Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

Hmm no sorry but i do not have such issue with other computer/hardware; FPS may drop a little, but certainly not that much!! And "lower settings so it's still playable when it drop to half" that's not the problem. As said, going to 60FPS to 30FPS feels like crap, just as going from 40FPS to 20FPS would.

 

Apologies in advance if previously addressed, I did not find this in searching the thread.

Background: Clean install of 8.1 Pro. Wanting to ensure I am using the most updated NVIDIA video drivers (had a few issues in running some VM's).

Here are the drivers I am finding, and need some help in ascertaining the 'best' (pro's .vs. cons):

Clean install+ Windows updates gets me to :9.18.13.2702
Lenovo 'official' nothing for 8.1, but 8.0 64 bit : 9.18.13.1100
From NVIDIA:
a) Using Product Series:= QUADRO NOTEBOOK ; nothing for 8.1, but 8.0 64 bit : Version: 320.92 WHQL
b) Looking at the GeForce R326 Game Ready Driver; Has 8.1, :Version: 327.23 WHQL - This indicates SUPPORTED PRODUCTS 1000M, under header Quadro FX Notebook series.

Question - Is the above GeForce R326 8.1 driver compatible?

Thanks!

 

If you have a solid working w520 which I had 3 of and unfortunately sold 2 thinking the w530 would be better. Hang on to them. I can't live without the oldie keyboard and esata for backups, the w520 is just so damn good. I'll order the w540 but I'm pretty sure I'll be back to my w520 or t61p

 

Yeah probably it's cause they're not made for game at first, though i find them quite guide, since i can run any game with decent settings... Until there's smoke No idea for the DP HDMI hang issue? It's much more bothering that the smoke issue...

 

Grounding issue?

 

Sorry for my english but even with translator i can't get what "grounding" is...

 

Grounding applies to electrical circuits being properly designed to prevent power surges and electrical interference from outside the system. There was an issue with a number of W520 units where a metal tab on the memory door did not appropriately make contact with the rest of the metal in the frame. This caused an electrical short circuit and a sudden system shutdown when the tab in question was exposed to static electricity from outside the system.

 

Hi guys,

Some of you might have seen my post earlier this year regarding my LCD smudge issue.
I had to work outside in summer, and as much as I can tell some bug went inside of my FHD panel leaving some residue inbetween the layers.
It covers about 20 or so pixels.

Ever since this happened, I've been trying to get a replacement AUO B156HW01 V.4, but the ebay sellers pretty much limit themselves to selling fake "compatible" panels.
I have just recently gotten a quote from IBM Hungary for the exact part for 780 USD.

I'm looking for a good source around 100-150 USD, if anyone knows something, the info would be much appreciated.
I'll try my luck with the warranty as a last resort, but I had no time to do so yet.

 

Uhh this is complicated! In simple words, how can i make sure this is/isn't my problem?

 

As I recall, the fix is to bend the metal tabs on the memory cover so they make full contact with the chassis. There's a very long discussion thread about it in the Lenovo forums here if you'd like to read about it.

 

Actually i noticed an electrical issue : My unit is wired to an LCD using DP-HDMI adapter&cable. When i connect my external HDD to wall plug, then approach the usb to the unit, when it touches the usb port, i hear some bzzzzzz and it makes the HDMI connection falters for a sec! Do you know what's that means? I know the electrical has always been far from perfect here but a pro came and he said all is ok..?

 

Per my post above, TL;DR: I had a smudge in my LCD, Lenovo changed the panel IN WARRANTY, yay!

Anyway, in the meantime I had found a reputable seller, so if anyone is looking for an exact AUO B156HW01 V4, talk to this seller:
screenintaipei on eBay

He even put one aside for me for a week. Hope it can be of help for anyone in need of this great panel.

 

I recently got the: Intel Network 7260.HMWG WiFi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC+Bluetooth.

Anyone have a bios whitelist so I can see if this works. Thanks.

 

If it wasn't ever an option on psref/TAbook, it likely is whitelisted without a custom BIOS.

 

I walked away 2minutes from the unit and when i came back there was a cmd window opened showing "installing drivers. please wait.." after checking processed i saw it was lenovo system update.

But i NEVER asked it to do auto updated. It updated NVIDIA drivers without asking me. Is that a "new feature"..? EDIT : Ok i found out it's in the option.. Wasn't there in former version cause it never EVER did such things before..

