Machine Shop, PC Tweakage

Lenovo Q150: Opening the Case For an SSD

A pre-Christmas sale brought a cheap SSD that rendered my oath not to install one in the Lenovo Q150 inoperative, so I had to figure out how to open the case. Removing the visible screws didn’t release the cover, but some exploratory prying eventually popped the internal snap latches. Knowing the latch & screw locations will simplify harvesting the SSD when that time comes…

Front (with USB & SPDIF jacks):

Lenovo Q150 - case latches - front
Lenovo Q150 – case latches – front

Rear (with all the other jacks):

Lenovo Q150 - case screws - rear
Lenovo Q150 – case screws – rear

Top (with the heatsink outlet):

Lenovo Q150 - case latches - top
Lenovo Q150 – case latches – top

Bottom (with the mounting boss):

Lenovo Q150 - case latch screws - bottom
Lenovo Q150 – case latch screws – bottom

With the cover off, the inside looks like this:

Lenovo Q150 - interior overview
Lenovo Q150 – interior overview

The two rubber blocks glued to the hard drive bracket (carrier / sled / whatever) conceal the screws holding that side to the chassis. However, removing the blocks and the screws didn’t release the bracket, because it had what looked like a black adhesive layer below the screw flanges:

Lenovo Q150 - hidden drive bracket screw
Lenovo Q150 – hidden drive bracket screw

Gentle prying from the edge of the bracket eventually released it, showing that the black plastic was just an insulating layer. Below that, two thin foam strips had firmly affixed themselves to the PCB, despite not having any adhesive on that side:

Lenovo Q150 - drive bracket - foam strips
Lenovo Q150 – drive bracket – foam strips

With the bracket on the bench, installing the SSD went exactly as you’d expect and reinstalling the cover was, quite literally, a snap.

6 thoughts on “Lenovo Q150: Opening the Case For an SSD”

  1. how do you like the ssd in it? i am happy with the prices of ssd going down. i might get one for my laptop after i buy a few more bike items and clothing

      1. Thanks! They’re mostly for my own benefit, though, because I’d never remember where to pry without a hint.

    2. It’s a dramatic boost, although the Atom Inside will never be a high-performance machine.

      I’ve dropped SSDs into an old laptop and our desktop boxes to good effect; a bit over fifty bucks each at NewEgg seems to be the sweet spot.

      1. It’s a dramatic boost

        I think you’re selling it short :)

        After using them as system drives in most of my machines for 4 or 5 years now, I’ve been thoroughly spoiled so when I have to do something on a machine with an old mechanical drive I often think it’s broken or hanging until I remember it’s simply not equipped with an SSD. Difference, at least on run-of-the-mill two core 2GHz+ machines, is “instant” vs “is this thing on?”.

        Before going solid, I used 4 7200RPM drives in RAID-0 (I know, young and stupid) and that setup was no slouch, hitting over 200MB/s in large blocks. Plugging in an SSD wiped the floor with them and made me never look back. And I’m still using the same drives even though they are junk by today standards (a 60GB, 120GB and 240GB Sandforce SF-1200 offerings) – they are still plenty fast.

        Recent upgrade from 120GB SF-1200 to 500GB Samsung EVO-850 went mostly unnoticed though. I guess 100% performance increase is not nearly as noticeable as 100x one :)

        1. I’m in the midst of breathing new life into a friend’s old netbook and the Intel Atom Inside really really cries out for an SSD!

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