Upgrading a T901, Results!

[bikerbob1016]

Not sure why my post is blank. Here's what I tried to type here...

I recently bought a T901, my first ever laptop. Because of my lifelong experience of building all the desktop computers I've ever owned component by component, I couldn't help but try customizing everything about this laptop to make it exactly what I wanted.

Unfortunately there's precious little information about customizing laptops, at least relative to desktops, so I though I'd post the results of what I've done so other people can find this information instead of experimenting for themselves like I did.

RAM
Fujitsu says that 8GB is the maximum. This is wrong! I've got 16 GB running in here just fine. Boots just fine, and Memtest-ed for 8 hours overnight without any problems or errors.

Optical Drive
Fujitsu wants $250 for a T901 with a Blu-ray drive. Which nowadays is pretty much the cost of two standalone blu-ray players. I bought a Panasonic UJ-240 for $75. I replaced its bezel with the irregularly shaped one from the T901's DVD drive so it would fit in the slot (the modular bay quick release prevents using standard bezels). I took off the, uh, framework or rails or mounting kit (I don't know what else to it) from the old drive and put it on the new one so it would fit snugly. It's about a 2 minute upgrade that saves $175.

Processor
Fujitsu says that the T901 only works with 4 processor models: i5 2520m, i5 2540m, i7 2620m, and i7 2640m. This is also wrong! I took a chance and replaced the i5 2520m that came with my T901 with an i7 2760qm. This is where I learned the CPU's are socket G2 and NOT soldered in. BIOS recognized it and booted without a hitch! This leads me to believe that ANY G2 socketed CPU compatible with the QM67 chipset will work in the T901, all the way up to the i7 XM CPUs. However, this quad-core CPU doesn't work nearly as well as it theoretically should. The 2760qm puts out 45 watts of heat, while all the stock CPUs Fujitsu offers with the T901 are only rated at 35 watts. I used Folding@home as a stress test to load the CPU while monitoring the temperatures on the four cores, and at full load it takes about 30 seconds to go from the idling temperature of ~45 degrees to 85-90 degrees. At that point the CPU begins severely throttling itself to prevent higher temperatures, slowing down to 1.2 GHz from 2.4 Ghz. Disappointing though that may seem, it still outperforms the i5 2520m by up to 50% (cinebench CPU test went from 2.79 to 4.25) even with throttling, which theoretically should best even the top stock CPU option, the i7 2640m. If it didn't have to throttle itself, the 2760qm should be at least double the performance of the i5 2520m.

In everyday programs, though (Portal 2, Civilization 5, Adobe Premiere CS3, Solidworks), the CPU only rarely breaks the apparent throttling threshold of 85 degrees (exception being Premiere, a couple minutes into a big video export). Even at 85 degrees, I'm surprised by how cool the case remains; nothing is too hot to touch even though the air blowing out the heatsink vent is VERY hot.

An interesting possibility that I hadn't realized until I had already bought all these part upgrades is that the i7 2760qm and the QM67 chipset both support DDR3 1600 RAM; Fujitsu's stock CPU's only supported 1333. So it may be possible to have 1600 RAM in a T901 if the CPU is upgraded to one that supports it.

I'll post more about my T901 as I work on it; a solid state drive upgrade and some sort of improved cooling solution is on my to-do list. But even without those, I absolutely love the T901 for its pen/touch input and even after only 2 weeks with it, I'm finding myself having trouble going back to touchless desktop screens and my Wacom tablet. For me, the T901 is truly a desktop replacement, it supersedes my desktop's functionality in almost every way.

[mimarsinan]

Great post! I'd have to say that your experience is typical with most laptop manufacturers. Nowadays I order the minimum possible configuration and then upgrade everything myself, not only because its cheaper this way, but also because laptop manufacturers simply don't offer the highest-end components during configuration.

Even with "high-end" manufacturers like Alienware, its the same story - I completely upgraded my m14x with dual SSDs, the fastest i7 mobile CPU (extreme edition), and 16 GB RAM...

The only thing that you cannot upgrade is going to be the GPU in 99% of the cases, so that's the only item I order maxed-out in the original configuration.

