Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

When I called Lenovo a week ago they said that the 160GB SSD was an X-25M. The 310 series is for mSATA drives. You're thinking of the 320 series 2.5" drives.

 

Just checked with the 270.61 drivers Pro/e WF4 runs fine with the BIOS set to discrete GPU. So Optimus mode is probably just not getting triggered to run with the Quadro when it starts for some reason.

 

I believe the 160GB SSD offered by Lenovo is the Intel SSDSA1M160G2LE. The Intel 310 is an mSata drive and the X-25M is a 2.5" form factor.

 

Ok, here are my crystalmark scores:

Test Size: 1,000mb
Test Data: Default (Random)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 977.541 MB/s
Sequential Write : 418.928 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 415.881 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 372.120 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 15.500 MB/s [ 3784.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 130.134 MB/s [ 31771.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 151.187 MB/s [ 36910.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 132.605 MB/s [ 32374.3 IOPS]

 

Glad to know you figured it out...it's kind of annoying that Optimus doesn't work smoothly but at least it can fixed with a reboot.

Now I'm debating if I should roll the dice with the new drivers just released by Lenovo...

 

Guys im going to call my rep tmrw and discuss my pricing, i have a quick quest on the smart card reader, adding that does it impact any upgrades for me later down the road?

 

I started getting these in my event log, and was wondering if anyone else had experienced these:

And, should I care? If so, how do I fix it?


The speed of processor 5 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 6 seconds since the last report.


- System

- Provider

[ Name] Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Processor-Power
[ Guid] {0F67E49F-FE51-4E9F-B490-6F2948CC6027}

EventID 37

Version 0

Level 3

Task 7

Opcode 0

Keywords 0x8000000000000000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2011-05-06T22:01:38.425081100Z

EventRecordID 4884

Correlation

- Execution

[ ProcessID] 4
[ ThreadID] 44

Channel System

Computer w520

- Security

[ UserID] S-1-5-18


- EventData

Group 0
Number 5
CapDurationInSeconds 6
PpcChanges 2
TpcChanges 0
PccChanges 0

 

Ok...I can speak for everyone who's had issues with the latest drivers...do NOT install the new Bluetooth drivers. My laptop is just looping at start and won't boot up.

 

None that I am aware of.

 

Figured it out. OpenGL wasn't selected as the graphics preference in the config.pro file. I had win32_gdi selected for when I was troubleshooting the Pro/e install.

 

Has anyone had issues where they have had to tweak their memory settings? I consistently get errors with two or more DIMMS in memtest, all of the DIMMS test just fine when I check them individually..

 

Awesome!!!!

 

Yes. That seems to be it.

I did the update yesterday through Lenovo System Update (which did not include the Bluetooth drivers) and had no problems.

 

all I have to say is thank you lenovo...awesome. well, look at the bright side...at least I can put my windows installation on my RAID array now.

Has anyone tried installing the new bluetooth drivers on a clean installation?

 

How big of an issue is the size of the power supply on the W520? I received my T420 and honestly I am pretty disappointed in the screen. The viewing angles are pretty bad. I am coming from an R61 that also had pretty average view angles but I guess I expected more for the money I payed. This will be a replacement for my aging R61 and will be my primary pc. I was looking to possibly send the T420 back and just get the T520 because I heard the screen was better. I was originally going to get the 1600X900 T520 but thought maybe I should pay a little more for the FHD screen. I will primarily just be using it for internet, office, remoting into my pc at work and doing some networking stuff (I'm in IT). I might play some games but honestly I have a PS3 for that. I honestly wanted the size of the T420 but I might have an issue with the screen (I might get over that as I didn't buy it to watch movies, etc. but I feel like it should be better than what it is right now).

When I priced out the T520, I was surprised that I can get a loaded out W520a few hundred less than a T520! Any reason for that? The size of the power supply scares me a bit and reminds me of the XBOX 360 one, lol. It isn't a dealbreaker I guess as even the 135v one for the T520 is a decent size also. The pc will primarily be at home but I am sure I will occasionally take it out or up to work.

Any opinions? Would I see an improvement if I went to a 1600X900 T520 (compared to the T420 screen) or should I just suck it up and go FHD? W520 a better deal even with the larger power brick? Thanks in advance!

 

With a 7 hour battery life, you may be able to leave the 170W power brick at home most of the time.

Does anyone know if a smaller power supply would work as a type of "trickle charger" for the batteries?

EDIT: According to the second to the last post here: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Serie...ng-vs-performance-question/td-p/424963/page/2 it seems to work with a 135W adapter.

I just tried to use a 90W adapter, which resulted in a message: "This AC adapter may not provide enough power to your Thinkpad". So I guess it would work, you just would have to turn the laptop off overnight to allow the battery to be fully recharged.

 

I think it's been reported that a 90w will charge the batteries while the machine is turned off...... not sure however.

