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)
They don’t ship to where I live ¯_(ツ)_/¯
So use a shipping forwarder
As someone who desperately wants a fair phone but it doesn’t ship here, consider what it means to buy a repairable device when replacement parts are not easily obtained.
any in greece?
No idea. Shipito.com is what I used
Dead domain.One too many T’s: https://shipito.com
Edited, thanks
I used Aramex’s shop&ship (both times), I found them from Courier Center’s website.
The cost was a bit much, but nothing compared to the laptop itself (and also I really didn’t want to buy yet another laptop that in a few years would be obsolete and unrepairable).
The laptop’s order shipping was €70 and it took ~10 days after it arrived at their location. You can compare the shipping cost to/from various countries, my DIY package was 4.5kg
Edit: just a few days after making this comment, I received an email from Framework that they started shipping to Greece, among other countries!
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 RAM goes up to 64GB (2x32GB) for both Framework 13 and 16.
Even 96 works but not officially
agreed that those machines can be expensive but all framework models can absolutely have 64 GB of RAM
source : me, the fw13 that I use as a server and my fw16 both have 64 GB (I love those machines)
Just found out that each slot can unofficially support up to 48GB at max.
Each slot supports as much as you can fit there, i have netbook with single ddr3 slot, it was said that this slot is limited to 2gb, i fitted 8gb and it ran just fine
But that’s not necessarily true. It depends heavily on the motherboard chipset you have. Sometimes, these chipsets are used to artificially limit the true capacity on consumer-grade devices.
Can confirm. Happened to me with my old laptop. Tried to upgrade it with some rescued RAM and it refused to use all of it. It would only use up to the laptops advertised max.
(Not the brand in question, but motherboards can definitely limit the RAM utilisation)
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.
I didn’t say it was good in the absolute, but that i5 processor from 2013 was better than the Intel Celeron processor from 2018, I checked. Yeah, my previous laptop wasn’t the best of 2018; neither I or anyone in my direct family knew a lot about computers then.
That’s a fair point. I’m assuming that you’re not using these devices for development and stuff, maybe just browsing around the internet?
Yeh, I’m not much of a developper, but I did more than browse the web on my old these laptop. Mostly bunch of digital art, including comics. Made a website once, tho using a Hugo template. Some homework, which included some graphing and some math algorithms with stuff like Sci-lab. But tho a shitty laptop was the first computer I’ve had, I’ve also had a desktop for a few year, it’s way faster and I do most of the “heavy” work on it, the laptop being for the rest when I’m not at home.
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.
Apparently, it isn’t as good as Apple’s ARM processor
Not from what my searching shows, the X1P curbstomps the M1.
AMD processors are almost what you’re looking for - low-power processors, highly performant iGPU, bang for buck
I’ve used a laptop with a (i think it was) Ryzen 5 5500u and it was the complete opposite of that. Lags on midnight protocol (game), it cost almost 1000euros, aka the same price as the Surface Pro 11 here, and it hit peaks of 101C, averaging at 70.
The M1 came out in 2020
Shouldn’t you be comparing newer processors? The M4 was released in 2024. Comparing it to top-of-the-line X1E-84-100 (X1E-00-1DE benchmarks aren’t available yet, I believe), the M4 destroys them. I mean, we can debate about the price, if we just limit ourselves to an Arm architecture, but a 12-core, 24-thread CPU getting it’s ass whopped by a 9-core, 18-thread CPU tells us clearly who is in the win here.
Oh, and mind you, thermals for the Qualcomm processors are far terrible than the x86_64 CPUs. The AMD processors, especially the 7040/8040 is the clear winner here, when it comes to price-vs-performance - also being equipped with some of the best iGPUs. Intel’s efficiency cores are garbage - they gave up on long-sough processor technologies, like hyper-threading, for instance, and then there’s this oxidation fiasco, so I’d not recommend them anymore. The M4 does really well for a premium-segment processor - obviously, it is expensive, but it is really good at what it does.
The X1, along with poor emulation support, terrible thermals, and lack of software support isn’t the best choice, unless you’re okay with going all-Linux - which again, and let me tell you, Rust support for Arm is bad. I’ve tried using a Jetson Nano, it was the worst Linux experience I’ve had - yes, Nvidia sucks balls, but Arm isn’t that easy to work on with.
As a RISC fanboy, x86_64 is still a good pick, at least if you’re not a dev and a tinkerer. There’s a lot of work pending, even after the existence of Arm PCs for almost a decade.
Thing is everywhere i look says otherwise, reviees say the SP11 is quiet and doesnt overheat, and is quite performant. Plus, my main use case is going to be development, which i cant find anyone writing about, but I’ve heard the DX is on par for Windows. Rust doesnt seem to have issues with ARM as you have stated the heaviest I’ll be running in games is going to be ULTRAKILL at most, which runs on a T450 smoothly so there is minimal doubt the x86 emulator can’t take it. I’m not keen on buying an Apple laptop, but I’ll consider it should a guy I know who has an M1 Macbook convince me well enough, and if I’m buying x86 again its either a newer Thinkpad (as in, not with a slow CPU and seemingly a long lifetime with a precious user). I’m increasingly eyeing up the Thinkpad P1 Gen 1/2 ( I know another guy who had one and even in 2024 it would RIP AND TEAR UNTIL ITS DONE ), is it still good?
Also, since I feel I haven’t dismissed your “M4 is better” point: There isnt an M4 Macbook yet, and the M3 is beyond my price range, costing over 3k€. The SP11 is 1.25k€ for comparison 1, 2, 3, while an M1 Mac is 1k€.
Finally, a small side note: you haven’t really “backed” or provided sources for any of your arguments, whereas I’ve linked sources for as many statements as I can. If you want, I can also provide screenshots of my friends’ testimonies)
EDIT: Weird, you stated the M4 makes the X1 bite the curb, but that doesn’t seem to be the case[X1] [M4]
I mean, you probably already did, but did you clean the fans and make ssure thee ventilation is OK?
