Thinkpads Forum

I scored a free T520 today - woo-hoo!

It's a fairly base unit with the cheap display and an i5-2520 CPU.

My questions are:

Will any T520 run the quad core CPUs?

If so, is the performance improvement with an i7-2820QM (for say .. light video editing with an external monitor, SSD and 16GB RAM) enough to warrant the $90 cost of this CPU?

For what you are proposing, personally I wouldn't bother. Rather spent that money on a cheap desktop. Biggest problem with laptops is the cooling. CPU/GPU intensive application will put out a lot of heat with an i7. Plan on upgrading the CPU cooling too.

For even more performance, you could flash the BIOS and put in an Ivy Bridge CPU.

Have a look at this 1-litre size Lenovo M900 Tiny desktop: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/185135122718
Needs a CPU, RAM, SSD, external keyboard, external monitor.
Fantastic little machines!

OneByteCPU wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 03, 2022 8:47 pm

Will any T520 run the quad core CPUs?
If so, is the performance improvement with an i7-2820QM (for say .. light video editing with an external monitor, SSD and 16GB RAM) enough to warrant the $90 cost of this CPU?

Yes the T520 will readily run the Quad core CPU's, but if you really want a quad core I wouldn't go for the 2820QM. Step down a notch or two and settle with something like i7-2720QM. The extra bit of max all core turbo frequency is going to be completely extinguished when any kind of GPU load is on the side, pushing the CPU to thermal limits.
But for your usage, it seems too desk bound and I would agree with others' recommendation of getting a desktop of that era instead. Spending C$90 on something like an OptiPlex 9010 or HP Compaq 8300 Elite is going to crush what you are going to get this thing to do in terms of desk bound video editing, with PCI express graphics cards, max 32GB RAM, i7-3770 and more hard drive mounts.
So maybe you are better off sticking with that i5-2520M. You actually don't know how the i5-2520M is good enough for most things until you work on a bunch of laptops with Sandy bridge Pentiums and i3's and wanting to get i5-2520M as sensible CPU upgrades

Thanks everyone for your input. It sounds like if I do the upgrade it will be for 'enthusiast' effect only.

I'll keep my eye out for a reasonably recent (and reasonably priced) workstation ThinkPad for my video needs. I can always use another ThinkPad as I only have 9 as it is.

Have a great weekend!

Nothing wrong with upgrading just for the sake of upgrading. No rhyme, reason nor does it make financial sense. Heck I do it plenty of times and not just on PC and laptops.

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 04, 2022 12:44 am

Have a look at this 1-litre size Lenovo M900 Tiny desktop: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/185135122718
Needs a CPU, RAM, SSD, external keyboard, external monitor.
Fantastic little machines!

This looks interesting. Maybe I'll send the vendor an info request. I have a 7th gen i7 laying around waiting for a place to put it and I wonder if it would fit in this.

Here are a few CPUs that fit in the M900 (mine has the low-TDP i5-6600T):

00XG111 N Intel Core i3-6100T 3.2GHz 35W
00XG112 N Intel Pentium G4500T 3.0GHz 35W
00XG114 N Intel Pentium G4400T 2.9GHz 35W
01AG002 N I I7-6700T 2.8GHz/4C/8M 35W
01AG003 N I I5-6600T 2.7GHz/4C/6M 35W
01AG004 N I I5-6500T 2.5GHz/4C/6M 35W
01AG005 N I I5-6400T 2.2GHz/4C/6M 35W
01AG016 N Intel Core i3-6300 3.8G 2C
01AG017 N Intel Core i3-6100 3.7G 2C
01AG019 N Intel Pentium G4500 3.5G 2C
01AG020 N Intel Pentium G4400 3.3G 2C
01AG022 N Intel Celeron G3900 2.8G 2C
01AG023 N Intel Core i3-6300T 3.3GHz 35W
01AG040 N Intel Core i7-6700 3.4G 4C
01AG041 N Intel Core i5-6600 3.3G 4C
01AG042 N Intel Core i5-6500 3.2G 4C
01AG043 N Intel Core i5-6400 2.7G 4C
01AG044 N Intel I7-6700T 2.8GHz/4C/8M 35W
01AG045 N Intel I5-6600T 2.7GHz/4C/6M 35W
01AG046 N Intel I5-6500T 2.5GHz/4C/6M 35W
01AG047 N Intel I5-6400T 2.2GHz/4C/6M 35W
03T7443 N Intel Core i5-6600 3.3G 4C
03T7444 N Intel Core i5-6500 3.2G 4C
03T7445 N Intel Core i5-6400 2.7G 4C
03T7446 N Intel Core i7-6700 3.4G 4C

Unfortunately I don't have any of those. I have the i7-7700. Thanks for the info though.