Thinkpad Edge E430 Owners Thread

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hi guys, care to advise whether Thinkpad Edge E430's fan is located at the bottom or side and does it get heated up easily? Is this laptop suitable for computing?

Thanks in advance.

 

I think this may be what others are also experiencing. If I understood you correctly you are saying that the fan may actually be doing something but you may not be as sensitive to it as others are. I am coming from a two-year-old HP DV6 that has developed a "jet-engine" syndrome so I decided to just underclock and undervolt the CPU and jam the screaming fan with a piece of paper. So when I compare the E430 to the silenced DV6, the E430 fan does make a little bit more hum (both have 500GB 7200rpm drives in).

BTW, a nice write-up on the fan modes!

 

The E430 has holes for cooling on the left-hand side as well as at the bottom.

No, it doesn't get heated easily around the keyboard area. Yes, it is suitable for computing.

 

Thanks for you reply!

 

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I don't think there is a solution out there at the moment, however, Lenovo indicated they are willing to work on one.

The most relevant thread you can follow appears to be: Re: E530 - pulsing/whiny fan @ no/low load - Lenovo Community

 

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to reduce fan noice, you can download tpfan control

http://sourceforge.net/projects/tp4xfancontrol/

 

Did you actually test it with the E430/E530?

 

Hi! I'm considering buying the E330 (430's younger brother) and have a few questions regarding the edge line. Do they have any charge indicator LEDs on the base of the laptop? And, how would you say the screen quality of the e430 is compared to the T430 (contrasts, black levels).

Cheers.

 

There are effectively only two indicator LEDs: one bright red dot on the i of the ThinkPad logo that is either on when the laptop is on, or flashes slowly while in sleep. The other one is a tiny green LED next to the power connector which lights up when the mains power is on.

I don't have the T430 but the E430's display is pretty average. The contrast and black levels are actually not bad on mine when viewing from the optimal spot, however, the viewing angles are very limited. There is also a considerable backlight bleeding at the top of the screen. This is not a screen for any serious graphics work, but for the office-type use, and occasional movie or game it should be fine.

 

Thanks for feedback.

No charge indicator is slightly annoying but the screen quality appears to be ok for my needs. I'm currently deciding whether a T430 is worth an extra £100 (essentially ~$120) over the E330. The latter offers much better portability, battery life and if the screen quality isn't considerably worse (might be better!?), then it seems the right option for me. A shame we don't have the E430 here in the UK.

 

Just out of curiosity, is there even still an E330? In the US we do not have this option, unless you find a used one... even then you are hard pressed.

As stated already above me, the screen is pretty average. My last machine was a MacBook 2,1 which had a 1280x800, so the 1366x768 seemed very different at first. But it is definitely usable, and I figure I don't need anything fancy. The lack of charge indicator is definitely a feature I miss from my last machine, but since I don't use bloatware (read Windows), I get well over 6 hours of battery life.

On the off change you are an open source user, you should know that this laptop runs Linux *very* well with one exception. The default wifi card, which is Thinkpad branded, is ultimately a Realtek. Unfortunately, Realtek's track record with the open source community is not stellar. They have apparently begun semi-working with open source developers for their wlan drivers, but to exemplify how much of a non-priority this is the driver they brought to the party actually perfomed *far* worse than the open source, reverse-engineered driver.

The card reader only works with their propietary driver, and the ethernet RTL8111/8168B only works well with their driver as well. The ethernet driver seems fairly stable and reliable (though I rarely use it). But the card reader driver throws out a whole bunch of seemingly harmess errors, and continuously polls for a card. It uses a lot of power, so I blacklisted it and only load it when needed.

So the only real issue I had with this machine and Linux was the wifi card. I should have ordered the Intel card, but I wasn't sure exactly what the Thinkpad card would be. It wasn't until after I ordered the machine that I found out that they whitelist their own cards, making the computer unbootable if you have a different card in. Fortunately I was able to remove it and get an Intel Centrino 6235 working in it. So now the computer is stellar.

