Thinkpad Carbon X1 Extreme (upcoming)

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenov...S-15-competitor-has-been-leaked.318248.0.html

Anyone here who likes the X1 series but really wanted those 45w CPU's (with 6 cores now) and a dGPu for added oomph?

This could be our answer.

 

It will be a decent machine for those looking for a 15"-class system, but if they want to be a true competitor to the XPS 15 / Precision 5520, they need to drop 2.5" drive support in lieu of stuffing the biggest battery possible in that machine. Those Dell models are currently the antithesis of the external + internal battery configuration, stuffing a 97 wHr battery in there when you equip them with an m.2-based SSD (if you opt for a 2.5" drive, you get a smaller battery, something like 56 wHr.)

Meanwhile, between the W550s/P50s to the P51s/P52s form factor, the internal battery managed to shrink down from 42 wHr to 32-ish? Not great.

Edit: While I'm complaining, here's also hoping that, if they elect to stuff 'full-wattage' parts in there, be it the Vega-integrated quad-cores, or the Coffee Lake 6-cores + a decent-wattage GPU, hopefully they opt for dual fans, and a reasonable layout of the components on the board to minimize how far the heat has to travel. My current P50s, even with only the 6500u, gets stupid-hot on the bottom after an extended productivity or gaming session. Looking at the design of the HSF, it seems the heat has to travel very far (half the width of the machine) to reach the fins/fan, meaning all the surfaces beneath the heatpipes inevitably get heat-soaked and hot-to-the-touch.

 

Is that called P1 or X1 extreme? I heard P1 from other sources. I believe it should be called P1.
P1 vs P52 like X1 vs X280

 

There’s no way you can put 45-W cpu in X1 chassis.

 

From some accounts, we are expecting two different laptops.

One, called the X1 Extreme with (potentially) a KabyLakeG/Vega setup (and maybe other options?).

Another, called the P1 with 1050ti-class GPU options (Quadro?).

Neither will have a 7row KB.

 

Would you want a numpad?

Trackpoint + Centered keyboard + No numpad nice for that airport/bus though..

 

The P1 is out so hopefully the X1 E is out with the Nvidia 10 series GPU's soon?

 

I wish they can make a GeForce thinkpad instead of Quadro. Don't wanna pay for the functions I don't need

 

Then X1E is for you

 

Too bad I already got P52
Besides I wanna play VR, and obviously P2000 is still not enough

 

Little bit more information about X1 Extreme
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Pictu...umer-variant-of-the-ThinkPad-P1.325676.0.html
http://winfuture.de/news,104772.html

P1 and X1 Extreme User Guide
https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/p1_x1_extreme_ug_en.pdf

 

Now it is official!
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/ThinkPad-X1-Extreme/p/22TP2TXX1E1
Copy of P1 with Nvidia GTX 1050Ti instead of Quadro and without Xeon option.

If thermals will be good and FHD version will have ~100% sRGB without PWM, I will prefer X1 Extreme instead of XPS 15.

 

Thanks! Lovely! Definitely an XPS 15 contender, can't wait for the reviews.

 

Wish the battery capacity was higher, but otherwise it looks good so far. It should last 8+ hours for ordinary usage, hopefully. Will wait for reviews, as well as discounts, given the exaggerated MSRP on Lenovo's site. I hope the FHD display is competitive with the XPS 15 9570's FHD display.

 

P1 disassembly, X1E will have the same internals layout.

 

I was thinking the same too. I was hoping they could bring us some 500nit screens too like their X1 Carbon series, but it seems they are offering pretty much the same as Dell. The option to include an LTE chip is not here either. I still don't like the Fn/Ctrl key's being swapped on these machines, so it will have to really shine in the QC and cooling department for it to steal the crown from the XPS 15 imo - I was hoping they would bring more than the 9570 since it came out a lot later.

 

Same layout as Dell XPS 15 9570 (below). I'd give the Dell small edge in thermal management for having a little larger and thicker plate areas. Performance will probably be similar enough to most reviewers.

 

The product page says it supports up to 4x 4K displays. The Intel HD 630 built into the CPU only supports 3. Is the HDMI output perhaps wired directly to the dGPU to get the fourth? Or might ALL display outputs except perhaps the internal panel be wired to the dGPU? Having the dGPU active while an external display was attached would reduce battery life, but it would definitely add capabilities. I'd make that trade-off.

Related to that, I'd really love to know whether it has the new Thunderbolt Titan Ridge controller rather than the old Alpine Ridge. I'm holding off buying my next laptop until I can get one that can support HDR external displays, which requires DisplayPort 1.4, which also adds support for DisplayPort DSC that I wouldn't mind having. DP 1.4 arrived with Titan Ridge, but it also requires GPU support, and Intel's current GPUs don't support it. Might have to wait until this system is refreshed with 9th gen CPUs, unless somebody can confirm both that it has the Titan Ridge controller and that the dGPU is directly wired to the TB3 outputs.