 

I have to order a new screen for mine as I have a white spot on mine.
I have a choice of two screens. Which one should I get?
I'm a professional Photographer.

* Matte
Compatibility:
IBM-Lenovo THINKPAD W520 4270-CTO
Size: 15.6-inch WideScreen (13.6"x7.6") ?Resolution: WUXGA (1920x1080) Full HD ?Type: Matte ?Backlight type: LED ?Video signal connector: 40 pin LED screen socket [image]Condition: New Grade A+ ?Warranty: 3 YearsNote: Make sure new screen has same size,
resolution, backlight as your old one!

*********

* Glossy
Compatibility:
IBM-Lenovo THINKPAD W520 4270-CTO
Size: 15.6-inch WideScreen (13.6"x7.6") ?Resolution: WUXGA (1920x1080) Full HD ?Type: Glossy ?Backlight type: LED ?Video signal connector: 40 pin LED screen socket [image]Condition: New Grade A+ ?Warranty: 3 YearsNote: Make sure new screen has same size,
resolution, backlight as your old one!

 

Depends on whether you can control the lighting in the environment around you and/or want to see yourself or the sun in your screen... lol

I'd say: buy an external IPS screen for photographs.

 

The ethernet is not integrated to MB, yet when this part was changed, the Ethernet Mac address changed. How do you explain that?

 

jcv - an external monitor might not be the answer if one is not able to sit for lengths of time & has to work standing.. Count your blessings as insignificant as they may seem.


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I went with the gloss screen and it is fantastic!

 

Just bought a used W520 (i7 2720QM and Quadro) and running Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously to stress test it. The W runs very hot with maximum CPU core temperature reaching low 90s. Is this normal because it passed the Intel Burn Test (10 passes) without issue? If not, is it reasonable to try to return it for a refund because it runs too hot under stress test but otherwise functions perfectly under normal real world load? The machine in question still has 1 month Lenovo warranty left (2011 production). Thanks!

 

I think you will be OK. However, I'd wait to hear what others have to say first.

 

I've had my temps reach into the low 90s when stress testing my machine (about a year after purchase). I'd think that repasting the affected parts (CPU, GPU, whatever) should help, along with a basic cleaning of the insides (can of air), since that might not have been done before you bought it.

Now, if this is doing 90-something degrees during non-benchmarking tasks, there's something definitely wrong.

 

I agree with jarhead... the stress test is maximum testing which really stressing the CPU and other parts... normal usage is far less than that. I would get Speedfan and/or Real Temp to monitor your temps and go from there.
How to Test Your Laptop's CPU Temperature
I do think you will be OK.

 

What should be the normal running temperature under light, everyday CPU load, i.e. surfing the web, etc?

 

Normal temperatures under light load on my W530 are in the 40s & 50s Celsius.

 

I am using a W520 2820qm/Quadro 2000m and I suffered very high temps as well. It won't be obvious with normal usage, but if you are doing anything like running video editing apps or any games at all, the temps in this machine shoot up.

I must have read hundreds of pages of forums for this and there are 2 main causes for the super high temps. (I have seen CPU remain above 90 degrees and GPU also hit 91 degrees, according to Throttlestop)

1. This laptops cooling solution is not designed for heavy workloads with a sandy bridge CPU and a fermi GPU. There is just one cooling fan. The equivalent HP model, the 8560W I believe, also suffers from severe throttling due to a single fan cooling solution. The Dell M4600 fared better as it had a dual fan cooling solution.

2. For some reason, my model, along with those of other also suffering from heat issues, has 2 fewer rows of vents at the bottom. Many people have 4 rows of vents under the fan, but mine and those of others have only 2. Most likely, these were for the i5 models and lenovo must have put i7's in some earlier models. Lenovo has also implemented a BIOS control on the fan to limit its max speed at around 3800 RPM. Read below to see how you can take it upto 5100RPM for a solution to your heating issues.

Anyways, like others have suggested, using new thermal paste is definitely an option, if I recall correctly I shaved off about 4 degrees after re-applying thermal paste.

More importantly, remove all applications that lenovo has installed to manage power and fan related settings on laptop. Then:

A: Install Throttlestop from TechInferno.Have it continuously running in the background (turned on) and in the 'Set Multiplier' option, decrease it from turbo to around 12 or 15 for normal usage. This allows the CPU to run at either 1.2 or 1.5 ghz, thus lowering heat generated considerably. This can also help save battery life a lot when on battery power as I set it a the minimum of 800Mhz if I was on battery and not doing anything intensive.

