W520 Thinkpad
Chloe Sarnoff
I have a thinkpad W520 with a Quadro 1000M nvidia card. This card is the Fermi generation, no longer supported by nvidia from driver 390 onwards. It seems Ubuntu 18.04 will ship with 390 or 396. It's a 2011 laptop. It's fighting fit, a fast quad core so it's still a very usable machine. However, Ubuntu 18.04 (beta) is keen to install this incompatible driver. I would like to use a fairly recent driver, such as 384, since these drivers have support for Prime Sync. There are no packages for these drivers for 18.04 from the nvidia PPA.I wondering what I should do? Perhaps try to port one of the 17.10 packages? How does Ubuntu support old hardware like this? It is not exactly geriatric hardware: 24 GB RAM, SSD drive, quadcore i7...
This was not a bug with the nvidia driver.The nvidia driver was being blacklisted due to a residual file in /etc/modprobe.d from prime-select, the Ubuntu Optimus tool. I have not seen this before. Something odd in the upgrade from 17.10 to 18.04 perhaps, somehow prime-select did not clean up after itself. I will leave this answer here in case it's of help to someone else.
Did some further searching, and according to this thread over there at forum.thinkpads.org, it should be possible with W520 to turn off Optimus in BIOS. That is very encouraging, still if someone get his hands on this machine and would be able to confirm, that would be great.
this page and im stuck on blank screen while booting throught usb drive. i have tried tluck's guide from -lenovo-thinkpad-t420-with-uefi-only/page/20/?tab=comments#comment-1952283 but still im unable to move past boot screen. p.s software isnt my kinda thing im more of a hardware type of guy i have currently windows 10 installed in this system and created almost perfect big sur hackintosh on lenovo ideapad slim 3 15itl6 using this great guide by @Trijintosh
-Bios/UEFI in full default settings(Just change CSM to Disable if you have a AMD GPU and Sata to Ahci)
-Use USB2 port for easy installation with no remap USB
-Users with IGPU can use -igfxvesa bootarg for easy installation
-Delete old EFI folder and paste new. Don't use merge files
-Don't use Drag and Drop into EFI partition. Use Copy/Paste instead
-Reset NVRAM one time - with OpenCore use entry "Reset Nvram" / with Clover use F11 key on boot screen
Maybe you should try this EFI instead: -oc. I reccomend using macOS Big Sur or Ventura; but you can use any you want! Before even booting to the installer, you first have to make new SSDT files with When you have generated all the SSDT files for your system, just zip it and find a way to send it to me, then don't follow the instructions that I've provided below; but you don't have to if you want to do it on your own. Make sure to enable a Quirk named AppleDebug in Booter > Debug and add the boot-arg "-v" and "debug=0x100 in NVRAM > 7C436110-AB2A-4BBB-A880-FE41995C9F82 > boot-args inside the config.plist. This will enable verbose mode, which will allow you to see error logs when booting. That's it for now!
I'm not sure what exactly fixed the fan; if you remember from the previous post, it either reported as spinning at "65535rpm" (16bit int limit; indicating a software error) while actually spinning at a much lower rpm, or just didn't spin at all. It could've been the cleaning that dislodged something gunking it up, it could've been the re-lubing that fixed some friction problems at the bearing, or maybe the fan connector just wasn't seated in the whole way and reinstalling it properly fixed it. either way, I'm happy the fan isn't totally bust, bringing the total cost of this project still at $40 ($50 if you count the paste, but that's more of a tool i can use for other projects).
HOWEVER, the thermal problem is still in the running. I'm hitting 80c, pushing 90, when just playing counterstrike source. I don't think the source of the issue is the thinkpad's thermal module; i think it's working as designed (source: trust me bro). I believe the issue is the Quadro 2000M and the i7 2960XM combined just produces way more heat than the w520 can handle, as even stock configurations push the limits from what i hear. but, the thermal module could still be fucked.
so. I'm not sure what my options are at this point. It's either upgrade the heat sink, try repasting again or downgrade the CPU. I could sell off the 2960XM and buy a less TDP CPU, but i also don't want to lose bragging rights on owning a speced out thinkpad. please share your opinions in the comments :)
frankly, the previous previous owner of this thinkpad who installed a 55w extreme edition cpu is a fool. this baddie runs WAY too hot (82c just installing steam with firefox open on debian) and is probably what's fucking with the fan (long term strain from running at high-rpm). to counteract this, i have a 3 step plan:
so, i ordered a regular old T430 on ebay and called it a day, until I saw this offerup listing for this W520 with a fan problem. the classic design and the promise of the lowest-spec variant of the W520: the i7 2720qm, Quadro 1000M and 16gb of ram; had me interested. and for only $40 including a charger, it's better than the $50 T430 i bought; so i decided to risk it all on whether i could fix the fan problem.
so, i canceled the T430 order and drove 30min across town with my 2 girlfriends to the east end, driving past a literal raging fire at a trailer park (before any fire engines showed up) and past several abandoned houses with broken windows and cars without tires, i made the trade for $40.
After driving home, pizza from an actual red-roof pizza hut in hand, I started fixing the fan issue. I played with it in various ways like dusting and wiggling the fan connectors, i got it to post (i don't know what exactly i did). And checking lspci from the debian install menu shell, I got WAY more than i bargained for.
second off, the CPU is not the advertised i7-2720QM. it's the i7-2960XM, a 4c 8t 3.7ghz 55w CPU; the highest spec CPU you can get for this generation. It's not stock either, it's an aftermarket upgrade. this thing is worth more than the laptop itself.
so; holy shit, I got this behemoth of a classic-series thinkpad on an actual gamble for $40. I fucking love gambling and risk taking. I need an SSD though, debian is currently running off a shitty laptop hard drive.
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