 

With the Operating System installed on M-SATA, does anyone know if this drive can be removed AFTER the W520 loads to desktop? I would like to have the Mobile Broadband Card. I realize that internet USB devises are available.

 

Good point. How much smaller is the 135W adapter? Is that the one that comes with the T520? If it isn't that much smaller, I think I should just go with the W520. If it was half the size though, that would be something to think about.

 

I don't understand what you're trying to do. You want to lift up the keyboard and swap out the mSATA drive while the laptop is powered on for the mobile broadband card? If so, then don't do that. You can have either the mSATA drive or internal mobile broadband card. You'll have to pick which one is more important for your daily needs.

You can always buy the mSATA drive and stick it in a sled (I posted one a few pages ago in this thread) so you can put it in the primary bay or UltraBay if you feel the mobile broadband card is more important. That way you can save your investment in the mSATA drive.

We're going to need more information than this if we're going to help. What kind of DIMMS? What speed? What size? How many do you have?

 

While it's always nice to have options, buying an mSata drive and a sled to put it in probably costs as much or more than just getting a 2.5" drive SSD to begin with and having at least 50% more capacity.

It might be easier and less costly to get a USB mobile broadband adapter. As hrana notes it may keep you from getting shocked or frying your laptop.

 

Agree. If he needs internal broadband then he shouldn't get the mSATA drive. If he has a change of heart later on and has already bought the mSATA drive then he can always grab a sled.

Agree again. Don't get me wrong, the Gobi 3000 is a very cool piece of hardware but I don't see the point of getting one (besides the GPS capability) because most networks will get a free USB dongle with a data-only contract.

 

W520 can works with 135W power supply, the same one being used on T520 or W510. I got mine when I bought the docking station because Canada site haven't yet sell the docking station with 170W power supply. Now I can hook up my 170W power supply at home with docking station and carry my 135W with me. The good thing about 135W is that it works with many other Thinkpad too.

 

Have anybody tried Intel 320 SSD as a secondary drive? I have 510 for system now, and I am considering getting 600 GB Intel for my data. Since there is a bunch of problems on 510, I dont want to spend over 1000 USD for a drive causing more problems.

 

Just buy an HDD. There's no reason why large data files need an SSD. They read sequentially. OSes have many small data files that need to be loaded at once; that is why HDDs are major bottlenecks as system drives.

Just get a 1TB 2.5" HDD and call it a day.

BTW, I just got my W520. It's awesome. Now I just need to migrate the OS over to my SSD.

 

the speed is not a problem, but I hate the noise and vibrations from the HDD.

 

I don't hear any noise or vibrations for my HDD in the ultrabay. Using a WD 7200RPM 750GB drive.

 

Yeah, it is your money after all. The 320 series should have rock-solid reliability if prior Intel drives are any indication.

 

Hey everyone I just got my w520 in the mail today, so exciting! I just started it and was installing a few programs. When I put the CD for Microsoft Office in the optical drive it started spinning and made a rather loud noise, sort of like a loud fan. Is the optical drive supposed to be this loud?

 

I have experimented with that and the HDD is much more quiet in a main bay, so I have SSD in ultrabay now. But I have standard 500 GB from Lenovo (hitachi), maybe WD is better. In my room the vibrations some sort of interference and I can hear a low noise from that. But I have to admit that I am a bat lol

 

Never mind it seems like a false alarm. I tried a few other CD's and they didn't make any noise. I then put the Microsoft Office CD in my other computer's optical drive and I heard another unfamiliar noise, suggesting that the CD is the problem, not the optical drive.

 

I have used a Intel 510 SSD as a single drive on the W520 and now bought a second one and put it in RAID0, which gives you twice the storage and twice the speed! (See benchmarks in signature)

There are no problems with the drive, aside from the 30 second delay when you do a warm re-boot. This is only an inconvenience which will be fixed soon by Lenovo - I hope. (It also occurred for me when I tested the OCZ Vertex 3 on the W520).

 

Sometimes an out of balance CD can cause some noise on spinning. It's normal. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

sure, but 2x 240 GB is not enough for me. But the 600 GB SSD is really not cheap, so I have to to think about this very carefully

 

Lenovo Thinkpad W520 Unboxing and Overview

Shameless self-promotion. Really rudimentary unboxing, but it's my first attempt at it.

 

Man lenovo has the best customer service! i cant not get ahold of anyone from their sales line, plus the automated dialing machine doesnt even work when u input anything! Any reps with direct number?

 

Try this:
Patrick Ngankam, Inbound Sales Rep
919-294-5832
Lenovo AG Direct Sales

 

I'm guessing that you have used him to buy a W520? Was he willing to haggle with the price fairly easily, just wondering?

