Hi everyone!
The X2100 motherboard (both the i7-10510u and i7-10710u) have all arrived. I’ve already shipped a few units out and will be posting installation guides for the motherboard and BIOS settings to tweak. However, the bulk of the orders are pushed back a bit further as there are a few issues I’m addressing.
Lid reinforcements
As the 13″ top halves are CNCed, I’ll be taking extra time to reinforce it with aluminium bars in the chassis. Without it, the entire panel assembly flexes a bit too much and this should reinforce it by a fair bit. I’ll post more info and photos of the process once I get that done.
Motherboard issues
As of 23 June, I’ve collated a few issues that is present on the motherboard. They do not affect the overall performance and stability of the motherboard and are more minor problems. I would still like to address these as much as possible before shipment to ensure a better experience once the laptop is shipped. The daughterboard refers to the original X201 daughterboard that contains the right side IO (USB, 3.5mm etc). The issues are listed in descending order of importance:
- SD card reader is not working in most/all left side daughterboard. The SD card reader is a USB2.0 interface and is quite slow though.
- BIOS (logo) occasionally might not appear after reboot. Desktop and OS will display fine. Cold boot if you want to access the BIOS.
- Low static in some daughterboards (I’ve not encountered it before but it’s reported that this is an issue).
- Some USB3.0 devices might not work on the USB2.0 port on the daughterboard (only 1 USB3.0 thumbdrive as far as I know). The native USB3.0/USB-C ports on the left side works fine.
- High powered 2.5″ drives might experience drop in connections due to lack of power (DC S3610 was the only one tested). Normal consumer drives should work without any issues.
I’m still looking into the SD card issue and will update on that as it appears to be the only issue that seems to plague all X2100 no matter the OS/configuration.
I’ll update this list periodically and also attach this on the X2100 main page for reference.
Motherboard stability
Other than the issues listed above, I’ve not encountered a single issue in my 2 weeks of testing the board (M.2 + SATA + 2*32GB RAM) with both Windows 10 and Manjaro Linux. All major functionality (sleep/wake), charging, WiFi (7260AC/AX200), 4G LTE are working flawlessly.
Linux KVM with hardware passthrough has also been tested (M.2 & SATA controllers). eGPU has also been tested with M.2 with the Beast EXP GDC M.2 eGPU. This enables a virtualised KVM Windows experience. All the usual eGPU issues and quirks are present but as far as the BIOS is concerned, the eGPU is fully recognised and usable.
As far as daily driver status, this laptop can definitely replace your daily driver. Other than the SD card reader, everything else functions properly.
Chargers supported
As the CPU and display draws a lot of power, DO NOT attempt to boot this laptop with a 65W charger WITHOUT a battery. I’ll be shipping a 90W charger in the box to enable battery-less boots but if you want to carry a smaller 65W charger, MAKE SURE you have a battery or you WILL NOT be able to boot it up.
I’ve been using a 65W USB-C charger with a barrel adapter and under most normal everyday situations, I’ve not seen a decrease in charge on the battery. I can safely conclude that 65W is just enough for a usable experience.
Fan adjustment
To those who’re concerned with fan noise, the fan speed can be adjusted in the BIOS at different temperature. This enables better adjustment according to how much noise you can tolerate. I’ll add the instructions to the software section including other BIOS adjustments. Personally, the default settings sounds fine to me so feel free to ignore this.
Shipping
As the SD card issue isn’t yet confirmed to be a BIOS issue, I’m not shipping the laptop just yet. If you’re not gonna be using the SD card reader, please let me know and I’ll arrange to ship yours once the lid is fixed up. Otherwise, I’ll work on this further to fix it and delay shipping.
Thank you for reading and as usual, please drop me a PM for any questions/inquiries.
9 Comments
I asked this on another page on your site, but I just noticed this part:
“To those who’re concerned with fan noise, the fan speed can be adjusted in the BIOS at different temperature. This enables better adjustment according to how much noise you can tolerate.”
Does this mean we can create our own custom fan curves in the BIOS like with a standard motherboard? If so then that’s huge, and solves my number one issue with custom Thinkpad motherboards (such as I’ve experienced with my X62).
There isn’t a curve unfortunately, only 3 temperature settings. Fan speed can be set at 3 different temperatures. It’s not the best but it’s a lot more elegant and user controllable than the X62 etc. At stock settings, the sound and temps are excellent at idle and doesn’t ramp up randomly or uncontrollably.
I’ll post more info but if you don’t do much, throttling the CPU to 5W in the BIOS gets you an almost silent machine at only 50C at 25C ambient.
Bonjour, je souhaite acheter cette machine X2100 mais où, comment et est-elle livrable en France
Merci pour votre réponse
Bonjour,
Pour acheter la machine, il faut envoyer un mail, au propriétaire du site, à cette adresse: xue.yao.n@gmail.com. S’il lui en reste, il vous la vendra.
La machine est livrable en France.
Si vous avez des questions, n’hésitez pas à les poser.
Cordialement.
Are there any news on the current status?
I’m sending a new updates in a few days’ time. In short, SD card is fixed and the lid is also reinforced.
Awesome! Thanks for the quick reply!
Wait, battery still decreasing with 65W charger? Then how much is battery time without wall power at all?
It’s decreasing not due to the charger I believe, but because I have a dead (bad) battery at the time of writing. However, I’ve tested that at certain CPU TDP, the system exhibits hiccups (switching between on/off charging state) on a 65W charger. I don’t think it’s because the system is drawing 65W but it’s something else (the T440p and a few other machines also exhibit this even though the system has no load). However, a 9-cell should comfortable last at least 5-6hrs on medium brightness. There are already reports of ~9hrs on a 15W PL1 TDP limit and low brightness on the hexacore but I expect a conservative 5-6hrs on a fresh 9-cell.