It may be true that this line is more like an Ideapad in Thinkpad clothes. But the overall feel of the machine is much sturdier than that of its consumer/multimedia intended siblings. So in my mind it is the right choice. It is not as burly as the X or W line, but certainly sturdy enough to give me confidence in having it hold up.

I hope this info might help you or any other Linux user out there looking at this machine. I say go for it. It is worth the work for the price.

Edit: I would like to also mention that I am an Arch Linux user, so this configuration is manual. I am not sure how something like Ubuntu would handle the situation.

 

hmm... My wifi card is made by broadcom. but then again I did op for the 2x2 a/b/g/n with bluetooth card. so its not the basic wifi card.

 

I am thinking about upgrading the RAM on my e430. Looking at this module, is it compatible with this notebook:
CT102464BF160B - 8GB, 204-pin SODIMM , DDR3 PC3-12800 from Crucial.com

The thing I am concerned about, is that crucial module has required voltage of 1.35V, while the existing samsung sticks in my e430 are 1.5V.

Please advise me, should I go for it?

 

I'm from the UK and the E330 is available for a CTO basis from Lenovo's website. I've had it a week now and I'm generally pleased with the purchase.

First thing I noticed was the nice rubbery textured lid. It gives the machine a good solid feel and the same impressions are continued around the notebook. I wasn't expecting much for £600 but this laptop is certainly solid. Off course it isn't going to be as a perfect as a proper Thinkpad, but I imagine this beats many products above its budget. Put it this way, I feel more reasurred with this laptop than my previous £1000 magnesium alloy Sony Vaio!

Next is the screen. The screen is plenty bright for indoor use and I can just about get by using outdoors. The Matte screen helps significantly with glare, an issue I had with my previous notebooks which all had glossy displays. Resolution wise, I feel this is perfect for myself. Considering I previously used a 1200 x 800 15.4" display, going down by 2 inches and keeping a similar res was the right way to go. Where the display falls is the colours/contrast. Out of the box, things a little washed out and on the cool side. But with a slight colour calibration (gamma = 0.9, saturation = 15) things become a lot more vibrant. I tend to use my laptops as a secondary multimedia hub and I find the display fine for watching TV/Movies. Not great, but just fine.

This is the first "Thinkpad" keyboard I've used and I'm very pleased. There is good feedback and just the right amount of "bounce", and very little flex. I would have loved the option for a backlit keyboard (or at least a Thinklight) but I can't really argue at the price this laptop retails for.
Touchpad has a nice bumpy texture to it and uses a Macbook style clickpad mechanism. It's no where near as good as a Macbook though - just average. Two finger scrolling is a nice feature though. The legendary trackpoint is still there for you old school users.

I've not run any benchmarks but the machine seems relatively quick. I'm not sure whether this is due to Windows 7 (I used Vista previously) or a newer processor, but opening apps is snappy and there isn't much lag in multitasking. I configured the laptop with an Ivy Bridge i5-3210m btw.
Heat and fan noise is a non-issue, though like I've said, I haven't stressed the CPU yet. During a bit of Q3, the fan noise was a nice soothing hum and the CPU Cores hit 70C max. On idle, the fan runs constantly but isn't louder than the mechanical 7200RPM HDD. Though occasionally the fan "wooshes" up for around a second before lowering again - no idea why. Temps are around 45C.

Lastly the battery life is superb. This is where a lot of laptops fail in this price bracket (especially in the UK) but I'm getting around 5-6 hrs easy, during productivity tasks/browsing and lowering the brightness to around 11-12. That trumps my Vaio by about 2-3hrs! I'm planning to buy an SSD and run a clean install of Windows to remove the bloatware that is left. I hope I can squeeze out another 30mins!

Hope that helps!

Btw, I've not tested Linux yet but I managed to configure the WiFi card to a Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230. Hopefully Mint will work without problems

 

I just got this machine with the following components/specs below. I don't have much experience with or understand much about computer technology. I did read somewhere here though that with a 16gb msata microharddrive, it makes sense to put windows 7 on that and run it from there rather than the harddrive for more speed. Is this true? And if so, how do I do that (in terms an idiot would understand) if Windows 7 has been pre-loaded by Lenovo onto the machine out of the box?

