I bought an $87 Ryzen ThinkPad.. what went wrong?!!!?!

Hey, welcome back to another video on the channel. Today we look at this ThinkPad X13 I bought for only $87, what went wrong? This deal was too good to be true, let's see what the issues are and if I can fix them. Also, if AMD Ryzen ThinkPad's are valid.
If you enjoyed this video, remember to like subscribe and turn on notifications for future videos. I've got more ThinkPad ideas so stay tuned. Thanks for watching :))
SUBSCRIBE HERE: / @cephacore
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:33 - The ThinkPad X13
00:50 - Unboxing
01:08 - Overview
01:25 - Issue No. 1
01:40 - Issue No. 2
02:22 - Dispute
03:18 - Testing
04:08 - Performance
04:18 - Minecraft
04:35 - CounterStrike 2
04:49 - Conclusion

[@Duraputer]

That's disappointing, sometimes sellers miss things in the description. A few times I've had a bios lock I've actually been able to guess the password. I try *blank* ,1234,password. On my x201 was not so lucky. I could have returned it, but it was is such good condition i decided to keep it, and i was able to unlock it by jumping two pins on the bios chip.

[@cephacore]

Forgot to mention this, the seller shows the BIOS page in the listing so they must've known but never mentioned it. Shady stuff. .. On the older ThinkPad's (xx40-xx80) you can bypass the BIOS password via CH341 programmer with Badcaps Lenovo AutoPatcher . Might try it in a later vid. BTW love your vids, keep em coming 👍

[@paitonVR]

i got lucky with my t470. i got it for $20 usd and had nothing wrong with it. all i did was upgrade the ram to 16gb and now i use it for random projects i do.

[@cephacore]

damn that's very lucky. nice find 👌

[@jakeparkinson8929]

I think its bad luck, I got an a285 for £100 and it was absolute fine! Honestly, I brought it on ebay from a sponsored seller, it looked sketchy af but the laptop came and it was totally fine. I love it.

[@cephacore]

That's great to hear, the A series ThinkPads are quite cool tbh

[@indask8]

You should also check if computrace (or other anti theft tool) is enabled in the BIOS, if enabled+activated the laptop can be tracked by the company who owned it. 2:18 should be in Security/Absolute Persistence Module.

[@cephacore]

I checked, it says Enabled but not active. So at some point it must've been. Unfortunately it doesn't resolve the bios lock

[@GhostLinx]

Good gaming performance !

[@24kings57]

Beautiful

[@kmgshop1570]

Bro i bought 10$ thinkpad with single core processor which now become my daily driver

[@cephacore]

Wow that's cool, surprised how a single core CPU can run these days. Nice

[@siontheodorus1501]

Since it has bios lock, how are you able to go into the bios?

[@cephacore]

you can view the bios by enter. you just can't change any settings

[@otodev3762]

What a shame, that laptop looked like an excellent project. I bought a thinkpad a485 for 200 dollars with a charger included, more or less, I bought it because it was in better condition than the old one I had (the poor thing was falling apart, I had had it for a few years already) The chassis is a little broken and somewhat bent, but otherwise it is wonderful; a ryzen 5 2500 pro with 16 gb ram and 256 gb disk. It is a good PC for developers, which is what I work on, the disk is filling up but I will soon buy a 500 GB one to replace it

[@cephacore]

Completely forgot they made those, the A series thinkpads are quite cool. Might make a vid on one 😄

[@kingmonkey88]

A lot of these Thinkpads on ebay are ex company, so have bios locked. Some of them have had a hard life and are not worth it. But every now and again you can find a good one.

[@cephacore]

Yep I get that, it was the seller's responsibility to inform that beforehand.

[@vijinho]

I returned 2 laptops in the past few weeks for the same reason, BIOS lock. eBay and Cash Converters. A third return because a RAM slot was dodgy... Luck of the draw. However I got a great L480 which makes a great Hackintosh and upgraded to wifi 6e ax210ngf with 32gb.

[@cephacore]

Hate it when sellers don't disclose full details. It's almost like they try to hide it from less experienced buyers hoping they never notice. eBay is prolific for this.

[@vijinho]

@@cephacore Yes. These secure permanent BIOS passwords are a real PITA with laptops where removing the CMOS battery does nothing and contribute to unnecessary e-waste. OK sure they are usually fine if you can just reinstall windows but any fine tuning or for other OS is a no-go.

[@JessicaFEREM]

the fact that lenovo still ships TN panels of such low quality in their laptops is shameful I DON'T CARE if it's a budget variant, there's no reason to ship such a crap screen in such an expensive laptop. the macbook air M1 is $600 there's no excuse.

[@cephacore]

Exactly, although I think they've stopped it with their newer laptops. Still, for such an expensive laptop a TN panel is mad.. it was almost unusable in certain cases.

[@Sugarhil1Adot]

Would love to see you upgrade a old socketed or not laptop and see how it can perfrom in todays world and see if its usable or not. 🙂

[@cephacore]

Great idea. I'll have a look to see if I can do that 👌

[@darkkingmina4487]

i would try to fix the bios lock somehow and change the whole body and display

[@cephacore]

Would love to know how, ik with the older thinkpads it's much easier to remove the bios lock.

[@thebyzocker]

@@cephacore iirc you need to flash the bios with the newer ones