Now I am about to begin the teardown process of my own brand new T901. I plan to upgrade it to 16 GB, dual 600 GB SSDs (unlike Alienware, Fujitsu is at least kind enough to let you order a second drive bay hard disk adapter option which is VERY thoughtful and sure beats all the tape and custom padding in my m14x holding down the second drive), and the CPU to 2960XM.

Even in the m14x which is thermally fairly good the 2960XM throttles down in the exact manner you have described, so I am prepared for that on the tablet. It will be well worth it having 8 cores on the system!

Finally, an Extreme Tablet! The Fujitsu does have a decent GPU - a first among tablets for a very long time - helping me fulfill my dream of having an Extreme Tablet - one that is completely portable, pen-aware, and powerful as most of the desktops out there.

Now the one thing I could use your help with is a teardown guide! Does Fujitsu have a maintenance manual, or is there a teardown guide available for this amazing tablet?

Usually with less pretty computers I don't mind diving right in but with this one I kind of want to be a little more careful! Don't you just love the heat protection padding at the bottom of it

[bikerbob1016]

Now I am about to begin the teardown process of my own brand new T901. I plan to upgrade it to 16 GB, dual 600 GB SSDs (unlike Alienware, Fujitsu is at least kind enough to let you order a second drive bay hard disk adapter option which is VERY thoughtful and sure beats all the tape and custom padding in my m14x holding down the second drive), and the CPU to 2960XM.

The modular bay is absolutely fantastic. I didn't even know modular bays existed in laptops, much less in a 13" one.

And while the upgrade to a quad-core was VERY worth it, I would exercise caution using an extreme edition. They put out 55 watts, while my 2760qm puts out 45 watts, and Fujitsu designed the laptop with only 35 watt CPUs in mind. The heatsink was barely large enough (like nail-bitingly small margins) to cover the increased size of the 2760QM, so if the XM chips are even bigger than that you may have some serious cooling problems.

Now the one thing I could use your help with is a teardown guide! Does Fujitsu have a maintenance manual, or is there a teardown guide available for this amazing tablet?

Usually with less pretty computers I don't mind diving right in but with this one I kind of want to be a little more careful! Don't you just love the heat protection padding at the bottom of it

I found no teardown guide anywhere. I actually had a private computer shop help me out with it. Fujitsu uses self-tapping screws on the case, so it's really hard to unscrew, and hard again to then rescrew. I lost two screws from stripping the heads just trying to get them out once. Other than that, it went pretty smoothly.

Let me know how it goes, and if you have any questions please ask!

P.S. Try Windows 8. In some ways it handles the touchscreen better than Fujitsu's own programming/interfaces. Only thing is, the consumer preview didn't support wacom drivers so I didn't have pen pressure sensitivity. But I can't wait for the full release to put on this T901.

[mimarsinan]

And while the upgrade to a quad-core was VERY worth it, I would exercise caution using an extreme edition. They put out 55 watts, while my 2760qm puts out 45 watts, and Fujitsu designed the laptop with only 35 watt CPUs in mind. The heatsink was barely large enough (like nail-bitingly small margins) to cover the increased size of the 2760QM, so if the XM chips are even bigger than that you may have some serious cooling problems.

Oh well that's part of the fun of trying

I found no teardown guide anywhere. I actually had a private computer shop help me out with it. Fujitsu uses self-tapping screws on the case, so it's really hard to unscrew, and hard again to then rescrew. I lost two screws from stripping the heads just trying to get them out once. Other than that, it went pretty smoothly.

Any hints/tips? Was a complete disassembly of the entire computer required, such as the LCD? I don't have anyone here I could trust with "heuristically" figuring this out, so I'd love any guidelines you may have.

P.S. Try Windows 8. In some ways it handles the touchscreen better than Fujitsu's own programming/interfaces. Only thing is, the consumer preview didn't support wacom drivers so I didn't have pen pressure sensitivity. But I can't wait for the full release to put on this T901.

Believe it or not, I use Server 2003 (from the XP era). Currently compiling drivers for it. I am just far more comfortable with it than the entire NT 6.X family. Windows 8 does look promising in some of its areas (Task Manager, Explorer progress dialogs), but I have doubts about the Metro UI...

[bikerbob1016]

Any hints/tips? Was a complete disassembly of the entire computer required, such as the LCD? I don't have anyone here I could trust with "heuristically" figuring this out, so I'd love any guidelines you may have.