Specs:

Processor Intel Core i5-3210M Processor (3M Cache, up to 3.10 GHz)

Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)

Operating system language Windows 7 Home Premium 64 - English

Display type 14.0" W HD (1366 x 768) LED AntiGlare, Midnight Black

System graphics Intel HD Graphics (WWAN or mSATA capable)

Total memory 6 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (2 DIMM)

Keyboard Keyboard - US English

Pointing device UltraNav with FingerPrint Reader

Camera 720p HD Camera

Hard drive 500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm

Micro Hard Drive 16GB mSATA Solid State Cache Drive

Optical device DVD Recordable

Battery 6 cell Li-Ion Battery 62WH - 75+

Power cord 65W AC Adapter - US (2pin)

Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 (2x2 BGN & BT4)

Language pack Publication - US English

Microsoft productivity software preload Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 - NA English


Thanks!

The Wolf.

 

I don't know bout that card. But I personally went with 2 8gb gskill ram cards. 16gb ram, Page file disabled smooth sailing.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2

 

I did something similar to what you want to do. Except I got the 16 msata like you did but I upgraded it to a 128gb msata and installed windows on it. You'd need a clean copy of windows to do it. It will see you msata as a regular drive and just install windows like normally using your windows key.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2

 

Just to confirm - I could buy something like this SSD on Newegg and put it into the micro hard drive slot, and do a clean install of Windows 7 onto it? Then I'll have a 128GB SSD with a 320GB HDD on the side?

Would this void the warranty? And do I even need to order the E430 with the 16GB mSata then? I should be able to just leave it blank at purchase, right?

Thanks

 

I was going to get that same exact card but Newegg was sold out and other places was alot more then the egg for the same item. So I ended up with the re branded a data card.

I originally didn't plan on upgrading the ssd never mind putting the os on it which is why I got the ssd option when I built my laptop.

You won't get the screw to bolt in your ssd so you'd have to outsource a screw to bolt down your ssd card.

No it won't void your warranty. I replace my 16gb ssd with 128gb, replaced my 4gb single stick ram with 2 8gb sticks, and replace my hdd with a 1tb hdd. If I need to send it in I'd just put in original parts back in. But this thing is solid. Mine is taking a beating and still without a hiccup.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using Tapatalk 2

 

Those who want to put an mSATA ssd in E430, please note that the msata port in this laptop does not support SATA-III speeds, so you don't need to spend on a very high performance drive. If you can find a SATA-II msata ssd, which would likely be at a low price point, go for it.

I personally got a crucial m4 128gb ssd, which has got a good reputation of reliability.

PS. I didn't order the 16gb msata with my laptop, but it still came with one screw in place (even though the msata slot was empty). I didn't need to outsource a screw.

 

Is your clickpad also a little loose, especially in the bottom area? I mean, when you want to click it, it feels like there's a half-push position and then a click-through position like a typical camera shutter button. I thought this was by design but read somewhere that it could be fixed by tightening the clickpad from underneath. So I'm wondering if mine is loose just because it wasn't properly installed.

 

My clickpad is loose, especially near the bottom, but it does not behave as you described. An gentle touch on clickpad generates a click. When applying pressure on clickpad, it gets pressed a little bit, but this pressing does not generate a click. So I guess yours in not properly installed.

 

Sounds very similar to mine except the gentle touch you describe would be called a "tap". Near the bottom however, you should be able to generate the left and right mouse click by depressing the pad all the way down.

 

I like a clean install with as little bloatware as possible (including Lenovo's software). I packaged most of the mandatory drivers. I didn't include some like WWAN gps. download here
lenovo_drivers_e430.zip

these are the leftovers.


you will have ur own to grab your own wifi drivers since they're huge. I had a discrete video card, so you'll have to grab your own as well
official site for drivers

 

I picked up an e430 from lenovo outlet for $550 shipped with a discrete geforce 630m, i5 3rd gen. Check slickdeals for more info as their inventory is weaving in and out of stock. I needed the extra bulk for running the discrete videocard and processor intense use of gaming. Otherwise, I would have slikdealed a smaller laptop in this price range.

