monovergent

In an effort to keep my X230 snappy for a few more years until I find/make a newer laptop to my liking, I finally caved in and bought an i7-3612QE board. Posting some observations and thoughts based on the questions I had prior to buying. Previous CPU was the i5-3320M.

Setup

• Debian 12
• XFCE
• 16GB DDR3L
• Two SSDs
• Hyper-threading disabled
• 1vyrain BIOS with classic keyboard EC patch

Performance

• Not literally twice as fast, but the improvement is quite noticeable
• CPU no longer seems to struggle while loading Javascript-laden websites
• Rarely hits 100% CPU usage, even on Youtube (sadly bloated enough to be a sort of benchmark)
• Single-core tasks are only slightly better than before

Thermals

• High 40s at idle to mid 60s when busy
• Feels cooler compared to previous CPU, which I assume is due to the CPU usage being lower across all tasks.
• Did not upgrade to the AVC cooler. Toshiba cooler works well and is quiet as ever.

Battery

• About 4.5 hours of office tasks and light browsing from full to empty with an aftermarket 55 Wh 6-cell at 98% health
• Wattage in the mid 9's at idle with brightness at a comfortable level for a well-lit room. Increase from low 8's with the i5-3320M.
• When doing actual work, wattage hovers from 11 to 15 watts
• 16 to 18 watts watching Youtube videos
• SLT1 IPS display does consume ~1 W more than TN. I installed tlp but left it on default settings.
• 65W Lenovo charger only works when in sleep mode or shut down. In normal use, however, it will not draw the full 65 W. A 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN charger that the X230 believes is 90 W will both work (my 65 W GaN charger worked well and did not overheat, YMMV)

Other

• Make sure to enlarge the cutout on the black sticker on the underside of the cooler since the 3612QE die is larger
• EC flashing will require a 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN that the X230 believes is 90 W.
• Factory CPUs have BGA package underfill. I have not checked for myself, but it is likely that the upgraded CPU does not have underfill. This should not affect day-to-day use, but the lack of underfill will make the BGA solder joints more susceptible to fall and vibrational damage. Liquid may get trapped underneath in the event of a spill.

Value

• With shipping and taxes, the upgrade costs about 200 USD and takes 2 hours. The total cost-to-date on my X230 built from parts is around 500 USD.
• Do not think of this upgrade in terms of how much performance you get for the price. Think of it like upgrading and daily-driving a classic car. If it brings you joy to daily drive an X230 as it does for me, then it may be worth it.

I like my Linux installs heavily customized and security hardened, to the extent that copying over /home won't cut it, but not so much that it breaks when updating Debian. Whenever someone mentions reinstalling Linux, I am instinctively nervous thinking about the work it would take for me to get from a vanilla install to my current configuration.

It started a couple of years ago, when dreading the work of configuring Debian to my taste on a new laptop, I decided to instead just shrink my existing install to match the new laptop's drive and dd it over. I later made a VM from my install, stripped out personal files and obvious junk, and condensed it to a 30 GB raw disk image, which I then deployed on the rest of my machines.

That was still a bit too janky, so once my configuration and installed packages stabilized, I bit the bullet, spun up a new VM, and painstakingly replicated my configuration from a fresh copy of Debian. I finished with a 24 GB raw disk image, which I can now deploy as a "fresh" yet pre-configured install, whether to prepare new machines, make new VMs, fix broken installs, or just because I want to.

All that needs to be done after dd'ing the image to a new disk is:

• Some machines: boot grubx64.efi/shimx64.efi from Ventoy and "bless" the new install with grub-install and update-grub
• Reencrypt LUKS root partition with new password
• Configure user and GRUB passwords
• Set hostname
• Install updates and drivers as needed
• Configure for high DPI if needed

I'm interested to hear if any of you have a similar workflow or any feedback on mine.

Anyone here use an X230 with the quad-core mod? I'm looking into it and was wondering about the reliability and battery life compared to the stock i5-3320M.

Been using searx.be for a bit now and they had many results in Dutch and German, which can be expected for a site based in Belgium. But does anyone notice an influx of results in Russian? Did they change the server location or are users in Russia catching on to it? Yandex isn't toggled on in the settings either.

Not trying to judge security by language. I just kinda liked having results in a mix of languages I could read.

Banking apps seem to be a motif among things that don't play well with privacy ROMs. My bank's website does everything I could want out of it. I think I might be ignorant to something.

• What about banking apps is especially compelling?
• How often do banks put must-have features behind an app?
• And should I be concerned that banks might move away from offering services through browsers?