W530 USB C Charging?

[Everyday_Normal_Engineer]

Looking to get a smaller charger for my W530, currently have the 170W.

Is it possible to use a USB C charger with the W530. Either using an adapter or modifing the current power port to be USB C?

I was able to find a mod for the T530/W530, but says it only goes up to 90W. https://www.tindie.com/products/mikepdi ... w520-w530/

[TPFanatic]

there's a harder to find 135W brick that is marginally smaller than the 170W and works for W530.

if u like the case of W530 but want to use smaller brick, consider adopting a T520 or T530 with or without Nvidia graphics, they will happily take the 90W. if without Nvidia, the 65W is as small as it gets.

[Everyday_Normal_Engineer]

Thanks, I'll keep a lookout for the 135W!

I've considered the T520, but I like having the ability to upgrade to 32gb ram and I was lucky to get this "broken" W530 for $25.

[TPFanatic]

32gb is pretty sexy, and you can do as you desire. i want to share in my personal experience excessive amounts of RAM has become overrated, especially with legacy PCs. back in the day when spinners were standard, high speed RAM was critical to a usable PC. now that OS just treats virtual RAM as RAM and SSDs are more than capable of being virtual RAM, the importance of high speed RAM is less important on a PC.

T520 can take 16GB. that's already more than enough. i was doing Pycharm on my X230 with 12GB and it wouldn't matter if it had 16G or 32GB, OS needs the SSD's virtual RAM anyway. i think you would be satisfied with a T520 without 32GB. nowadays a T60 with 3GB satisfies me as far as RAM is concerned, it's the Core 2 that holds things back.

[Everyday_Normal_Engineer]

Thanks, I'll have to pull some ram out of the W530 and see how it performs.

Curious I've read a little about GaN chargers that support more than 100W. Wonder if there is a barrel plug adapter for something like this?

[Everyday_Normal_Engineer]

Has anyone tried something like this?

https://a.co/d/f7ILuQo

They also have a barrel plug that fits the T430/W530. Ordered one to see if the laptop allows it to charge.

[TPFanatic]

if the plug adapter reports the resistance being that of the 135W or 170W power brick, then that should be all it takes for W530 to work with it. if you're good at electrics, you can modify any barrel to spoof 135W or 170W to the W530 and then become compatible with the W530.

[Everyday_Normal_Engineer]

So got the charger and it works great with my T430, but my W530 does say it's too low power.

How could I go about modify the plug? Looks to be sealed.

https://a.co/d/3yhtxP0

[TPFanatic]

I did some digging.

From: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Power_Port
7.5 x 5.55 mm, coaxial with 0.8 mm signal pin
Wattage Resistance
170 W 1,500 Ω
135 W 0 Ω
90 W Not Connected
65 W 10,000 Ω


This page as well may have somethings to say:
https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Power_Co ... 30_variant


As for modifying the laptop:

From: viewtopic.php?f=70&t=131940&p=854481#p854477
This fellow decided to modify the laptop.


I am not familiar with this issue as I generally just use the readily accessible and high quality OEM bricks. But seems it should not be too difficult to do, if you so want to. Hopefully anyone else with experience in the matter can share any tips.

[Everyday_Normal_Engineer]

Appreciate the info!

Yeah it's not really a big issue, but would be nice to only need one charger for laptop, phone, etc when traveling. I'll probably just lean to using my T480 when trying to keep everything consolidated. But just enjoy the W530 so much! Or back to considering a T5XX model!

[ac427]

Has anyone seen these options before:

https://www.tindie.com/products/mikepdi ... w520-w530/

[axur-delmeria]

Has anyone seen these options before:

https://www.tindie.com/products/mikepdi ... w520-w530/

The W530 requires a 170w (20 volts 8.5 amps) charger. AFAIK there's no USB-C charger that can do that.
Using a 90w (20v 4.5a) charger on the W530 will only let it charge while the laptop is powered off.

That means you gain the convenience of USB-C but lose the ability to use the laptop while charging. IMO it's a bad trade-off

[ac427]

I agree. Is the 130w charger enough to allow charging with the laptop powered on?