 

I totally agree with your BQ notes. Have the same feeling with my trackpad. Display is pretty crap vertical viewing angles.

 

I picked up a refurbed E430 with i3 recently. I bought it online after test driving a 420 that had a smooth track pad. I was hugely disappointed that the 430 came with the godawful nipples all over the pad, as I am a track pad user and I hate that. Figured I'd get used to it but my return period has ended and I still hate it passionately. If anything, I hate it more now. I planned to remove the textured sticker on the pad which I know some of the Thinkpads have, but I'm not sure this has a sticker like those. It seems to be a part of the plastic, and I'm afraid to really dig into it with a sharp object. Does anyone know? Has anyone smoothed their E430 track pad? I really want my track pad to be SMOOTH.

I love the machine itself, other than that and the tech support which has been inexcusably awful, the worst i have ever experienced.

I want an xp partition, and i was misinformed that the Thinkvantage utility would take care of all my driver needs but it only works on SP1! I've manually downloaded everything I can find but I still have a bunch of problems in device manager. Has anyone succesfully installed xp?

I am also running a Linux Mint partition, and it works great except for it's usual problem with modems. My wifi is a Broadcom and works fine in Mint.

 

If you want your trackpad to be smooth may I suggest using a vinyl skin, cut it using a scissors or a pen knife. Alternatively you could re-purpose a cellphone screen protector.

 

I am not sure what you all are talking about with the mushy loose trackpads. Mine feels super solid. I did see in a youtube review, a user showing how he had like a millimeter or two of play before it actually clicked. But this is not how my machine is.

Also, I would like to say that I am also not sure what you all are talking about with the msata slot and lack of screws. My machine actually had one screw in there, and the other didn't really matter because instead of a screw hole it has a little nub that goes through the screw hole on eht msata and holds it in place. So really only one screw is necessary, and it was certainly where I expected it to be. This one screw method was also the case for the wlan card. I ended up putting an intel card in because realtek and linux don't mix well in terms of wifi comaptibility.

So far I love my machine. I got an E430-CTO which has a 3210M i5, it had a 320GB 7200RPM HDD, but I put my old momentus xt in its place. I also got the mushkin atlas linked above, which is fabulous. I knew it would only be sata II, but I figured the reliability of mushkin was worth the few extra dollars. Seriously the price difference wasn't much. I put a second 4GB stick of ram in. I went with corsair vengance 1600. I thought about 16GB, but I am a linux user and don't really need much ram. Maybe for compiling, but that is very infrequent, and I can use swap anyway. I also ordered myself a kingston hyper 120 ssd yesterday. I am thinking about doing software raid, and seeing how rediculous I can make this thing.

Anyway, it has been great, and I would highyl reccomend. Fortunately I have not experienced any of the problems that this series is purported to have. No fan whie, no fan pulse, no nothing. I think the fan thing probably has to do with what kind of processor and/or gpu you have in the system. It seems to me that with my i5 dual core and integrated graphics, my sh*t never gets hot enough for the fan to really go on.


Edit: speedy1979, good to see you are a participant here. How is the bios working for you? I see you took advantage of the updated one I had serg008 mod for me. I really haven't noticed any difference between the last one and the current though. You?

 

So a couple days ago, Newegg had the Kingston Hyper 120GB (or 128? dunno) for $70. I had been thinking about getting ~256GB SSD, but I figure since I already have a Mushkin Atlas 120GB mSATA SSD, that 120GB would probably be enough. It will be replacing my Seagate Momentus XT, which has served me well for the past year or so. But alas, it is no longer the boot drive, and therefore I am not seeing the true benefits out of it that I could be. Also, it is a SATA II drive living in a SATA III bay. This seemed wasteful to me... like 3Gb of bandwidth wasteful.

So my new drive will become my boot drive since my Mushkin is running at SATA II, and I cannot change it. I really love me Mushkin, I just wish manufacturers would somehow enable a third SATA III input onto the mobile HM77 mobos.