And oh what I wouldn't give for a 4K anti-glare display. I also wish they'd implemented a way to charge this system over USB-C/TB3 as well despite the >100W power draw, like Dell did with their WD15 and TB16 docks to support their 130W systems. The ThinkPad Thunderbolt Workstation Dock is sort of an awkward solution that involves plugging 2 AC adapters into the back of it.

 

That is my single biggest pet peeve of Lenovo systems. Fortunately they offer a BIOS option to swap the function of those keys, which helps a LOT when I've had to use Lenovo systems, but it's still not perfect because the Ctrl key is physically smaller and therefore not as easy to trigger. The most irritating part to me is that Lenovo knows they've got it backwards here, because not only do they offer this BIOS swap option unlike any other manufacturer, but their own IdeaPad line has these keys in the proper arrangement. I guess they're too worried about upsetting the vaunted reputation of the ThinkPad keyboard and rocking the boat with the longtime faithful and their backwardly trained muscle memory.

 

Besides the Fn and Ctrl swap, I also dislike the lack of media controls. Not a dealbreaker by any means, but it is nice to have. Keyboard will definitely be better than the competition, and one of the benefits of the larger size, compared to the X1 Carbon, is that the touchpad will be larger. In my brief time spent with the 5th generation Carbon, the small touchpad was annoying.

 

Never even noticed that. My older XPS 15 9530 has them, but my Latitude 7480 doesn't. Where the XPS has Play/Pause, Next, and Previous, the 7480 has microphone mute, NumLock, and Scroll Lock. I guess it's a business vs. consumer design thing, although I personally prefer the media keys. Many conferencing apps like Skype for Business put the key controls in an always on top window, and even without that there's usually a separate keyboard shortcut to mute your mic. I have no use for NumLock on a laptop keyboard that lacks dedicated number keys or for Scroll Lock at all. But I do find the Latitude keyboard much better to type on compared to the XPS.

Points to the X1 Extreme for sticking with dedicated Home and End buttons though, and in the proper location! In an ideal world I'd get the 8-row keyboard of my old Precision M6300 back. Now THAT had a proper layout.

 

I'm just noted that and it is really frustrating to see modern laptop without media controls.

 

Especially such a big laptop. This isn't a 12" subcompact that barely has enough space for a compact KB.

 

PSREF
http://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X1_Extreme

Platform Specifications
http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad X1 Extreme/ThinkPad_X1_Extreme_Platform_Specifications.pdf

 

Nice find, thanks! Wow, support for 5K @ 30 Hz on Thunderbolt. That suggests that the display outputs wired to the Thunderbolt ports are fed directly from the dGPU, since the Intel GPU doesn't support 5K resolution. However, the 30 Hz also suggests that the Thunderbolt ports are still using DisplayPort 1.2 rather than 1.4. Bummer. I guess I'll be waiting for the refresh.

And the point about a keyboard with multimedia Fn keys seems dubious. I guess just having volume controls is enough to qualify for that bullet point in their mind?

 

too bad you can't buy this without the nvidia gpu

 

That may come, although unless it only arrives as part of a next-gen CPU, it would drop the maximum displays down to 3 and remove 5K resolution support. I wish it supported at least low-level charging over USB-C. That way I could just take a travel charger that had 60W USB-C and a few USB-A ports and have everything I need. Obviously 60W wouldn't be enough to run it off AC properly, but I could charge it overnight and probably get through the day on the battery.

 

Insane pricing in Germany!
https://www.lenovo.com/de/de/laptop...d-X1-Extreme/p/22TP2TXX1E1?menu-id=X1_Extreme
X1E with FHD+i5+8GB+256 SSD for 2119€
XPS 15 with FHD+i5+8GB+256 SSD for 1399€
XPS 15 with 4K+i7+16GB+512 SSD for 2099€

X1E with FHD+i7+16GB+512 SSD for 2589€
XPS 15 wit FHD+i7+16GB+512 SSD for 1789€
XPS 15 with 4K+32GB+1TB SSD for 2599€

 

At the very least, You are getting a HDR screen on the 4K models. I wouldn't buy for a month or 2 until the "instant savings" appear and the configure your own model appears. For example, it is a good 25% off the "list price" on the X1 carbon now:

 

You forgot perks





PM me for code, I don't profit off this.

 

Do you know why the storage size is just up to 1 TB per drive? Is it not possible to install NVMe 2TB ssd in order to have 2x2, 4TB total)?

 

probably no oem offering for ssd of that size

 

Not true, and the P1 supports that. I wonder if they're limiting it in UEFI/BIOS or they are just saying that to differentiate it from the P1.

 

I don't think that configuration could be offered.

 

I meant if there was to your knowledge some technical limit for which a 2Tb drive could not be installed.
I don't care if they are not going to offer it in their configurations cause probably it would be cheaper buy it after market.
I'm just worried to buy it and then discover it doesn't work for some weird reason.

