[SOLVED] Upgrade Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 7

[agrothe]

Really considering buying this X1 Carbon to dual boot linux/windows for a web development machine. The base price is good, but $800 CAD to upgrade to a "1TB Solid State Drive, M.2 PCIe-NVMe, Opal" is crazy. I can get this 1TB drive for $132 CAD or a 2TB for $400 CAD on Amazon.

Question is, can I upgrade the RAM and SSD on this X1 Carbon with parts from Amazon/Newegg/etc?

I can't see why I couldn't, but it's been 15 years since I've done any hardware upgrades.

 

[cin19]

Question is, can I upgrade the RAM and SSD on this X1 Carbon with parts from Amazon/Newegg/etc?

Yes, you can.

 

[captaincharisma]

if that X1 carbon is like the X1 extreme thinkad that i have it will have an secondary empty M.2 NVME slot. and can be upgradable to at least 32GB

 

[agrothe]

if that X1 carbon is like the X1 extreme thinkad that i have it will have an secondary empty M.2 NVME slot. and can be upgradable to at least 32GB

How is the X1 Extreme?

 

[captaincharisma]

How is the X1 Extreme?

it's a nice laptop with great performance but like with other thinkpad carbon laptops its a fingerprint magnet lol

 

[geofelt]

My reading says that the ram on the x1 carbon is soldered and not upgradeable.
Likely for weight savings.
The single m.2 80 ssd is replaceable.
There is a second m.2 40 slot but there are few ssd devices of that size.

For a dual boot system, I suggest instead the thinkpad extreme gen2.
I bought one and it really is expandable.
Buy the 8gb ram version. You can add a second 8gb from crucial for much less than buying it already installed. I did that with no issue.
That also gets you dual channel operation.

It has two m.2 pcie nvme slots, the first will be populated with the default os and minimal software on a 240gb drive.
There is no reason why you can't install a second drive for dual boot operation.
Or, for that matter, you can upgrade the original ssd to a larger drive.
I use samsung ssd devices because their ssd migration app does an easy job of moving a Windows C drive.

One unique task is to disable the non removeable battery before doing any maintenance.
This video shows how.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vvLexQZUos

 

[agrothe]

My reading says that the ram on the x1 carbon is soldered and not upgradeable.
.....
For a dual boot system, I suggest instead the thinkpad extreme gen2.

This is great info and advice, thanks.