Customizing a T400

Hi everyone,
I purchased a good deal on a refurbished T400. Despite a few set backs, I think it will end up being a good laptop for me.

I'm going to swap out the hard drive and memory for larger capacities. That's easy enough. It just has integrated graphics and a DVD-ROM drive, however. In the future, I may want to swap these out for a DVD R/W drive and possibly add the ATI graphics card.

I can see the DVD drive swap not being overly difficult, but I imagine the graphics card would be very difficult (or impossible?).

Does anyone have any experience with this? If so, where should I start?

I did a search on ebay, but did turn up any parts I was looking for (e.g. a DVD RW drive for a T400). Do these show up on occasion on ebay?

Some other questions:
-How difficult would it be to do without some sort of service manual?
-Are service manuals available? If so, where from?
-What other models would be compatible with the T400 for the DVD drive and graphics?

Thanks.

 

Unfortunately you cant upgrade the graphics without replacing the mainboard as its built in.

DVD swap is easy, theres a little release latch on the side of the computer under the dvd drive next to the usb port. It will release a pull tab which will let you pull out the drive. Simple in and out swap. There may also be a screw underneath, but its not neccesarily there.

You will need an ultrabay slim serial ata drive (model number 43N3214). I havent had much luck on ebay for that drive as im looking for the same one. The cheapest ive seen on lenovo is around $USD 175. Maybe you can find it cheaper with coupons and sales.

For the hard drive, make sure you get a SATA drive as well, I just picked up a 500gb WD drive for about $100 shipped at newegg. RAM is DDR3, I picked up a 2gb stick for about $65 shipped at newegg.

When swapping the hard drive, just pay attention to the direction all the parts are facing. The hard drive comes out on the same side as the optical drive, just remove one screw from the bottom to remove the door and pull out the cradle carefully. there should be a plastic pulltab tucked inside which you can pull on. Remove the drive from the cable and put the new one in the same way as the old one came out.

Ram is underneath, one screw should open the door. There are two slots which can take up to 4gb each i believe. 32bit windows can only use 3-3.5gb. I recommend 2gb minimum.

 

Unless you got some serious skills, you're not going to be able to upgrade your GPU.

The new Thinks just switched to SATA drives. There's not a big supply of them right now and they're expensive. The T series use super slim 9.5mm height drives. Not many drives will work in the bay. Plus they use a different connector. You're pretty much stuck using Lenovo made drives unless again you got some serious skills.

Check the sticky for the manuals.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the tips!

Too bad about the graphics card, but I guess I figured. I hope the integrated card isn't too bad. Heck, I guess I rarely use any graphics intensive stuff anyway. I wanted to try Fallout 3, though. Hope it will run ok.

Already picked up a 7200 320GB SATA. I see a real good deal on ebay for 2 x 2GB DD3 PC3-8500 chips for around $90. Maybe too good to be true? Doesn't event mention the brand name. Hmmmm...

Anyway, if I find some of those drives on ebay, I'll let you know. (Assuming there's more than one!