Buy and upgrade thinkpad t400?

[nishad Ahsan]

Hi,
I need a laptop badly but I don't have the budget to buy the one I want/need. So for now I am willing to buy one second-handed laptop.

A friend of mine is selling his lenovo thinkpad t400 (without the external gpu model). It's used for 4 years. it's condition:::

--heats up quickly
--has become slow (i think it's for the hdd)
--battery last only about an hour

I was thinking to change the hdd and add an ssd, samsung evo 250 maybe, and 4gb of ram. It'll cost me around $200 for the upgrade and the laptop itself will cost me $130.

Should I go for it? Please suggest!

PS. I love thinkpad series and the keyboard is awesome!!

 

[jaguarskx]

If it heats up quickly, then that could mean the thermal paste has gone bad and needs to be replaced. An overheating CPU will force itself to run at lower clockspeed which could be why the laptop is running slow. Replacing thermal paste requires you to take the laptop apart, clean off the thermal and then applying new thermal paste. It is possible to do it yourself, but taking apart a laptop can be a bit tricky and you need to be careful. You can also bring it to a laptop repair shop for them to do it. I have no idea how much that will cost. It might start at $40.

You should probably consider a refurbished ThinkPad T420 for $200 + shipping. It has a more recent 2nd generation Intel Core i5-2520m which is probably about 20% more powerful than the Core 2 Duo CPU in the ThinkPad T400; assuming the same clockspeed. It cost more than what your friend is asking for, but at least you should not have to worry about a overheating CPU.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1ZD3485712&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC-_-pla-_-All+Laptops+%2f+Notebooks-_-9SIA1ZD3485712&gclid=CjwKEAjwyemvBRDFpN3E5_bs9BQSJAA5n8L2xVhWRZwc9GO0HS87lHYQSoAEEkgFtQKtRuHxVql0ZhoCi5bw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

You get a 60 day warranty and you can purchase a 1 year warranty for $35. The Intel HD 3000 was actually pretty decent when it was for now an Intel graphics core. Much better than their old GMA series graphics, but still weak compared to dedicated graphics back then.

Here's 4GB of RAM for $24 and a 250GB EVO SSD for $98.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148813

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3FA2EV1108&cm_re=250GB_evo_ssd-_-20-147-372-_-Product

 

[nishad Ahsan]

If it heats up quickly, then that could mean the thermal paste has gone bad and needs to be replaced. An overheating CPU will force itself to run at lower clockspeed which could be why the laptop is running slow. Replacing thermal paste requires you to take the laptop apart, clean off the thermal and then applying new thermal paste. It is possible to do it yourself, but taking apart a laptop can be a bit tricky and you need to be careful. You can also bring it to a laptop repair shop for them to do it. I have no idea how much that will cost. It might start at $40.

thanks for this tip.

I cannot buy the item you pointed cause amazon doesn't deliver in my country (Bangladesh). So no amazon or newegg or anything for that matter.

I am hoping that ssd and the extra ram will make it usable for coding in VS and Android Studio, comfortably.