buying laptop parts separately?

**drunkenmaster** · 06-08-2007, 02:55 PM

I know you can get a couple of barebones cases around, though the spec isn't listed so not actually sure what they come with.

but ideally i'd like to build a laptop myself, choose the parts i want and upgrade what i want in the future. hard drives, cpu's, you can pick them up all over the place, but what about motherboards and gpu's.

i'd expect options to be fairly limited and probably not a real chance for future upgradability.

if you ask me its one very large area a company could look to expand, offer a couple chassis, a few battery options and screen res's, then design new generation mobo's with some output placements. people love building their own desktops and theirs a HUGE market, you'd think a lot of those guys would be more than happy to build their own laptops, just need a few guys, asus, gigabyte to jump on board and make a few cases and motherboards.

i know a lot of gpu's are trying to use a upgradable socket now, mxm2 i think the 8600's are based on.

so any idea's on websites that sell gpu's or mobo's for lappys?

its one of those things, i can't find a single site, rock/rizeon/znote that have a decent set of configurable prices. for instance rock charge a stupid amount for an upgrade to a 100gb 7200 drive, the other 2 have cheap upgrades for drives but one will have an expensive cpu upgrade.

buying a laptop without, even just without the cpu/hdd/memory would let me buy exactly what i wanted without paying overinflated upgrade costs.

**staffsMike** · 06-08-2007, 03:01 PM

asus do make barebones laptops for general sale afaik..

Rizeon use them for their 13.3" laptop at least.

Theres also compal that do barebones for the latest generation equipment.

Scan sell the santa rosa CPU's

not sure where you will get gfx cards from.

**drunkenmaster** · 06-08-2007, 03:14 PM

yeah, i saw two asus barebones listed on dabs, however no specs listed and so far i've not seen them listed anywhere on the asus uk or global sites to find specs.

i mean frankly, we started building our own computers to save paying for tech support and an extra warranty. every piece of kit you ever buy has a warranty on it, you are paying for a secondary warranty when buying through dell. not to mention we build our own comps so we can get a E6600 and clock it to 3.5Ghz, instead of buying a dell with a 3Ghz cpu in it costing a lot more.

now at least overclocking is being dealt with in laptops a little, asus and dell both support overclocking, in a limited fashion. but basically all we need is a barebones laptop, or some kind of general standard like the atx backplate so all mobo's support their outputs in the same places, removeable/custom back panels on the laptop if you get a new mobo with a hdmi out or whatever in the future. mobo's use standard chipsets, its not hard to give bios options we want. maybe not voltages, but the dell's clearly support multiplier as you can change the multi with presets. that i assume means laptop cpu's are upwards multi unlocked aswell?

i want to get a laptop, with a cheap cpu, the hard drive i want and the gfx i want, that are upgradeable/overclockable. i see it happening at some point in the future, wondering why one of these companies don't make the leap right now and get ahead of the game.

**vicar** · 06-08-2007, 03:23 PM

Try ebay for gfx cards

**GoNz0** · 06-08-2007, 03:43 PM

the gfx must be compatible with the board its going in, and tbh from experience it costs about 33£% more to DIY a laptop, you get one from the likes of dell complete with warranty and operating system, chance is with a much higher spec and enough left over for a something extra.

**vicar** · 06-08-2007, 05:24 PM

Agree with GoNzo, it's not worth the bother to build.

**drunkenmaster** · 06-08-2007, 05:26 PM

well at the moment you can put together a asus barebones with 965 chipset, with a 8400 core in, plus a 100gb 7200 rpm drive , a 2Ghz 4mb cache core 2 duo, and dvd rw for about £580 inv vat, which ain't bad, and, admitedly i have no clue what options their bios's might have, might have some latitude for overclocking, their c90 series bios's support upping the multiplier with same chipset i think, actually that might be a 945g.

its not the best gfx, but not a bad system either for the money. warranty is silly, every piece of kit you buy to put in a laptop aswell as the laptop barebones itself already has a warranty in place. dell simply offer a warranty from themselves for added cost, but the parts (except the stuff they actually have made themselves) already have warranties.

if you have a laptop from dell and the intel cpu dies, you can have dell replace it, or Intel, as intel have a warranty on their chips. i'm not really up for spending extra on a secondary warranty, or for their incredibly slow/bad/crappy windows installs, or for extra copies of windows when i own a copy of XP i can move to a new laptop. so far, dell are about the most expensive i can find for any setup except a couple of the very base models with, for me, entirely useless specs.

thing is though, if some companies really start pushing their barebones stuff and they start selling better, prices come down, and more competition means better prices and offering more to the end use, like overclocking options and more innovative ways to give you upgradability all reducing end cost.