B: Install TPFancontrol, which is a software that allows direct control of the fan. Change its ini settings to take fan up to max rpm if the temps hit 87 degrees or something. Then you can set multiplier as high as you like in throttlestop and get the maximum performance out of this machine.

Let me know if you have any trouble getting all this running.

 

Increasing fan rpm will mean you wear out the fan much earlier.

All in all the formfactor of a notebook doesn't lend itself for high performance computing. In a desktop tower the possibilities to dissipate much higher volumes of cooling air are much greater.

My desktop has about 9 fans; all more than four times bigger than the one in my W520.

 

You are absolutely right.

Somewhere in this thread we had this exact same debate before. Thing is, the extreme temps to which this machine gets to will cause damage to much more expensive components than just the fan, which is probably the cheapest powered part of this machine. Some guy bought the entire fan assembly for $34. So running the components at max and then later replacing fan is still cheaper than a laptop whose components are being pushed to the maximum. And you have no idea how annoying throttling can be.

And in the post I made above, i mentioned that for normal usage I reduce speed of the CPU to low enough temps that the fan is off for most of the time. I personally got this machine in july of 2012 and figured out these things in a few months. Have been using it to full performance on demand as required and is running great (knock on wood). And I am talking all nighters on BF4 and video rendering for lengthy periods as well.

 

My W520 just died.

I hadn't used it for a while. I was installing new Windows updates and all of a sudden it just turned off and went dark.

All the lights are off and it won't come back on. Completely dead.

I tried a different power supply, but there is not even a power indicator light. Any ideas what I can do?

PS: I tried this advice I found elsewhere, but no luck:
Remove the battery (and slice) and AC power
Turn the laptop on 30 times
Re-connect the batteries/AC
Turn on

 

did you do the bios update via the lenovo software? I always avoid bios update unless needed and never inside the OS. I can see a windows update hosing an OS but not the entire machine

 

@huberth:

Have you tried powering it on with no battery installed, AC adapter only?

Are you using the 135W brick?

 

I was using the 170 W adapter when it happened.
I tried without the battery. No luck.
I had not done a BIOS update recently..
Something inside got hot and melted some of the plastic around one of the screws of the memory latch.
But it was not the memory that overheated. Something else. Perhaps a fan failure. I guess it's a write-off.
I have already started selling the RAM and SSDs on eBay ...

 

Wow...

Have you considered swapping the motherboard instead of burying the machine? Granted, you should get some $$$ from parts especially if you have a FHD screen, but still...

Good luck.

 

Any idea how much a new (RAID enabled) motherboard including labor would cost approximately?

 

No.

You can post a WTB (want to buy) ad in ThinkPad Forum's Marketplace:

forum.thinkpads.com • View forum - Marketplace - Forum Members only

Good luck.

 

I have a w520 sound card problem. The sound will after a while start buzzing, stalling buzzing. Kind of Max Headroom like. It seems like a conflict or some sort. A reboot will fix the problem for a few days.

I have 2 sound drives - the standard Conexant Drive - up to date.

I also have an NVIDIA high definition audio - is this normal?

I have deleted reinstalled etc.

 

Nvidia HD audio is likely HDMI/Displayport output on the nvidia GPU. Perfectly normal. Same with Intel and AMD audio devices, for the same reason.

Not sure about the buzzing though.

 

Has anyone found an AC wireless card that will work properly in the w520? Just replaced my old router with a new AC model and would love to take advantage of the higher speeds with my w520.

Also thinking about replacing my w520 with a w540 or a HP Zbook or maybe even a miniature desktop model to use with my NEC 2090uxi monitor. Hate to give up the excellent keyboard for the offset crap but the lure of an IPS display has me kind of chomping on the bits. Decisions, decisions.


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You'd either need a Lenovo-approved (whitelisted) wireless card, or you'd need to edit the BIOS to allow something else.

 

Moving W520 and Dock to an environment that has 3 X VGA only 1280 x 1024 monitors. Want to run all 3 in extended mode. Do not need to use the W520 screen when docked. To connect I plan the following.

#1 VGA port (Dock)
#2 Display port to VGA cable (Dock)
#3 Display link USB to VGA

Before purchasing #2 and #3 wanted to get input on whether #2 works with Dock and W520. Previously ran 3 DVI monitors without issue.

Other notes, Windows 8.1, will be running Yacht 3D navigation software (Nobletec Trident) as well as weather and yacht systems monitoring software.

