Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

Are any of you guys going too put up some W520 vids on Youtube.

 

I will soon once mine arrives.

 

Thanks, also what's is your w520 configuration?

 

Oh, I have a question. Does anyone know if there is a store or something that sells a lot of Wenger bags? I want the Wenger Pegasus, and the only place that I could find it was TigerDirect.ca, and it wants $74.99 for the bag which after shipping and taxes, comes to $93 something.

 

If you want a video of something specific I could do one.

Newegg or Amazon both have them available. Any input as to why you chose the Pegasus over the Ibex or the Synergy?

 

I checked both their sites, they don't have it (or the Synergy and stuff) for the Canadian site.

I like having my bag a size bigger than what I'm carrying. That's about it. Having a bigger bag also lets me put bigger things in it.

 

I completely agree with Dwkor. You are better off getting the cheaper PC3-10600 type. See AnandTech - Sandy Bridge Memory Scaling: Choosing the Best DDR3 for a great read.

 

I'm already planning on installing an mSATA drive as soon as Intel releases one that is at least 120GB (yes, I know Renice has one, but I like to buy from companies I've heard of), and as soon as WD starts shipping the WD10JPVT 1TB 9.5mm drive, I'll be installing one of those too. I'm not a big fan of RAID-0 anyway

 

Silly Canada
From what I've read the Ibex (17'') actually is bigger than the Pegasus, and the Synergy actually has more room than either 17''. The laptop pouch is smaller, but the actual internal capacity is larger.

 

2920xm, FHD Screen, 6GB and 500GB HD.

Going to do a run against my W510 920xm.

 

I have already asked this but didn't get a response:
-Does the W520 have thermal grease, glue, pads, or what?
-Will it void my warranty to apply some arctic silver instead?

 

I would also like to know about the thermal pad. I think the w520 uses thermal grease for the GPU and CPU, and thermal pads for the GPU memory.

According to the service manual, the heatsink in the t520/w520 varies by the CPU/GPU you choose. Looks like there is three different one; Switchable Graphic, Integrated Graphic, and Workstation. The manual shows that the Switchable graphic heatsink has three small thermal pads for the GPU memory, the Integrated Graphic does not have thermal pads. The manual does not explicitly mention thermal pad on the Workstation heatsink, but the picture looks like there is room for some.

I am guessing the w520 has the Workstation heatsink, the Integrated Graphic or Switchable Graphic heatsink is for the t520.

If anyone has open their w520 with i7-2920xm, and can confirm if there are thermal pads on the GPU memory. If there are thermal pads, then how thick are they? 0.5mm, 1.0mm, or 1.5mm?

Here is the manual: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/0a60078_01.pdf

 

Quote: (last page "Final Words")
The sweet spot appears to be at DDR3-1600, where you will see a minor performance increase over DDR3-1333 with only a slight increase in cost.

 

What your w520 configuration?
Do you have SSD or HDD or both?
Do you use linux?
I'll say run random programs on it.

 

It was ordered by my new employer.... it took a while to justify the extended RAM need

 

After a way tooo long time of waiting I finally pulled the trigger on a W520! WOHOO!!!

Now the final questions: i have 4GB (1module) ram and he 500GB disc. I want to upgrade the ram and put a SSD in it.

RAM: i am thinking of getting another 8 GB to have 12 in total (is this compatible if I am using 3 modules and leave one open?) which RaM do you guys have/ recommend? the normal speed 1333mhz will do it for me.

SSD: never had one and I am not really familiar with it. Want to use it as a boot disc and for some critical programs that i want to use. (space should be OS + 20-30. GB for apps). I think an mSATA is the better choice for me, because I need the DVD drive from time to time and the speed advantage of a a normal SSD t(hat I can afford) is not too big.

Do you think I will be able to get both for under 300 USD?

thx for your help!

 

Freelancer27:

You can easily get all that for under $300. I know this because I did just that. I got an Intel 310 80 GB for $200 and 3 sticks of 4 GB GSkill 1333 mHz RAM for $80. So you should be able to get 2 sticks of RAM and an mSATA as well.