EDIT:_ forgot to add ram cost, but for 1gig or 2 gigs, call it £620 or 700, thats still WAY cheaper than what you can get from dell. the main problem i have is complete lack of the upgrades "I" require. the cheapest one dell do with a 8400gs, is £600 standard, now while they have a £47 upgrade to the 8600gt, which is actually very good, it comes with a 1.5Ghz dual core which will be pretty poor for gaming, an upgrade to the 2Ghz dual core is £176 even though the chip itself, the 2Ghz 4mb cache is £145 from dabs today and i haven't checked anywhere to find one cheaper. thats the issue i have, i can find one company with one good price for upgrade, but would get utterly screwed by getting the cpu i want. if i buy the cpu and install it myself i void their warranty.

the problem is so far i haven't spotted a barebones lappy with a 8600gt in, so again theirs just to limited a choice all over. where if i get a desktop i can buy absolutely any parts i want. if there was a standard, like the atx ports, then you could just buy a case of any size you want, with any cooling you want really, if you want a little bigger, better cooling as you don't care about an extra 1/2 width you could. they because standard mobo's you could go amd/intel, any cpu you want, whatever mem, hard drive, then if you've decided you want to go from a 14" to a 17" higher def screen you can do that indepandant of the internals. i know, day dreaming, i think its coming, but its a long LONG way behind desktops and i guess i'm peeved because i can't see a reason for it.

**GoNz0** · 06-08-2007, 05:30 PM

barebones stuff does sell well, but only to companies like mesh, maybe clevo do something now, i know they supply alienware with laptops, then at least your heading up the performance path to make it a bit more worthwhile doing.

**mycarsavw** · 06-08-2007, 05:46 PM

ASUS (I think it's them anyway) have that external graphics card thing coming out shortly - if it's not out already - that allows you to use any card at all.

EDIT: XG Station - http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=5369

**drunkenmaster** · 06-08-2007, 06:12 PM

yeah, i was wondering about the external gfx stuff but honestly, i think that will be one of those, good though, won't ever get released and be useful products. along with gigabytes i-ram, great, as long as you never turn the power off.

i'm also not sure what the heck it is, an actual gfx card, or a pci-e connector to have whatever card you want in, as i thought it was the former, but they are trying to make it sound like the latter. If its a non changable card it stats 9 times faster than intel onboard crap, which is 9 times faster than the very worst graphics you can get, making it fairly useless.

the idea of being able to buy a lappy now, that would support 45nm quads(should use similar power to current 65nm duals), and you can then use any external gfx you want would be great.

its really the base and the gfx thats difficult, everything else you can get easily and cheaply.

**staffsMike** · 06-08-2007, 11:37 PM

i've just bought a dell xps m1330 (yet to arrive though

)

OK i did get a very big dicount due to having a corporate account but i got the following for £1150

2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo
2gb RAM
200gb 7200rpm Hard Drive
Geforce 8400 gs 128mb ddr3
13.3" LED back lit screen
Media Remote
4 years next day onsite hardware support

(if you take away the hardware support, drop the ram down to 1gb to upgrade yourself, drop the cpu to 2.0ghz and get the 120gb hard drive that would be about the same price you are talking about after upgrades)

The thing is the thinnest lightest laptop in the 13.3" class ..looks really nice ..pretty much the best laptop i've ever heard of so i just had to buy one lol.

People on fourms have got similar deals to me just ordering and haggling on phone so a high spec laptop would be avaliable for a similar amount of money.

You can't build a laptop which can touch that..and with the warranty it will for the next 4 years only be broken for 24 hours.. if it breaks at all.

As appealing as making your own is.. it's just not a viable choice to me.