Thanks in advance

 

I'm ordering a few things to update my w520 so I can give it to my wife with the latest & greatest. I've misplaced my PDF of the maintenance manual & was wondering if anyone can tell me if there is a mSATA slot under the keyboard? Thanks…


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Latest HMM: http://support.lenovo.com/de/de/docs/MIGR-76854

 

Hey guys,

Spent (wasted) 3 entire days trying to get something that seemed a no brainer to set up but gradually became some of the most infuriating/frustrating days that I have ever spent on computers

Lenovo W520 (bios 1.34)
i7 2820QM
Win 7 x64 pro (on samsung 650 gb sata drive)
24gb ram (8 x 8 x 4 x 4)
1 x 7200 rpm samsung 650gb hdd
1 x 7200 rpm scorpio black (data drive in ultra bay adaptor)
1 x 240 gb crucial mSATA m500 (win 8.1 x64)

All I wanted was to add in a win 8.1 installation on an msata drive and dual boot with my existing win 7 installation on the spindle hdd. Seemed simple enough. It took me quite a while to figure out that win 8.1 seemed to have severe issues installing on an msata ssd on this laptop whilst there was another bootable drive in there.

I removed the other drives and still faced a lot of problems booting from the msata after the first reboot that windows requires. After much trial and error and googling as well as combining a bunch of solutions (disabling VT-d, enabling diagnostics at boot up, setting bios to defaults etc), I finally managed to install windows and get it up and running.

Then the second I attached the other drives back into the laptop, and although the laptop booted up, it refused to detect the win 7 drive in windows (it was visible and bootable from bios). It was also nowhere to be found in disk management tools. I made the mistake of trying to re-install win 8 with drives attached. Nothing worked.

I had to repeat the whole aforementioned process again to get 8.1 running on msata.

I then reattached the remaining 2 drives (one in the laptops primary hdd bay, and the other in the optical drive ultra bay). This time I inserted the data drive into the laptops primary hdd bay and the windows 7 drive in the ultra bay.

Although I can see and use the win 7 drive from win 8, I cannot boot windows from an ultrabay adaptor. I am too scared of trying to switch the drives back around in the fear that they will mess up the win 8 installation again.

Is there a fix to this? I would prefer one that did not involve a bios update as the laptops warranty period has ended.

Thanks in advance and for reading this lenghty tale of woe.

 

Making this new post as the previous one is too lengthy and this contains just the simple solution I found:

The solution was, I switched the places of the ultrabay drive with the win7 os drive and booted.

Then all drives were visible and usable, with the exception that my win7 installation was useless now.

I installed EasyBCD, went into the startup editor to the OS selection menu, pointed it to where my win 7 install was, and pressed apply to input the registry entry in win 8.1 boot manager to allow OS selection at boot.

now whenever i boot, i get the option to boot between win 8.1 and win 7 from win 8.1's boot manager.

Both drives are perfectly bootable and usable.

--------------------

EDIT:

A new problem has sprung up.

I have an external Transcend USB3 2TB drive. Whenvever it is hooked up to the USB3 port, the laptop cannot boot from either OS if I try restarting. I have tried restarting a couple of times. However, with the drive attached, it is not possible to boot.

I have to remove the drive to reboot.

The drive has no OS installed and is a pure data drive.

 

Can't boot while storage usb3 drive connected happens to me too. Could someone tell me about the 2000M overclock?

I'm not experienced with that.. I downloaded EVGA and tried a bit, unit crash after 10' despite temperature still very fine..

 

How does the T440s stack up in comparison to the w520? For photoshop, multitasking and/or vmware (1-2 linux - usually 1 at a time). I'm concerned about it being too heavy to be 'used on the lap'

 

Note, if you are not using a w520 anymore - what have you switched to?

 

Does anyone else use the Esata, I'm experiencing some very slow esata speed transfers. I haven't used it since last month and I usually transfer my backups via esata. I'm getting some very weird results, 11 hours estimate for 8gb transfer and my mouse is staggering while transferring the data. Could be my drive or a setting but I haven't changed anything that I can remember.

Figured it out, used the default AHCI driver (not the intel matrix storage)

Now copying through esata at 300MB a sec. That does not seem possible.

Transferred a 4 GB MS iso from my samsung SSD to my 2tb( I think 5900 or 5400rpm) drive at nearly 300 MB/s

Can a 5400rpm/5900rpm drive transfer it that fast?