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Upgrading my Lenovo Legion

I had such a great time upgrading my laptop I felt I had to share my experience of it with you all.


Lenovo Legion Y530

Right ok, so I spilled water on on my keyboard on my favourite laptop and rendered it useless. I had to buy a new keyboard and replace it.

Why would you do that especially after watching this scary YouTube video. Take it to a guy "they" said. I kinda dig computer and I think its fun, and it was great fun, well not the soldering part that was torture.

What you will need

  1. Patience
  2. Replacement keyboard from AliExpress the Azazel Store to be precise.
  3. Magnetised Phillips Screw driver and credit card (to pry open the laptop once the screws have been free'd).
  4. Soldering iron (inexpensive hobby ones are fine) you only need it to melt plastic rivets (more on this later).
  5. Patience, did I say that already.

The dismantle

New Keyboard

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement Feeling pretty pleased with myself at this point, only paid $28 for this replacement keyboard.

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement Looks very close to the real thing.

MAC Memory 16BG's

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement Oh yes, bumping RAM up to 16GB's

Soldering iron

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement The only non-destructive way to detach the keyboard from the plastic Lenovo chassis is by melting tiny little rivets off one at a time.

Before, dusty fans needed a clean

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement Throughout the process I took pictures and labeled screws, do this, or bad things may happen later.

That has to go in there

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement At this point I was questing my life choices.

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Fans and headsink off

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Motherboard off

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Screen detatched

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement See that black wrapping, and silver chassis, well the keyboard is under that, protected by many plastic rivets.

lenovo-legion-keyboard-replacement These tiny black dots are the rivets that need melting off, this was the most time consuming task of all.

Tadaaa, keyboard off

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Goodbye old friend

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Is that it? had no idea what I was looking at thinking maybe I should have taken it to a guy

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All of this must be put back together again

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Careful don't touch anything

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Nearing the end...

End scene, everything back together again

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This process took 5hrs, spread out over 2 sessions of 2.5hrs, If I were to do it again I am sure it would be much faster and easier.

Thanks for scrolling, see you next time.