I guess I can always think about getting a caddy to replace the optical drive. That way I would have two devices running at 6Gb/s. I have been seriously thinking about this, since I rarely use my optical drive, and I have an external DVD+/-RAM that I could use. It just seems so wasteful to me to slap an optical drive in a SATA III input. In fact, Linux reports that the drive itself is in fact a SATA I drive. I guess this makes legitimate sense. If the device cannot perform at that speed, why give it the newer and more expensive connectivity. I think the cd/dvd would actually fall apart if youu spun it fast enough to try and get 6Gb/s out of it.

 

Does anybody know if this model supports International warranty?
Because i cant seem to get the machine model ,type whatever that
is typed into the international warranty page . .

Also is it a must to remove the optical drive to have a second hdd in this machine?

 

@lesterq - From what Lenovo Support tech conveyed, the warranty depends on where you purchased the laptop from. I'm not sure if a separate international warranty exists - either from Lenovo or through a 3rd party.

As for removing HDD - as far as i know, you would need to do that ONLY if you are installing a 2.5" drive. There is a mPCIE (mini) slot which can be used for either a Network card (wireless), or a mini Solid State drive (mSata SSD). mSata SSDs are comparatively inexpensive, and in some cases, almost half the cost of regular 2.5" MLC regular SSDs.

The other experienced forum members here will be able to give more info on this.

 

Question with E430: I have just ordered a Mushkin 256GB mSata (i think Sata III) SSD for my E430, as well as a G-Skill 16GB memory. As you might expect, I am planning to put the OS (Windows 7 64-bit) on the SSD and data on the regular drive (not planning on swapping that to a regular SSD anytime soon, due to cost restrictions).

I use my laptop to connect to my company's VPN or EVPN to log in and work. I do love Windows 8 (have installed Developer edition on my wife's IdeaPad G460, and it is great - so far). But I cannot upgrade since our E/VPN goes through firewall / antivirus and a multitude of security encryptions - are not set up for Windows 8 yet.

In a nutshell
- what are the steps needed to be done to ensure smooth transition of the OS from existing HDD partition to the new SSD ? I have never used Lenovo Recovery Media (the partition that exists by default). Should I need to buy any external (paid) software? I would rather not, but, if that is a strong / enforced recommendation, then I will.
- Should I do anything *before* and **after** adding the mSata to the laptop (BIOS wise) ??
- Any other recommendations for the E430 to be considered in conjunction with the SSD and 16GB memory install?

Thank you all, in advance.

 

Thank you so much for the help rendered. I have since purchased the T430. Thank you again for your kindness.

And for the guy^^ what I know about creating recovery media is that for windows 7 recovery media can only be in the form of CDs...



Sent from my One V using Tapatalk 2

 

I just re-vamped my already great E430 to new specs below:

240GB mSata (Mushkin - $199) for Windows 7 boot + System files
320GB existing (7200 rpm SATA) for data, etc
16GB DDR3 (2*8GB G-Skill, 1.5eV)

I did a clean install of Windows 7 on the mSata because - well, I could afford to, since 99% of the stuff in the SATA HDD was reproducible.

My questions - all pertaining to the mSata
- I have not made any additional tweaks for getting (even) better performance
- Unfortunately, I did not check on the BIOS before fresh install of the OS; what should I do now so that I can modify any settings on BIOS (if neccesary) without affecting the motherboard and/or hard drive?

Any thoughts on the above is appreciated.

Thank you!

 

My new E430 will be delivered within a few days. It is configured with a 500gb (7200 rpm) HDD, and 16gb msata cache SSD. It will have 16gb ram, after I install it.
I'm having second thoughts about the cache drive, as I might want to replace the HDD with a 256 or 512 SSD.
If I do, will the existing cache drive interfere? Should it be disabled?
Will the performance of the SSD be dramatically better than the configuration ordered? If not, I would rather save the extra expense.
I would appreciate all advice, tips, etc.
Any SSD model recommendations?
Thanks.

 

off subject. im here because this thread is alive but i needed to get a sticker thats says "lenovo" on the lid of the laptop for my e320 as mine has started to peel off badly as i wanted to sell it. andi would like to replace it to keep it in immaculate condition. i cant seem to find it as a PN or something. they vary in sizes so i cant just buy any size.

please help.

thanks

 

Hey folks, I'm looking for a decent laptop for standard office work as well as MATLAB work and watching movies. Is the E430 what I'm looking for? TigerDirect has one with an i3 for $450. Worth it?

