Lenovo X200 Repairs

Not long ago I got a circa 2012 Lenovo X220. It’s an old laptop, but represents one of the last of an era of well-made modular commercial laptops that are designed to be easily serviceable. Testament to this is the fact that it has a user service manual available for it. The keyboard and build quality are also excellent.

All is not perfect though, and the X220 I had had an intermittent issue with not resuming from suspend. A search indicated that this might be a common problem with the motherboard, although I’m convinced that it can be resolved. In any case buying parts is not expensive, and I happened to get a really good deal on a second working X220 complete with dock and lots of accessories. As it happens with Ebay occasionally there were a couple of things that weren’t mentioned in the description - perhaps unknown to the seller, so I didn’t blame them. First was a bonus mSATA installed inside, but unfortunately one of the USB sockets was broken. I think I would be able to solder a replacement USB socket although I would also need to de/resolder the SD adapter to access it so that will be a later project.

There was another problem which was slightly more pressing - the CPU core temperature was idling at close to 60°c and under moderate load was heading in excess of 90°c. So I finally completely dismantled an X220 and replaced the thermal compound on the heatsink. Unfortunately it seems that overheating in the past might have caused issues