The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • 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.