 

I have 4 x 4GB DIMMS (1 x Samsung & 3 from Crucial) - Spec / Link below:
Part Number: CT1934343
Module Size: 4GB
Package: 204-pin SODIMM
Feature: DDR3 PC3-10600
Specs: DDR3 PC3-10600 • CL=9 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1333 • 1.5V • 512Meg x 64 •

4GB, 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 upgrades for Lenovo ThinkPad W520 Laptop/Notebook, CT1934343 from Crucial.com

it's starting to look like one of the DIMMS may be faulty - but I consistently see more issues when I have more than 2 DIMMS loaded in to the machine.

 

Patrick is an excellent rep for Lenovo. Has a background in computer science. I know that he would help you much.

 

I appreciate that a lot, I'll make sure to use him when I order a W520. Maybe I should tell him you referred him to me, giving you real-life rep points?

 

I got lots of points, but tks anyway.

 

I had something like that as well where I thought it was broken as soon as I started using Slot 1 and Slot 3. But after doing some SODIMM roulette it turns out to be just 1 DIMM that was bad. Memtest86+ was reporting errors for me at 2GB and 5GB addresses. That made me think that Slot 0 and Slot 1 were bad. But that couldn't be because the first one was the original Samsung and the other was a Crucial that passed the memtest. I finally took out the Samsung from the equation and still got the error. Aha! Was the Crucial RAM incompatible? Nope. It seemed the addresses interleave or something. I tried rotating the positions of the DIMMs and kept track of the sequence on a pad (keeping in mind which was one in Slot 2 to have a fixed reference). When I took out one of the chips everything was fine. I added back the Samsung and it passed the complete memtest86+. I now have 12GB in Slot 0-2 running (Underkeyboard:0-Crucial, 2-Crucial, Underlaptop: 1-Samsung, 3-Empty) . Waiting for the 3rd Crucial DIMM to return from RMA. Looks like you're the third one in the forum to have problems with Crucial.

P.S. Part CT1934343 and CT51264BC1339 are the same. I asked Crucial and was told the first part number was the one labeled for the W520. The generic part was a few dollars cheaper.

Part Number: CT51264BC1339

Module Size: 4GB
Package: 204-pin SODIMM
Feature: DDR3 PC3-10600
Specs: DDR3 PC3-10600 • CL=9 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1333 • 1.5V • 512Meg x 64 •
http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?imodule=CT51264BC1339

 

For those with 4270-CTO and didn't explicitly order MS Office, did your image include MS Office Starter? When I installed the SSD it asked for a reboot a few phases before it would have asked asked about Office and Thinkvantage tools.

 

First impressions:
-This thing runs super cool, even while on discrete only. I am very, very glad that my biggest gripe with the Macbook Pro was taken care of in the design of the W520. The thermal management on this machine is phenomenal.
-The 2720QM is a very fast processor. It chews through just about any task that I throw at it with ease. The Quadro 2000M is also a very good GPU. I'm getting much better framerates with higher details at 1920x1080 than I was with the GT 330M at 1680x1050.
-Optimus is good for general usage, but is terrible for games. I'm going to be going into the BIOS whenever I want to game.
-The FHD screen is phenomenal on this thing. Horizontal viewing angles are really good, vertical not so much, but the overall image quality of the display is top notch.
-The keyboard is phenomenal and the Thinklight is a great alternative to backlighting a keyboard.
-The touchpad texture is a little bit weird. I'll eventually get used to it.
-Fingerprint readers are cool.
-HDDs are slow.

That's my take on this laptop so far.

 

Whew, the problems I had earlier are all gone with a replacement OCZ Vertex 3. The original drive died soon after my previous post. My UltimateN 6300 had to be replaced too. The Vertex is working nicely as my main drive with a fresh copy of Windows using the F6 driver and the registry import referenced on http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/572043-sata-6-gbps-official-word.html#post7426953

I can't believe how horrid Lenovo support was to get the wireless problem taken care of. Very painful.

Anyway, I'm amazed how well this laptop works. Looks like it's time to peruse all of the pages and look for tips.

 

I don't have this issue at all.

I can warm boot all day and there is no delay. When I received this laptop, the first thing I did was pull out the hard drive and put in the SSD. It's never attempted to initialize a mechanical hard drive before (unless they did so during QA phase before I received it). I wonder if that made any difference or if it's just coincidence. Either way I'm not having this issue and I wonder why.

 

Yes. I just reinstalled from recovery disks and Office Starter was installed.

 

Can I ask what was wrong with your wireless card? I just got my W520 and I'm having trouble with the Ultimate-N 6300 wireless with very intermittent network performance, dropped packets, and connection failures. Connection via the GB Ethernet port is fine and connection to the wireless router with other laptops is also fine.

I'm suspecting the card as I can't even see as many access points when searching as my 5 year old wireless card in my old Dell.

Then again it could be Windows 7 doing something strange as that OS is new to me (I'm an XP die-hard).

Any ideas?

 

but what SSD?