• Lenovo W520 Ram Slots Drivers
• Lenovo W520 Ram Upgrade

I believe I got this originally from the Lenovo forum where there is a picture as well. It applies to W510 and W520. When buying additional memory DIMMs for ThinkPad W510 systems, Lenovo recommends that you populate the memory DIMM slots in the following order to take advantage of the best system performance. The W520 comes in 4 quad-core configurations, and 1 dual-core configuration. The quad-core configurations support RAM up to 32GB. It is similar to the T520 model but supports more powerful CPU's and GPU's and has 4 RAM slots (32GB total).

• 8GB RAM Memory for IBM-Lenovo ThinkPad W520 (4 Slots) (DDR3-12800) - Laptop Memory Upgrade OFFTEK Part Number:-FT8GSK64V4U-1060269 Capacity:-8GB Module Form Factor:-204 Pin SoDimm Memory Type:-DDR3 Bandwidth:-DDR3-12800 (PC3-1600) Memory Specs:-204 Pin 1.5v DDR3 PC3-12800 SoDimm Premier Brand Memory.
• Hi, I have recently upgraded the ram on my W530 and thankfully when Lenovo assembled my machine they filled the keyboard slots first (2x8GB). I bought another (2 x 8GB) modules and stuck them on the bottom slots of the machine.
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Learn more about the Lenovo W520 (427637U)

Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!

• 5Known issues
• 6Building

Specification

The W520 comes in 4 quad-core configurations, and 1 dual-core configuration. The quad-core configurations support RAM up to 32GB.

It is similar to the T520 model but supports more powerful CPU's and GPU's and has 4 RAM slots (32GB total).Compared to the superseding W530 model it notably features the conventional keyboard, an eSATA port, and full-size DisplayPort connector.

It is noteworthy that the graphics output (VGA and DisplayPort) are connected to the NVIDIA GPU, so this GPU needs to be controlled in order to have video output.

For more detailed specifications, please refer to the ThinkWiki

Status

The W520 is implemented as a variant of the Board:lenovo/t520 and so it shares much of the same status.

Patch history

In November 2016 Charlotte Plusplus has made an initial attempt (mailinglist posts) based on the T520 firmware, with added romstage additions for ram init. This patch was committed in full to the mailing list, but not as a diff to the Gerrit infrastructure.In February 2018 Nico Rikken again customized the T520 firmware, and delivered a working patch set.

Proprietary components status

• CPU Microcode (optional)
• VGA Option ROM (optional): the native graphics initialization tested gave video artifacts in SeaBIOS. When using VGA Bios there were none.
• ME(Management Engine) => you do not have to touch it (just leave it where it is). Also the stripped down T420 version can be re-used.
• EC(Embedded Controller) => you do not have to touch it (just leave it where it is)

Known issues

• The 2 USB 3.0 slots on the side are not working for boot media, just the USB 2.0 slot on the back.
• SD cards mount as read-only in Ubuntu 18.04 (unconfirmed report by Nico)

MCE Hardware Error

Found and confirmed:

Issues reported by Charlotte Plusplus

In 2016 some issues were reported. These need to be verified base on the most recent W520 patch.

• Native VGA init is not working reliably (discussion thread).
• The coreboot configuration consumes more power than the vendor BIOS does, so some additional settings might be required. (discussion thread).
• No ACPI event when (dis)connecting the bay.

Works

• CPU (4 cores, 8 threads)
• Suspend and resume
• Ethernet port (GbE blob was put into place)
• Speakers
• Webcam (which is an internal USB-device)
• 4 RAM-slots
• Booting GNU Linux from USB using SeaBios
• Speakers
• PCIe Wifi
• Fan
• Touchpad, trackpoint and keyboard
• Ethernet
• Keyboard ACPI events
• VGA and DisplayPort output using the patches below
• Bluetooth

Building

Just run make nconfig, and select the board Lenovo W520. Other configurations include:

• Size of CBFS can be set up to 2M (0x200000), perhaps larger like the Board:lenovo/t420 but this might depend on the chip.
• You can select 'Use CMOS for configuration values'.
• You can use native graphics initialization.

To obtain ME, Intel Descriptor, GbE images you will need to read the BIOS off your T420.

To use VGA option ROMs, you can manually add it to CBFS using cbfstool multiple times to support more GPUs on a single board.

Perhaps adding 1 rom for NVIDIA and using a link file might work as well.

VGA / DisplayPort output

At the moment of writing two additional patches are required to enable VGA/DisplayPort output. Then output works out of the box with Ubuntu 18.04 (Nouveau driver)

• _ROM ACPI call enabling Nouveau to load the optionrom patch
• 'Dual Graphics' CMOS option to enable the GPU patch

Then Dual Graphics mode can be activated using nvram:

Flashing

Lenovo W520 Ram Slots Drivers

The location of the chip is similar to the T520:

When flashing with a Raspberry Pi no external power is needed. The 3V source from the GPIO is sufficient. The pins WP and HOLD can be left floating.

Lenovo W520 Ram Upgrade