My ThinkPad T440P

Here is my turn on a T440P upgrade and configuration guide. I know it’s 2021 and a device from 2013 might not appeal very sexy, but it is. In the time owning the T440P I bought a Razer Blade 15 (2018) and a Microsoft Surface Pro 7. The Razer Blade had hardware quirks (SSD working unreliably) and some hardware was not well supported under Linux. The Surface Pro I bought as a replacement for the Razer Blade had no Pen and Camera support, even with custom kernel. (Read more on that)

My ideal device would be the upgradeability of the Framework Notebook as a stylus convertible with a current Zen 3 Ryzen. The cherry on top would be a 120 Hz 1080p panel and in a case like the ThinkPad L13 Yoga. I am dreaming…

So it’s 2021 and I am still on an old T440P I bought used for around 170 €. I am still quite happy, the only bummer is the poor battery life. On a 6-Cell battery I get around of 2-3 hours of usage.

But lets start with the hardware upgrades I did to push the notebook through the years.

Hardware Upgrades

I used this guide as reference for most of the hardware upgrades.

Display

Since my Notebook came with the standard 1366x768 TN panel, I upgraded it to the Innolux N140HCE-EN1 Rev. C2 for around 75 €. Full HD IPS are well worth the money. The Aliexpress seller first shipped the wrong panel, but after a dispute I got the right one. The new display is a pleasure and would be the #1 recommendation for a single upgrade I would do. The upgrade is very easy and well documented.

CPU

I switched to the i7-4700MQ with a TDP of 47 W and max. clock. of 3.4 GHz. I would have gone for the 4702MQ or the 4712MQ but they were overpriced at the time. To handle the heat dissipation I used Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut. With its thermal conductivity of 73 W/mK it is one of the best, but since it is electrically conductive, I used nailpolish to seal the surroundings. On Idle I get around 50-55 °C, which is approximately 5 °C less then before switching to liquid metal. Under full load it goes as high as 77-80 °C at a clock speed of 3 GHz. I am using undvervolt to reduce some voltages a little. More on that later. In the BIOS there is a hidden option to cap the longtime power limit at 37 W. To get around this you need to modify the BIOS. See the configuration part for that.

WiFi AC

For the WiFi card I switched to a Killer Wireless-AC 1535 which I had purchased a while ago for cheap. Since the T440P BIOS comes with a WiFi Whitelist, which have to be removed via a BIOS patch. More on that later. Actually this Killer WiFi card is based on a Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac with slightly modified firmware. Not sure if it makes any difference in speed, I just had it lying around.

Small Hardware Upgrades

• I installed 16 GB of used DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM.
• I switched the keyboard since my device came with the wrong layout and no backlighting. I bought the keyboard for around 25 € and sold my old for around 15 €.
• I switched to the T450s touchpad. It was around 15 €. Nothing to comment here.
• Using a SSD/HDD caddy I swapped the DVD Drive for an old SSD I had lying around. The main drive was already a solid state drive.

Hardware Recap

The single most important upgrade for me was the display. An IPS panel with FullHD is gorgeous.

In total I paid around 450 € including shipping. You get somehow attached to a piece of hardware once you start to customize.

Here is a picture from inside.

If I could, I would change the webcam to a 1080p version and retrofit a Wacom Digitizer.

Configuration

BIOS Patch

As mentioned above to get rid of the WiFi Whitelist and to raise the longtime powerlimit you need to patch the BIOS. The best guide to do this is a video on Wolfgang’s Channel with the corresponding articel on his blog.

The prozess looks more risky than it is and is very well documented on his blog.

Pop!_OS first steps

I decided to give Pop!_OS a try. First steps after installation is to do the nescessary OS and firmware updates.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt autoclean
sudo fwupdmgr get-devices
sudo fwupdmgr get-updates
sudo fwupdmgr update
sudo reboot now

After the reboot ist complete we will continue with finetuning and improve the battery life.

ToDo

1. TLP
2. Undervolt
3. Gnome Shell Extensions

Links

Thinkpad T440p Ultimate Buyer’s Guide on Octoperf.com

Lenovo Thinkpad T440p Upgrade Guide by Joshua Lay on Gitlab

Article on removing the WiFi Whitelist on Wolfgang’s Blog

Undervolt Utility by Georgwhewell on Github

Things to do after installing Pop!_OS 20.04 (Apps, Settings, and Tweaks) by Willi Mutschler