A note about the RAM, you are supposed to put the RAM in a certain order. I forgot what that is. Frankly, I was too lazy to look it up which is why I bought 3 sticks of RAM, so all four slots would be taken.

Edit: Newegg has the Intel 310 80 GB in stock: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167040

 

With current price of RAM ($20-25 per 4Gb), you can afford to have 16Gb

As for SSD - everything depends on how much total storage do you need. If you think that 128Gb would be enough for you, I'd rather replace main HDD with 128Gb SSD and don't worry about mSata at all.

Speaking of the model and keeping in mind your budget - OCZ is the cheapest one but there are ton of reliability issues reported with their recent drives. I personally suggest Crucial m4 - those one are one of the fastest drives available on the market now (SATA-6). You can buy 128Gb version for around $200-220 now.

 

Hello again I believe I found a decent compromise for my calibration but I have a new issue!
When I use Windows photo viewer it changes his internal colors seems like if it uses a different calibration! It only works in full screen (F11), otherwise it looks green! :O How can I fix this? thanks

 

If you need a really fast speed, you'd better go for intel 510 SSD which support SATA 6Gb.
Newegg.com - Intel 510 Series (Elm Crest) SSDSC2MH120A2K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Why did you need a 12GB RAM? I think 8GB RAM is more then enough for your daily use.
so you could get intel 510 120GB for $276 and a 4GB RAM about $25. That comes out $300 perfectly

 

I would like to see just how bad those vertical viewing angles are on the FHD screen... The reviews are so ambiguous...

 

so which speed is recommend for the w520 ram?
the stock appears to be DDR3 1333 but there are multiple PC3's associated with it. 10600,10660,10666. thanks

[will this work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231342 ]

 

Do you know about his/her daily use? I don't think he/she mentioned it I think the whole point of buying W520 over T520 is to be able to put 16Gb of RAM. For some people (myself including) 16Gb is barely enough.

Speaking of Intel 510 - it's not faster than Crucial m4 (it's faster in some modes and slower in others). Intel typically expected to have better reliability, but if it a question if it worth 20-25% premium over Crucial, for example

 

Those would work.

 

Did you check out the review on notebookcheck? Review Lenovo ThinkPad W520 Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

Good observation in the manual. I guess we just need someone who has taken it apart to tell us. I will have the 2720 cpu and 2000m gpu. The thermal pads are 1-time use, so if you re-do the thermal paste you should replace the pads as well.

edit:
I believe it will be the 'workstation' thermal module (pg 85). If you look at that one, it is the only one with 2 heat pipes which is what the W520 has. http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/58155.jpg

So it looks like grease only. If someone could verify that would be nice

 

I wanted to redo the thermal grease/pads but do not know how thick the pads are, if there are any. I already bought the thermal grease, but the pads comes in three different thickness, from frozencpu. If I open the laptop then I can be sure, but then it will be useless for a few days until the pads come in the mail.

 

The Workstation heatsink also has the two side bar next to the GPU heatskin portion, that could be where the pads goes. I am quite sure you will have to sink the GPU memory. But I am not sure if they are pads or if lenovo made the two bars closer to the memory to use grease.

 

I saw that. It makes the vertical viewing angles look horrendous, especially from the top, which is the most common non-direct viewing angle (e.g., when you are on a plane or in a train. Is it really that bad when you're looking down from 30-45 degrees above center (and some 1.5-2 feet away)?

Is the brightness at least uniform when your eyes are at the height of the top trim of the panel and you're looking from 2 feet away (i.e., normal viewing)?

It would be nice to hear some subjective indirect viewing experiences, as well...

 

That could be, but they don't show a peel-away view of the thermal pads like they do in the first module. Hopefully they are close enough to use grease... the pads are supposedly not as good.

 

Also check this out:
Service Videos and http://www.lenovoservicetraining.com/ion/

 

My WEI score is;
Processor: 7.6
Memory: 7.6
Graphic: 6.9
Gaming Graphic: 6.9
Disk: 5.9

I have the 2920xm, 2000m, 16GB 1333 ram, 500gb WD HDD.

I have seen some score for the 2920xm as high as 7.9, why is my so low? I have the battery is in, the 170w adapter is plug in, and the power plan is set to max performance. I also ran all of the updates.

