Swapping the internal battery on a ThinkPad X250, plus an X260 fan experiment

I never plug in my work laptop, so the battery wears out pretty fast.

The X250 has two batteries. The external one is at 10% wear, still fine to keep using. The internal one is nearly at 50%, so I bought a replacement.

eBay and AliExpress have them everywhere. Just grab a cheap one that looks legit.

Same as always: tear it down and swap it.

Before opening it up, remember to disable the battery in the BIOS first. Otherwise you fry the motherboard.

While I was at it I also bought a cheap X260 fan, because I noticed the X260’s heat pipe is thicker.

I figured it would be identical when it arrived. It really isn’t. The screw holes on the X260 fan are spaced wider apart. Doesn’t stop you from forcing it on, though — you can bend the four screw tabs to line up.

But after screwing it down, the results weren’t good either… if anything it was worse than the stock one, so I gave up on it.

Anyway, lesson learned. The X250’s cooling is just bad. Next laptop, I’m paying more attention to thermals.