Not sure what you mean by the LCD. The black panel under/next to the hinge was one of the first things that had to be taken off (it pops off by lifting up the edges and then sliding towards the keyboard), but the screen didn't need to be taken apart or removed. The keyboard and case bottom were just screwed together, but like I said the self-tapping screws in the plastic holes won't go cooperatively. Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as just removing the back panel to gain access to the CPU; all the bodywork on the keyboard side of the laptop had to be taken apart. I don't know if that counts as a complete disassembly or not...

Windows 8 does look promising in some of its areas (Task Manager, Explorer progress dialogs), but I have doubts about the Metro UI...

I had my doubts, too, about its usefulness. And I still do, for desktop/laptop users who only have a keyboard and mouse for input. But with a touchscreen, it really works well. They really wanted to make this a touchscreen OS, and I think it shows. I especially liked the pop-up menus on all four edges of the screen, and even preferred the Windows 8 touch keyboard to the one Fujitsu provides for the T901 in its software/drivers. I even started using Internet Explorer again because IE 10's touch interface was just that good. And the desktop is still there, and (at least in the previous public release) it's identical to the desktop UI we've all grown accustomed to.

Edit: Since your putting in a quad-core CPU, the T901 should then be able to support DDR3 1600 RAM instead of just DDR3 1333 RAM, if you want to maximize everything about your laptop. The stock Sandy Bridge processors seem to be the only stock component that didn't support that type of RAM.

[mimarsinan]

Well, I'm truly impressed with the T901. It runs Server 2003 beautifully! Kudos to Fujitsu for providing a superb and complete collection of XP drivers for this tablet. It is so rare in this day and age! Granted, XP is 11, and 2003 is 9 years old; however clearly as Fujitsu have demonstrated they are still capable of running on all modern hardware - and do so wonderfully well! I've spent ages collecting and publishing XP drivers (even on this forum) for my other laptops. I cannot thank Fujitsu enough for saving me all this pain!

Right now I have 16 GB RAM (1333 I think, 8x2), 2x600 GB Intel SSDs (one with 7x64 and another with 2003 x86 - the beauty of the Server 2003 OS is that its identical to XP in virtually all respects; except it can actually USE ALL 16 GB of RAM in 32 bit mode!), and the only outstanding item to be upgraded is the CPU. I cannot imagine how fast it will run after that!

The machine is already blazing fast and has terrific battery life to boot. Even on 2003, and on a single battery (without the second bay battery), I am currently getting 4-5 hours with moderate use. That's really saying a LOT! On the Alienware m14x which also had a hybrid nVIDIA GPU solution, battery life was terrible because the GPU would drain all the battery in XP mode. Not so with the Fujitsu T901. In fact, I am so impressed, I will be writing a full review of this system with both 2003 and 7x64 after the CPU upgrade!

Would it be too much to ask if I requested pictures for the teardown regions that are required for the CPU replacement? From your description of it, the main display is not required to be removed which is fantastic news (LCD). So I take it the CPU is underneath the keyboard, then? After removing the black panel with the "Rotate" text on it, which regions must be unscrewed on the bottom of the unit to be able to remove the keyboard? I think we could collaboratively put together a tear-down guide (I'll be happy to provide pictures of my own experience) for anyone else who might also want to upgrade the system. And of course, I am very curious to report my findings on how the Intel Extreme CPU runs on this tablet! I realize its completely out of spec, but again, that's part of the fun of it!

[bikerbob1016]

Awesome! Glad to hear it's working so well!

Would it be too much to ask if I requested pictures for the teardown regions that are required for the CPU replacement?

No, not at all... Though I probably won't be able to do it today. Certainly by this weekend, though.

So I take it the CPU is underneath the keyboard, then?

No, actually, it's right next to the RAM compartment on the underside of the motherboard. But the part of the case that is concealing the CPU is screwed in to both the cover around the keyboard and the motherboard itself. Literally every screw has to be removed to get at it.

After removing the black panel with the "Rotate" text on it, which regions must be unscrewed on the bottom of the unit to be able to remove the keyboard?

Everything. Everything has to be unscrewed. The case components and RAM/HD covers and motherboard are all annoyingly intertwined, so if one part needs to come off so must the rest.

I'll post pictures for this in the next couple days. Congratulations on making what is one of the world's few, if not only, quad-core extreme Tablets!