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E430 3254-ACU Notebook PC - 2nd generation Intel Core i3-2350M 2.3GHz, 4GB DDR3, 320GB HDD, DVDRW, 14 Display, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, Matte Black at TigerDirect.com

 

Has anyone tried installing a 630m or 635m on this laptop? It was offered with those GPUs at least somewhere sometime, but they go soldered into the motherboard so...

Can it be done? I know you can't remove them, but can you install one if they're not installed?

 

I'd like to get an E430, and wonder if experienced users can provide feedback on three issues.

1. Before installing Windows on an mSATA SSD using the E430'as spare mSATA slot, should the HDD be (temporarily) disconnected? The E430 I'm about to buy comes with Windows 8, but I'd install Windows 7 on the mSATA SSD. (I won't use Windows 8, thus no need for dual booting.)

2. Where is the SWTOOLS folder, and is it necessary to put it on a DVD? If I'm going to clean install Windows 7 on an mSATA, is the SWTOOLS folder still required?

3. Is it better NOT to use ExpressCache if one can afford say a 128GB or 256GB mSATA drive?

Thanks in advance!

 

Just thought I'd post an update. I had to go back to Windows 7 because xp wasn't working well, but I hated 7 even more the second time around so I gave XP one more shot. Success! I did not even try to use the Lenovo Update utility, I just d/l all the drivers manually. Everything works except the fingerprint scanner and I haven't made any effort on that yet. Even my USB modems works now, which did not work before. So evidently I just did a sloppy XP install the first time around.

I finally got used to the hideous track pad, a couple months after installing a cover as suggested. So I'm very happy with the computer.

Still think their customer service and tech support is terrible though.

 

Hi,
I have an E430 with B960 CPU. Can I upgrade it to an i3? (I just need the VT-x)
On intel's spec. I saw that B960 is PGA988, while i3 is PPGA988.

 

Dear all,

I'm new to this Thread. i just purchased E430, after checking out E431 and hated that it does not have trackpad buttons.

I got my E430, and now trying to replace HDD, install m-SATA SSD, and clean install Windows 7. But the laptop came only with Windows 8 DVD, and there is no Product Key. For the first problem ,I guess I just need to download a copy of Windows 7 DVD and create a DVD. But I am not sure about the second problem. I read that the Product Key is installed into BIOS so that it is automatically recognized when Windows 8 is installed. Is this true for clean-installing Windows 7? i.e. Is it ture that I don't need to have Product Key to clean-install 7?

Thank you so much in advance. I might come back with more questions later.

Best,

 

It's true you don't need a product key when you install win 7.....for 30 days then you have to put one in to use it cos you locked out of using it. Best way round it is buy win 7 or use a relatives key code of someone who doesn't use it no more

 

Hi,

I want to upgrade the wireless card on my Thinkpad Edge E430 laptop and I was thinking of buying this card: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260.

Is the card supported? Are there drivers available for this model? Is a bios mod needed?

Thanks!

 

You will need a bios mod.

 

I know this thread is OLD but I just wanted to say that I still love my E430. Bought it used 1.5 years ago for $250 (then got a $25 credit since it didn't have the spec'd 7200 RPM HDD) = $225. Doubled the RAM, replaced the HDD with a WD Scorpio Black, and added an mSATA cache. It feels faster than my i5 desktop - thanks to the mSATA cache, barely gets warm, and the matte screen is easy on my eyes. I've had a ton of laptops that have come and gone but I'll be keeping this one till it's dead. I'm tired of the new laptops that need to be completely disassembled to get to the HDD or anything else for servicing/upgrades.

The only thing I'd like is a genuine Lenovo extended battery but it's hard to find on eBay. 3.5 hours with the 6-cell is on the short side. However, my battery is now 2 years old with 156 cycles and it's still at 0% wear. I'm impressed.

Anyone else still rockin' the E430 by choice?