replacing the thinkpad
replacing the thinkpad
for anyone who wants to offer actual advice: its a lenovo thinkpad t450 with a soldered i5-5300U that hits over 90C when running cargo compiles. I have changed the thermal paste and it didn't do much.
Just leaving this here in case you don't know: there are also the Framework laptops, which are designed to be modular, upgradable, and have easy to buy replacement parts.
They even sell motherboards, so you can now get a e.g. Intel Core Ultra motherboard for your 3-4 year old laptop.
Of course It's a bit more expensive than a used 10 year old Thinkpad, but it kind of competes with other high end laptops, and it is cheaper especially when you consider it's designed to last more
(Not a sponsored post, just glad there is a company that makes such products, and that when I broke a part I could just go to their store and order a replacement instead of searching for serial numbers on random online stores etc like I've done before)
Framework 13 is unfortunately not a workstation replacement. Framework 16 is, with options for the 7040HS CPU, but they're:
- not available as second-hand
- too expensive
- RAM is limited only to 32GB
The t450 is peak laptop in terms of build quality and repairability. Keep it around until it's dead for real
"peak build quality and repairability" not anymore. repairbility by 2015 standards isnt great, by today standards its average to good. that's a problem because the aging CPU can't be changed.
A few months ago when I had to replace my shitty HP laptop from 2018, I found a secondhand Thjnkpad model from 2013 for 90€ which was better in every way.
But a processor from 2013 is kinda whack, and there's no physical quad-core with logical octa-core, so that kinda defeats the purpose, right? Honestly, I'd love to have a Thinkpad with a high TDP workstation processor that is good enough to build NodeJS/Rust from source in a few hours, and no dGPU.
It's a really old SMT2 processor with just two physical cores. Even a physical quad-core with SMT2 struggles in 2024, especially if you're trying to build from source (I use Guix, btw). You need a workstation processor - the U series isn't going to cut for the task you're trying to do. Maybe a H, HQ, K or KF-labelled processor? Something like a 6700HQ, 6820HQ, or a Xeon 1505/1535 v5/v6? The P5x series (not the P5xs) is what you need, minus the dGPU. They're still quite expensive, and at this point, you're better off getting a A485/T495/T14 Gen 1/2.
I've started looking more into getting an ARM laptop. I know a bloke who has an M1 Macbook and it has indescribable battery life without sacrificing performance. Apple is out of the question due to their walled garden, though (I don't want to get sucked into their ecosystem and end up with an iPhone, Apple Watch, and who knows what else), so Snapdragon X series it is for me.
About the Qualcomm processors, I'd advise you to wait. There's a lot of hype going around, and apparently, it isn't as good as Apple's ARM processor. Honestly, AMD processors are almost what you're looking for - low-power processors, highly performant iGPU, bang for buck. In fact, if you look at the newer processors, they also provide power-efficient chips, which is almost similar to the big.LITTLE in Arm - Zen4, paired alongside Zen4c. This pattern is also visible with their newer Strix Point - having both the Zen5 and the Zen5c chiplets.