Lenovo Thinkpad T430

Hardware information
iGPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000 (in CPU): seventh generation, Ivy Bridge (released in 2012-2013). You can get GPU information in Firefox in.

Firmware setup
Press Enter during boot to enter BIOS, RAM testing. F12 to choose boot media.

lscpu
Product page for stock i5 CPU.

Ivy Bridge page on Wikipedia.

Compare stock CPU with top available 3840QM, userbenchmark.com, notebookcheck.net, technical.city, cpubenchmark.net, cpu-world.com, cpuboss.com.

RAM


ThinkPad T430 supports up to 16 GB of SO-DIMM DDR3/DDR3L memory. Max frequency for some machines is 2133 MHz, but personally I got black screen without loading with 2133 MHz memory, so check in shop before buy. DDR3L is better because it is 1.35V instead of 1.5V so it uses 10 percent less battery with the same performance as DDR3. To check how much of memory the laptop has:

This shows one 4GB module is installed and a second is unpopulated but available.

To find out the frequency of installed RAM modulesː

When a second RAM module is installed, they will operate on the same frequency (the lowest one from both), but size can differ (for example 4 GB plus 8 GB).

See video about how to replace RAM.

Hard Drive
Better replace for SSD for higher speed, (SATA III: 6Gb/s) or mSATA (SATA II: 3Gb/s). Good models: MX500, BX500, Samsung EVO 870.

Trim
If you have SSD — sometimes you need to trim it for faster writing. Do not mount with discard option - it will be slower and can be harmful. Better trim on poweroff, on Fridays:make it executable:

.

By default prints are hidden, to show them:

Battery
Get current battery level (useful when using i3 or Sway window managers without GUI battery indicator) ː

For all details about the batteryː

Wi-Fi
The Linux firmware package is needed since the Centrino Advanced-N 6205 AGN wifi adapter requires a specific firmware file.

Firmware file that is needed is the. It can be obtained by installing the Linux firmware package: or.

After every kernel update (after ) execute

For more info see iwlwifi.

You can replace mini-PCI (half) WLAN module to something that do not need proprietary blobs, for example AR5BHB116.

Ethernet
To try to use Ethernet on laptop boot (run by init system):

Bluetooth
Thus a Linux firmware file is needed. See Broadcom Bluetooth for additional info.

Microcode
Intel released microcode updates that fixes fault on processors. Install the officially published microcode package. For more info see Intel microcode.

Kernel
Gentoo specific Menuconfig. More info at Kernel.

Ready to use .config for Linux 5.

Compiler settings
More info is available at:
 * GCC optimization
 * MAKEOPTS
 * EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS

Packages settings
For more info: CPU_FLAGS_X86

USE flags
You can get or review my /etc/portage configs.

With Intel Modesetting DDX as video driver and libinput as input driver add the USE flags  and.

Firefox video performance
Video performance is better on (use --hwdec=vaapi), but from 2021 you can   and enable WebRender in Firefox (if not enabled by default, see about:support) to use GPU for video and get higher FPS. Also in firefox in  enable   (tested on Firefox 86).

To check that it works: emerge and run  : it must show loading for Video when Firefox plays YouTube, not like this 0%:

Note that Intel HD 4000 (Ivybridge) supports only h264 hardware decoding, as you can see in vainfo:So you can install popular browser extension h264ify. On YouTube make right click on video and choose Stats for nerds, see Codecs line. Also check media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled.

You can check video performance on this video, maybe vp9 and av1 will play smoothly for you even without hardware decoding (0% Video in intel_gpu_top).

See more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration

Gentoo Wiki about Intel.

battery charge thresholds
Use:. Example config and instructions can be found at: github.com/teleshoes/tpacpi-bat.

fan control
Use:.

Fingerprint reader
Use:. Instructons can be found at:

ThinkLight
Fn-Space to enable/disable the ThinkLight, useful to see the keyboard in low light conditions.

Multiple displays
To add more displays, there are several methods: one additional external display, or attach two external displays but internal panel will be disabled, or to do a triple monitor setup with a T430 (iGPU model) you'll need the 4337 or 4338 dock for its dual DisplayPort, external screens need to have the same setting (resolution & refresh rate) and interface type (DisplayPort, hence needing the dock). If the monitors lack a DisplayPort you can use an Active cable or adapter (passive cables & adapters won't work).

Fastboot (reduce flickering on boot)
Uncomment and add:and regenerate grub, as usual after kernel update:See more about fastboot.

Also you can use (Wayland support in development) or  (Wayland support in development) to unite multiple computers.

Fix screen tearing
When watching some videos, some frames may be out of sync with the screen rate. Screen tearing can be fixed in multiple ways. For Xorg: Thinkpad T430 has Intel GPU, create this file:

And emerge (because still not implemented in the default xf86-video-modesetting).

Reboot the system for the new configuration to take effect.

Another option against screen tearing: use Sway window manager, because underlying Wayland protocol has no screen tearing by design.

Pros of Wayland (Sway):

 * 1) A little bit better scrolling in Firefox, better video playing (no drop frames, even if Youtube shows 0), more FPS
 * 2) No need for xf86-video-intel driver

Cons of Wayland

 * 1) Difficult screencasting for Google Meet in Firefox, you will need to mess around with unstable PipeWire, xdg-desktop-portal-wlr, personally I got no success in January 2022 after a few hours of trying
 * 2) Xorg will be installed if you compile Firefox with PGO, looks like Firefox uses Xorg virtual screen for testing
 * 3) Impossible to use ffmpeg for screen grabbing, but other options exists
 * 4) The most minor - you will need to change your screenshot software from scrot (or maim) to grim

You can check tearing on this video.

i3 bindsym for screenshot to file with a good name and to clipboard
File name will be like.

Alter brightness
Brightness value live in a file, to react current valueː To alter brightnessː

Alternatively, install or  to control brightness with the  or  tools respectively.

Keyboard layouts
This is usual, for example here we add Russian language, change by Caps:

Screen recording with ffmpeg and vaapi
To h264, because GitHub supports this format (mp4), not webm (vp9), and our Ivy Bridge support hardware encoding to h264:

Related link: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/H.264