Inside Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 – disassembly and upgrade options

Lenovo has created a nearly desktop experience with this device. It offers a ton of upgradability, with ECC memory support for Xeon-equipped laptops.

Check out all Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 prices and configurations in our Specs System or read more in our In-Depth review.


1. Remove the service lid

This is not your ordinary device. Upgrades here are made easy, but there is some work to do to get to all internal ports. First, on the bottom panel, you will find a service lid. Undo its single Phillips-head captive screw, and pry it with a plastic tool. This will reveal two SODIMM ports for memory expansion, and two M.2 slots for storage.


2. Underneath the keyboard

To continue, you need to undo a couple more screws, which will set the keyboard loose. Then, turn the device the right way up, open the lid, and slide the entire keyboard upwards. After that, pull it away together with the secondary touchpad buttons. Be careful, as there are two ribbon cables that you need to unplug.

Then, you will see a metal cover, held in place by three Phillips-head screws. Undo them, and slide the cover upwards to remove it.

Ultimately, this leads to the rest of the upgrade option. Here, you have two more SODIMM slots, that combined with the two on the other side, support up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM. Also, you can see a third M.2 slot for storage.


3. Remove the bottom panel

Provided you want to continue with the teardown, and take a look at the cooling, you need to remove the entire bottom panel. After you undo all of the visible screws, remove the SIM card tray, using an ejection tool. Then, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool and lift it away from the device.


4. Battery

Here, you will notice that Lenovo has integrated a rather large 94Wh battery pack inside of their notebook.


5. Cooling system

As far as the cooling goes, there are four beefy heat pipes. Additionally, the graphics card has a large heat spreader above it. What is more impressive here is that the graphics card is interchangeable.

Check out all Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 prices and configurations in our Specs System or read more in our In-Depth review.

Lenovo ThinkPad P15 Gen 2 in-depth review

Once again we are delving into the realm of mobile workstations. However, today we're not going to look at some finicky thin and light machine, that claims it can handle your heavy workloads but ends up crying on the couch after the first CAD render. No, no, no. With us, we have the ThinkPad P15 Gen 2.This time, you should expect not only a beastly processor but also a pretty capable roster of graphics cards, which maxes out with the NVIDIA RTX A5000. Of course, for this, one would need a good cooling solution, and as the ThinkPad P15v Gen 2 has shown us - this could be a problem.Howe[...]

Pros

  • Up to 128GB of RAM and 6TB of storage
  • Very good thermals
  • IPS panel with 533 nits of max brightness (BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182))
  • No PWM (BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182))
  • 91% of sRGB coverage and accurate colors with our Gaming and Web design profile (BOE NV156FHM-N65 (LEN4182))
  • Comfortable spill-resistant keyboard
  • Great battery life
  • 2x Thunderbolt 4, SD card + optional IR face recognition and fingerprint reader
  • LTE support

Cons

  • Thick and heavy
  • Quite pricy
  • Could use a better cooling
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Hellmann
Hellmann
2 years ago

Hey! Danke für die tolle und verständliche Anleitung. Ich habe ein P15s Gen 2, also die Einstiegsvariante. Bei der hier vorgestellten Version gibt es die praktische Wartungsklappe um an die SSD und den Ram zu gelangen. Gibt es da auch eine Lösung für das P15s Gen 2? Oder gibt es etwas kompatibles? Es ist verdammt gut so einfach an die SSD zu gelangen.