ThinkPad T70 - The ultimate Beast Fanmade Custom Enthusiast Retro Thinkpad with KabyLake HQ CPU

[iHack13]

Hi guys, I have written this up on tomato's forums, so I thought I'd share it here too. Would be a waste if it would get lost there:

 

Hi,

 

I still own an old T60 Thinkpad. It has a 15" 4:3 fantastic IPS-Screen at a resolution of 1400x1050. Now some of the newer Generations probably won't understand but in fact, this screen ratio is very precious for a lot of productive tasks and nowadays you can't find these anymore in modern laptops, since all manufacturers go 16:9 mainstream, for multimedia consumption. Which sucks... Apple is at least making a compromise and still goes for 16:10 , which is the best you can get. And people already appreciate that. So.. Whatever, lets talk about the Topic.

 

As you might know this ThinkPad is internally quite outdated. It has a Core 2 Duo with a GMA950 !! I remember getting kexts for GMA950 on my Dell Pentium D Desktop PC (Dual Core Pentium 4 basically) for OSX 10.4 Tiger

That was the time when Macbooks were made from Plastic instead of unibody aluminum. Remember those white Macbooks? Yeah, those used Core 2 Duo with GMA950.

 

Around 2006 that must have been. Infact my Thinkpad has a discrete ATi Mobility X1400, which rather makes things even more complicated..

So.. This whole old stuff doesn't really mean anything, because someone in China who goes by the name of HOPE and has really some love for old Thinkpads, and engineering know-how and connections to manufacturing sites, came along and decided to build a new custom Motherboard calling it the T70.

 

You can go to 51nb.com and check it out (chinese site). Maybe I will link some threads with pictures later, showing the install process and mods if you cant find it.

 

Just as a little overview, I tried to get some information off the site (with Google Translate etc). The Specs of the T70 are:

 

1. adapter models

1) 14 inch 4: 3 positive screen T60 (p), T61 (p)

2) 15 inch 4: 80 GHz) ; 2) i7-6700HQ (4-core 8 threads), i5-6300HQ (4-core 4 threads), i5-7300HQ (4-core 4-thread), i7-7700HQ (4-core 8 threads), i7 -7820HQ (4 core 8 thread)

3) trial production version will confirm the use of the seventh generation: i7-7700HQ

4) production version of the first batch of the seventh generation: i7-7700HQ

5) production version of the second batch of the seventh Generation: i7-7700HQ ES, i5-7300HQ ES, i7-7820HQ ES

6) Production version of the third batch using the seventh generation: i7-7820HQ ES

 

3. Chipset

1) Engineering board using HM170, you can use the P50 / P70 Bridge chip CM236, reference comparison: HM170 vs. CM236

2) HM175 support 1 NVME M.2 + 2 SATA

3) CM236 support 2 NVME M.2 + 2 SATA, test board and production version of the first, Two, three batches of the use of CM236 chipset

4) built-in TPM encryption chip

 

4. Cooling & fan & water

1) Early shipments provide motherboards based on the new T500 fan transformation, will be shipped with the motherboard, without self.

2) post-shipment board provided by the dream fly custom water-cooled fan and water-cooled suit (to be paid separately): mass production of the third batch of T70 free upgrade water cooling fan

3) silicone grease to be self

 

5. memory

1) dual DDR4 memory, The maximum support to 64G (32G * 2, the market is not a single 32G memory, the current maximum support 16G * 2)

2) theoretically support the type of memory: DDR4-1333, DDR4-1600, DDR4-1866, DDR4-2133,

 

Wireless card

1) using Mini-PCI wireless card, full height, located in the original T60 WWAN card slot location. Half-high card to be self-fixed to full high fixed, 15-inch T60 right antenna to be appropriate to extend their own 2) and X62 the same, not compatible with any original TPU with the FRU card

3) current test compatible NIC: AR5B22, Intel7260ac, Intel6300, BCM94352

10 ( 1) support key combination: Fn + F3 (off screen), F4 (sleep), Home / End (brightness adjustment), PgUp (night light)

 

11. graphics card

1) set significantly: According to CPU model, 7700HQ is the Intel® HD Graphics 630

2) alone: difficulty is too large, do not support, do not consider

 

I will try to order things. Since Google Translate messed up the formatting and some other stuff.

But the most important stuff should be there.

 

Also here is a link to the BIOS collection. The BIOS is mentioned to be AMI Award 7 Bios. It should be UEFI as it can be seen at the bottom of this post

https://forum.51nb.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1740243&highlight=

 

Also here is a collection of the BIOSes . It gets constantly developed and I think it is nice to have someone that can listen to your input. Call me crazy but it might even happen that with the correct feedback the BIOS could be so good that you would ent up with a perfect native DSDT for OSX.

 

BIOS:

https://forum.51nb.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1739986&extra=page=1

 

The price is set to $580 USD for the latest batch from July, last month I believe.

specifications are as follows (Google Trans):

i7-7820HQ Processor (ES version, the same specifications and the official version, 4 core 8 threads, 32K

+32 K + 256K +8 MB) CM236 chipset, support dual M.2 +2.

 

I think earlier batches like leftovers from second batch with 7300HQ should be a bit cheaper. $460 USD according to my research.

 

So this is as far as my research goes. I hope you like my little writeup on this topic. This is a really nice project in my opinion and I think it would make a beautiful hackintosh for people who are willing to mod and get the best classic experience with a beautiful display in terms of aspect ratio and also a very nice keyboard with a horrible trackpad , the size of a stamp and the trackpoint .

 

Let me know what you think about it. I am especially curious about RehabMans opinion.

 

Also there are other ThinkPads that are modded like this. So if this isn't your favorite one, or the one that you don't own, maybe it is among these if you are lucky:

 

X200 / X200s / X201 / X201i / X201s -> X210

X61 / X60 / X61s / X60s -> X62. It was even reviewed by notebookcheck

T4x series -> T50

[TECH_ATTACK]

Nice to see this Retrolove. But it makes no sense. First of all you will not cool the device good enough (or will be very loud). The next is, the Display from the T60 is realy {censored}. Yeah... maybe good screen ratio, but bad Contrast and really bad brightness, is a no go today. Resolution is bad too. So have fun with that, but i doubt that many people wants this system you are talking about. 

 

I had the T60 too (1600x1200 Display), now i have X1 Carbon 5th Gen, P51 and T470 and they are all much much better than the T60.