 

Speaking of Intel 510, I seem to remember there was a $30 rebate going on Amazon, which seems to have sadly disappeared.

The Crucial M4 looks tempting, however, the Anandtech review wasn't all praise...

 

I got different take from Anandtech ( http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/12):

Even if Intel is better in sequential activity, m4 is better in random activity. Review mentioned potential issues with garbage collection in RAID but in this configuration it would not be an issue.

I'm personally going with m4 rather than Intel. I frankly don't think that Intel worth extra $70 premium for 128Gb model.

 

can someone help me? I'm getting crazy

 

Yes and no. I assume people buying a w520 isn't average desktop users There's no doubt the m4 is fast, however, the way it does garbage collection is what worried me.

While Intel is expensive, traditionally the failure rates of Intel SSD's have been lower than the competition.

Having said that, I'm also planning to get a SSD soonish and the m4 does look very lucrative

 

I still don't see how you guys are getting 6hours...the best I've gotten is 5hrs..and thats running at 9/15 screen brightness and low battery..I tried the balance thing and get around 4:15minutes but 6hours seems like a pipe dream for me. I even have tried running purely integrated graphics and that seems to work worse for some reason. I can't seem to find anything that is running in the background so maybe I just have a hard working machine..lol I will say though that it has been an interesting battle to get everything I need on this thing right. I guess 4:30 hrs though isn't bad but just would like to see this magical 6hr mark a lot of you guys are getting. All I'm doing as well is basic surfing(no videos) and microsoft office.

 

What drivers are you guys using for your trackpad? I have been using the stock trackpad drivers and so far its not to bad but just wanting to see what everyone else is using.

By the way also I just finished installing ubuntu on virtualbox and so far so good...just have to have the integrated graphics card on as optimus isn't allowed or at least I haven't found the drivers that seem to work with it just yet.

 

6 hours on this laptop feels short to me.

Doing basic surfing I can get like 8.5 hours. I haven't done anything special to my machine, I just use the factory image. Though, I think my battery life took a hit after I upgraded my RAM by like 15 ~ 20 minutes doing certain things.

 

vegas3416:

Did you uninstall Thinkpad's power management tools?

 

Could it be your battery? I think there are a least two different manufacture for lenovo battery.

 

They should have more or less the same capacity, though. I got the Sanyo one, which should be the crappiest one if I did my research correctly.

 

When I checked in the power manager, it said that my battery manfacture is LGC. Which one is that? Panasonic or Sanyo?

 

I'm gonna guess neither and say that it is a LG.

 

I guessed that too, but I have only heard of Panasonic and Sanyo here. Does anyone else have LGC battery?

 

My older T510 has an LG. They use higher voltage cells in those packs but they are still the same capacity and should perform the same.

 

If you set your CPU to the absolute lowest performance level that will help you find rogue processes. They'll effectively consume a higher percentage of cpu resources in the task manager. Even things that just consume single digit percentage of the cpu time will make an impact. Other things to try, when on battery, turn off ALL performance monitors. Things like temperature monitors, or cpu speed monitors. All those monitors are constantly polling your hardware and keeping them out of their idle states. Lastly, I'd make sure you have no power consuming USB devices plugged in. For me, even having a wireless mouse dongle makes a measurable difference. Not because the dongle uses so much power, but because it prevents the USB hub from going to sleep. When you are operating in the 8 -10 watt range even the tiniest of things that you'd normally dismiss do make a difference.

 

Well I just got my W520 and according to the ThinkVantage toolbox it is running on BIOS 1.27. I mostly see members using version 1.26. What's the dealio?

I only got a 4.9 for system graphics though, and it's not even showing my 2000M as the card.

 

What? 1.27?

Also, that's normal on Optimus as it uses the iGPU for desktop stuff.

 

Yep. it says 1.27. I need to figure out the optimus/performance stuff. Is there a guide somewhere? I'd basically like to have three performance settings: mobile (igpu, low clock speed, etc), regular use (plugged in but still energy efficient) and performance (everything to the max). I assume I can program these through the power manager, or do I need to go into BIOS also?

Also, what's the best charging scheme to keep battery life long? I will be plugged in most of the time.