I’m planning to get the cheapest used t480 i could find in Beirut and upgrade the screen, ram, trackpad, storage, and battery and I was just wondering if you have any tips to share.
Current specs: CPU: Intel Core i5 8th Gen 8GB DDR4 RAM 256GB SSD NVMe 14" FHD"
My use cases besides simple Web browsing is programming (Python, C, C++ currently, but I do tend to learn a new language atleast once a year), light gaming (minecraft, indie games, and maybe some first person shooters), I plan to get tinto 3d printing and CAD to expand my projects into physical devices instead of just software, servers, and light arduino/esp32 expirementing on a breadboard.
Upgradibility and Repairability is something I care about. I’m gonna he putting Linux on it ofc and might expirement with changing bios in the future though still unsure as that will limit me to no egpu capabilities.
Anything else I need to know? Parts to upgrade, different models that would suit my use cases better etc?
My only tip is buy used. It might be a gamble but it’s better than to pay 4x the price. Sometimes used machines are cheaper than the components themselves.
don’t fixate on the T480, be open to snagging a newer model if the price is right - T490 and T14 G1. even models with soldered-on RAM if they’re cheap, like X390, T13 G1, T14s G1; they can be had with 16 GB on-board and they also have interchangeable motherboards, in addition to many other parts being cross-model compatible. unless the price is awesome, stay away from early ryzens (anything below 5000-series) as they’re a headache wrt power management in linux. chill with the upgrades, it’s the worst time to be spending money on those, your use cases are easily covered with the base config. if you’re set on upgrading things, try to source parts from local busted up units and junkers, not online sellers. good luck.
The T480 (at least with the nvidia graphics) is not suited for light gaming. In theory you should be able to play games up to Doom 2016. In practice the thermal throttling is so awful that the GPU is throttled very quickly that you can’t even play Quake 3.
CPU and GPU sit on the same heatpipe so that you get to the throttling limit even if the GPU isn’t used that much.
