This artical was written a long time and left in a very uncomplete state. I still need to add links but I thought I would post it otherwise I will never post it. Please excuse the state this is in. I have since moved onto a framework and then a surface tablet since I completed this mod.

My thinkpad is now dead, the screen flickering returned. I have a feeling this is because the cable died. These modes can be very unraliable, they are attaching to parts of the machine that were not ment for a 2k screen. They rely on hacking the bios to trick it into displaying only out of a docking port. Also, the parts will not be QC’ed as well. This can leave the hardware in a very unreliable state.

QHD 16:10

This project took a long time to get together. Well, I tried a few times but I always came accross issues.

A minor panic was when my order came like this: image of crushed box posted from china That being said, all was OK with the package.

Finding the Right DAM Cable

One of the first issues is the mod chip I ordered didn’t come with a cable for the DISPLAY_NAME_HERE. Seems like a easy problem, order the correct one. The problem I had was I couldn’t find one anyware. I posted a few times on reddit and asked in the discord REFERANCE SOURCES

Flashing Black Screen

Gif of screen flashing

After getting everything in place; I have the right cable; the MOD chip is installed; I turn it on; the screen lightes up.. then stays black. I tried numerous times to reseat the cables and nothing! After hours of trying, I go back to the basics. I went over my soilder joints with lots of flux trying to make sure it joints are strong. Attack everything up again; screen flashes black; goes off but this time it lights back up with the bios screen! Hazzar!

Battery Re-Cell

Unfortunatly, I didn’t take any photos of this, I was shitting myself that I might blow a battery up. That being said there are lots of guides online on re-celling a battery. Honestly, I don’t recomend it. If it gose wrong, you could end up either breathing in a lot of dangrous chemicals or burning your house down. You can get a fairly decent replacment battery from companies like green-cell.

USB-C

USB-C is one of the best things in the world. The thinkpad shippes with a barrel jack plug, while it is reliable, which means I have to carry around an edditinal charger. Online, you can pick up a simple circit that works with the Power Direct spesification. It can provide 9V,12V and 20V when you change the value of a risistor. All you need to do is soilder up the wire of the barel jack and print a 3d enclousure. After all this was done, I had this: image of a usb-c plug for the thinkpad

There is someone online that sells this as a kit, though they don’t ship to the UK. You can find them on Tindie here: (LINK TO TINDE SITE)

Quad-Core Mod

The X230 never shipped with a quad-core CPU. That being said, the motherboard dose support more powerful moddles. You can find a list on the xcpdpsh(something site) where they sell boards pre-modded. You can also find these boards from sites like aliexpress. It really improves the perfomance, if you are dead set on this style of hardware it is really worth the upgrade.
image of the bios screen of the laptop with the new CPU in

BIOS

Just a final note, if you are modding a thinkpad with a 2k screen, you need to flash the bios with a patched version. This can be coreboot based bios or the OEM bios.

SOURCES

REDDIT_POSTS_HERE FIND THE MODDING WEBSITE THIS IS MAINLY BASED OFF!