Chosen Solution

I have a Lenovo T430 with Ubuntu with an Intel i5 processor, but the motherboard is defective and I can’t power on my computer.

  • If I buy a used motherboard from ebay where it says in the description “This unit has been tested to successfully power on and boot to the BIOS screen”, all I have to do is boot the computer as normal, and then it will enter Ubuntu and I can access all my old data just as before?
  • If the replacement motherboard doesn't include a CPU, then I can just use my previous one on the new motherboard and it'll work fine, right?
  • I saw used motherboards with the same product number on eBay around $30-70. Is it worth it?
  • What about paying $70 or so to the computer shop so they can repair it?

  • If the above aren't worth it, then how can I transfer my data to a new computer? * I just buy a new computer and insert the SSD from the old one into it and I'll recover everything? I don't need to erase anything if I want to resell that Lenovo (everything but the SSD and damaged motherboard)?

It depends on which GPU setup you have. The IGP models are incredibly common, compared to dual GPU systems. In many cases, these systems aren’t worth repairing since their abundance makes it cheaper (and easier) to replace it if it’s older. In many cases, the motherboard is nearly as much as an entire system for that same reason. Dual GPU models are a toss-up, but i5 configs tend to be in the same group as IGP systems. This is because how many of these corporate laptops use the i5. Because the i5 systems are so common, they tend to be cheap enough an entire system is similarly priced or cheaper then the motherboard itself, but this isn’t always the case. I am running into this issue with my T420 (HD+ LCD/nVidia NVS 4200M with Optimus/Intel HD Graphics/i5-2520M), which may need a CPU fan (if I can’t find it, I will need a heatsink) but definitely needs a keyboard and motherboard (or board repair) since the Ethernet does not work. Since I have the nVidia model, the board is more difficult to find and I have found these options are the most practical: Bad LCD parts system for the sole purpose of moving to a new system with the existing screen (everything is good but the LCD and it doesn’t have a HDP/SVP+Computrace and Intel AT/AMT aren’t permanently disabled)Buy a working system that’s nearly identical and move the SSD and RAM over (If needed, the WiFi card and other parts can be moved as well).Move to a newer generation system like Haswell, knowing the 1.5V RAM will not carryover BUT the SSD, optical drive and Intel WiFi will work. My recommendation is to either find a near exact replacement or buy a newer system (8th gen budget, 9th gen if budget allows; 10th gen hasn’t hit the used peak yet). What I am finding is a lot of the major jobs are now about as much to do then the entire systems cost; ESPECIALLY machines like mine which aren’t common. You can move your SSD to your new system and it should work. If it doesn’t, plug it into another system and get the files off or use chmod 666 on your files so you can move them to a new installation easily. The downside is you will need to spend some time sorting it out back to normal by blocking other users from accessing your files, but chmod 666 will make migration easier. The other reason I’m more inclined to recommend a newer system is Spectre high speed patching; Sandy and Ivy do not have this, and it wasn’t enabled on Haswell outside of 10 for Windows. The problem with these is you either have to accept the performance will tank OR leave it unpatched; some workloads get hit hard. The downside is these new systems need DDR4, so you can’t carryover old DDR3 – then again, that also happened with Haswell with the DDR3L switch.