRetrospective Purchased in Mar 2009, still using it for engineering finite element analysis.
Very cool. Always interested to hear how these machines are used.
i have to use and maintain older machines than this on daily basis at my job...
A true hero.
Laptop Retrospective thanks
Keep up the good work!
Me too. Mostly Sandy Bridge followed by Westmere and Ivy Bridge (mostly i5, a few i3 and i7). For office work, those are plenty adequate, and I/O matters a lot more. Have installed a number of SSDs over the last couple years, and the odd RAM stick. Recently got the very first legit complaint about CPU performance... sheesh, impatient young colleagues and their web stuff. It's only an i3-2310M and those never struck me as very fast, so I hope dropping in an i5-2540M is going to get this sorted.
Haha. Kids these days.