Building a Laptop – Why?

PC Mechanic is very well known for my tutorial Build Your Own PC. If you search Google for it, you’ll see that I come up #1. So, I get a lot of people coming around here interested in the do-it-yourself approach. Laptops are more and more popular these days. I have a desktop computer which I obviously use pretty regularly, but I am typing this article on a laptop. I use my laptop pretty often as well. When I am out. Sometimes even when I just don’t feel like sitting in the office. So, with that popularity, one of the questions we get every so often is “How do I build my own laptop?”

Most of the time, I don’t even bother answering the question. But, today I was in the mood to answer it publicly.

Why Bother?

This is the magic question. Building a laptop doesn’t make any sense in any department at all – EXCEPT just feeling like it. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. Yes, you CAN build one. But, its a lot of effort and you are almost certainly not going to save any money. The project should only be undertaken if (a) you are the ultimate geek who loves to tinker with computers and (b) you are highly particular about the parts that will go into your computer and (c) you don’t really care about money.

I am typing this article on an HP Pavilion DV6000 series notebook. It has an AMD dual core processor, 2 gigs of RAM, DVD writer, built-in webcam in the screen, a gorgeous LCD, etc. Is it a top of the line notebook? No. But, it is every bit as powerful as my desktop machine. And chances are it is just as powerful (if not more so) than the computer you’re reading this on right now. I bought this computer for about $800 at Best Buy. Could you build this machine for $800? No. In fact, chances are you couldn’t even build it – period. This is a lot of stuff packed into such a small package and I just highly doubt anybody without the resources of a manufacturing plant could build this thing.

How Would It Be Done?

Even though I have to say that this is a stupid idea, you CAN do it. How?

Well, you would start by buying a barebones notebook, sometimes called a barebook or a whitebox notebook. A typical barebone notebook will include the chassis (of course), a motherboard, graphics card, LCD, keyboard, speakers, etc. It’s the basic package. Companies like Asus, MSI and ECS provide such barebooks. This would leave you to select your own processor, memory, hard drive, optical drive and LAN card. So, obviously, this is not a total build from scratch like you can easily do on a desktop machine. But, that goes with the territory.

On most of them, you would flip the notebook over and unscrew the cover plate. Once uncovered, you will see the motherboard. You will then see the processor socket staring right at you and you just install the processor as you would in a desktop. Processors in notebook computers obviously require cooling just like their desktop counterparts, but there is no room in a notebook for the large heat sinks and fans typically found in a desktop. A notebook heatsink is usually quite flat and is structured such that a plate attaches to the CPU (with thermal compound) and then pipes heat directly to a large fan. The fan, too, is shaped differently to fit into the small format and is designed to blow air right out of the notebook computer. Memory comes in smaller DIMM modules and is installed sideways in order to conserve vertical height.

I’m not trying to make this into a tutorial simply because it’s just not something I recommend even in the slighest. But, here are a few other sites that will show you how to do it:

• Do It Yourself Laptop, from LaptopLogic.
• Build Your Dream Notebook, from Toms Hardware
• Do It Yourself Notebook, from Directron

I should also note that those articles are from 2005 – back when notebook PCs were more expensive. But, again, I just bought a good one for $800. How can you beat that? Plus, you’re probably going to have a pretty hard time finding somewhere to buy stuff like this. Again, there is so little reason to do this that people barely even offer the parts anymore for such a project.

Answer To The Question

Hopefully that answers the question. I have been asked many times via email and now I can just link to this article. If you want a notebook PC, go buy one. Don’t build it.

On the other hand, you want to build a desktop PC? You’ve come to the right site!

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