[mimarsinan]

I look forward to the pictures! I won't be able to start on this upgrade until Monday so no rush. Right now I'm fine tuning both OS's and I will probably swap the drive placements (battery bay into main bay and vice versa) so I can use the second bay battery (and optical media drive) on an as-needed basis with my favorite OS...

[Shwarpine]

Hi, can you tell me what antenna T901 has, 3x3 or 2x2?
I wanna know whether T901 can use Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN instead of Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6205.
Thank you.

Not sure why my post is blank. Here's what I tried to type here...

I recently bought a T901, my first ever laptop. Because of my lifelong experience of building all the desktop computers I've ever owned component by component, I couldn't help but try customizing everything about this laptop to make it exactly what I wanted.

Unfortunately there's precious little information about customizing laptops, at least relative to desktops, so I though I'd post the results of what I've done so other people can find this information instead of experimenting for themselves like I did.

RAM
Fujitsu says that 8GB is the maximum. This is wrong! I've got 16 GB running in here just fine. Boots just fine, and Memtest-ed for 8 hours overnight without any problems or errors.

Optical Drive
Fujitsu wants $250 for a T901 with a Blu-ray drive. Which nowadays is pretty much the cost of two standalone blu-ray players. I bought a Panasonic UJ-240 for $75. I replaced its bezel with the irregularly shaped one from the T901's DVD drive so it would fit in the slot (the modular bay quick release prevents using standard bezels). I took off the, uh, framework or rails or mounting kit (I don't know what else to it) from the old drive and put it on the new one so it would fit snugly. It's about a 2 minute upgrade that saves $175.

Processor
Fujitsu says that the T901 only works with 4 processor models: i5 2520m, i5 2540m, i7 2620m, and i7 2640m. This is also wrong! I took a chance and replaced the i5 2520m that came with my T901 with an i7 2760qm. This is where I learned the CPU's are socket G2 and NOT soldered in. BIOS recognized it and booted without a hitch! This leads me to believe that ANY G2 socketed CPU compatible with the QM67 chipset will work in the T901, all the way up to the i7 XM CPUs. However, this quad-core CPU doesn't work nearly as well as it theoretically should. The 2760qm puts out 45 watts of heat, while all the stock CPUs Fujitsu offers with the T901 are only rated at 35 watts. I used Folding@home as a stress test to load the CPU while monitoring the temperatures on the four cores, and at full load it takes about 30 seconds to go from the idling temperature of ~45 degrees to 85-90 degrees. At that point the CPU begins severely throttling itself to prevent higher temperatures, slowing down to 1.2 GHz from 2.4 Ghz. Disappointing though that may seem, it still outperforms the i5 2520m by up to 50% (cinebench CPU test went from 2.79 to 4.25) even with throttling, which theoretically should best even the top stock CPU option, the i7 2640m. If it didn't have to throttle itself, the 2760qm should be at least double the performance of the i5 2520m.

In everyday programs, though (Portal 2, Civilization 5, Adobe Premiere CS3, Solidworks), the CPU only rarely breaks the apparent throttling threshold of 85 degrees (exception being Premiere, a couple minutes into a big video export). Even at 85 degrees, I'm surprised by how cool the case remains; nothing is too hot to touch even though the air blowing out the heatsink vent is VERY hot.

An interesting possibility that I hadn't realized until I had already bought all these part upgrades is that the i7 2760qm and the QM67 chipset both support DDR3 1600 RAM; Fujitsu's stock CPU's only supported 1333. So it may be possible to have 1600 RAM in a T901 if the CPU is upgraded to one that supports it.

I'll post more about my T901 as I work on it; a solid state drive upgrade and some sort of improved cooling solution is on my to-do list. But even without those, I absolutely love the T901 for its pen/touch input and even after only 2 weeks with it, I'm finding myself having trouble going back to touchless desktop screens and my Wacom tablet. For me, the T901 is truly a desktop replacement, it supersedes my desktop's functionality in almost every way.

[mimarsinan]

Any luck with the pictures?

Are the two screws that had to be broken off the ones near the docking port at the bottom of the case? There's basically two "sealed flat" tops there...are there screws underneath that must be removed; making it necessary to break these "tops"?

Any hints how one might do the breaking