 

The last time there was a hardware/firmware limit around hard drive capacity was back in the Windows XP days where you needed SP1 and motherboard support for 48-bit LBA addressing to use drives larger than 137GB (or thereabouts). Then there's the 2TB limit, but that isn't hardware-based; that has to do with MBR vs. GPT partition layouts and some other things (more detail here). I agree with the post above that they're claiming 1TB because that's the largest they're offering from the factory and have officially tested, but there's absolutely no reason to suspect that it's a hard limit. Dell does this same thing in the specs of many of their systems and people routinely install drives with larger capacities than are claimed to be supported, fwiw.

 

Can't you only install 1/ea M.2 drive in the P1 though? Whereas the X1 Extreme has 2 slots. That I would think would differentiate enough, but who knows.

 

Anyone else anxious for some customization options to appear for the X1E on the Lenovo site? These pre-built aren't doing it for me. Anyone have any inside info on when this usually happens on a newer release?

 

I don’t understand what you mean by only installing 1/ea in the P1. Both systems have 2 M.2 slots. The P1 and X1 Extreme are basically the same system except for the GPU and certain options (Xeon CPU and ECC memory).

 

If you check the tech spec section on the P1 it simply says 512gb m2 and no mention of anything more. Maybe I just don’t have the secret decoder ring on the right setting...that is great news though!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I'm betting that's a product launch spec glitch. I read a ZDNet article specifically about the P1 saying that it supports up to 2TB of storage, and I assume they would have gotten that from an official source rather than making it up -- and even that's probably based on what Lenovo will actually offer from the factory rather than a hardware/firmware limit. But I'm sure it won't be long before someone gets their hands on one and tries to install a 2TB SSD.

 

Had a quick chat with a sales rep from Lenovo Italy yesterday and he told me that " officially they must say 2TB disks sare not supported". I then asked what that "officially" meant but got no satisfactory and clear answer.
I'd pull the trigger for the X1 Extreme but my only concern is that this 2 TB thingcould not work for some reason ...
Thinking about worst case scenario - UEFI/BIOS block - would it be possible to bypass it somehow?
Thanks

EDIT: re-checking the platform specifications, no mentions about a 1TB drive limit
http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys...inkPad_X1_Extreme_Platform_Specifications.pdf

 

Yeah, gotta be a glitch...I think it's just based on what is currently available for order.

 

If they have a firmware lock, the only way to bypass would be hacked firmware, but even if someone managed to develop that and kept it current with Lenovo’s releases, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable installing it on my system, unless MAYBE it was open source. But I also don’t see what Lenovo would gain by locking out higher capacity SSDs. A firmware lock to restrict you to SSDs supplied by Lenovo would be one thing, although even that would prompt customer backlash. On that subject, is Lenovo still restricting WiFi cards in firmware? I remember reading that they used a whitelist of cards and in some cases even went so far as to reverse some pins on the card and their slot so that Lenovo systems only accepted Lenovo-supplied cards and Lenovo-supplied cards only worked in Lenovo systems.

 

I will wait to see the temps to make my choice in replacing a X1 4thGen.

I think this will be run hot.

 

I am slightly hopeful that the i5 8300H + GTX1050Ti MaxQ config might have very slight chance of keeping everything cool. But tripod CPU cooler and only two screws on the GPU heatsink don't give a lot of confidence.

 

You can now customize the x1 extreme at Lenovo's site, but no 4k monitor option. Some good info on this site as the x1 extreme was just released in Japan. Pics and details about cooling (eg. lots of optimization with Intel's DPTF to improve performance up to 40%, the little bumper on the bottom of the laptop that lifts the laptop slightly also prevents the air intake from just sucking in the warm exhaust from the back of the machine).

 

It seems that the rubber strip doesn't lift the laptop up enough--I can see why they revised the design to try to give the air intake more room to work with. If I'm pushing the X1 Extreme enough to spool the fans up, I can hear the speed of the fans change when raising the back up slightly, as if they can take in air more easily without a desk surface beneath it. There is the standard mesh covering the vents, wondering if removing that would help airflow any.

Also as a side note, it seems possible that the three-point mounting for the CPU is leaving some area of the CPU cooled less effectively than others. If I run 7-zip's benchmark, core 0 on my 8750H will spike up to 98C, while the other five cores will stay in the high 70s to mid 80s. Will be taking apart tonight for a repaste and "careful" reassembly.

 

Repasted the X1 Extreme. After 7 minutes of 7-zip's benchmark, core 0 is still the hottest, hitting at most 94C. The coldest core got to at most 83C. Definitely some bias towards some of the die with the mounting mechanism. Attached is a before picture--note the lack of residue on the upper-left corner of the CPU die (CPU on the right.)

 

Is this with undervolting too?

Can you run 3D mark Firestrike or Time Spy in a loop to test CPU + GPU temps at the same time for real world 3D application usage?