DIY Notebook

[Masaki 7-11]

I was looking for a notebook with good performance for around $1500 and found out that I could build one for about that much with all the parts that I want. Here are the parts I was looking at putting together, comments and suggestions would be appriciated (btw, battery life is not a concern, trying to get the best performance for the money):

Asus C90(S) (Uses socket 775, as in the one for desktops)
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?mo...41&l3=536&l4=0

Seagate Barracuda 2.5inch SATA 160GB 7200RPM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148307

2x1GB DDR2-667 Kingston (I'll look into Mushkin or other brands first)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134555

LITE-ON Black 8X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 4X DVD+R DL 8X DVD-R 8X DVD-RW 8X DVD-ROM 24X CD-R 24X CD-RW 24X CD-ROM 2MB Cache IDE Slim 8X DVD Burner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106096

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115003

[Jester]

I have not heard much on building notebooks. Is there somewhere you can buy notebook cases, screens, batteries ECT.?

[Masaki 7-11]

You can find notebook barebones (chassis, screen, motherboard, and sometimes video cards and wifi cards) in a decent amount of places, and there is some variety to them, so far I know of three companies which make them; Asus, Aopen and MSI. Batteries and screens can be bought off ebay (there other places too, but ebay is one of the more common places to buy laptop parts).

Asus website seems to be really slow, so here is another link to the C90: http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/...90S_Whitebook/

[Alaron]

You'll need a mobile CPU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...04&name=Mobile

[Masaki 7-11]

Originally Posted by Alaron You'll need a mobile CPU. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...04&name=Mobile

This specific barebones laptop uses desktop processors (LGA775), given reason for this is that it is cheaper and it is made for enthusiasts who prefer performance over battery life.

[HAL9000]

WHen I was in the computer business, I sold a couple of custom laptops like that... in the longrun, the users weren't overly happy with them and I know one of them for sure sold it and bought a Dell.

[Masaki 7-11]

I don't really need it to use on the road, mostly as a portable computer with performance close to that of a desktop, a desktop replacement as it were. Most desktop replacements that I found were either too expensive or too heavy, this one will weigh under 7lbs when built. I've used Dell laptops before and wasn't particularly impressed with it, had too many features that I didn't have use for and ended up hindering my experience on it, so that's another reason I'm looking at building one for myself. I've repaired a lot of laptops so I'm comfortable with working on their hardware.

[thefultonhow]

Honestly, I am very wary of using desktop CPUs in laptops. None of the old P4 laptops ran very well and a lot of them ended up being much less reliable than their mobile-CPU counterparts. Luckily, most manufacturers have abandoned the idea of using desktop CPUs in laptops.

I am not entirely sure if this is still true, but when I looked into building my own laptop a couple years ago, there were a few barebones chassis around that accepted mobile CPUs. If I were you I'd check into that first.

[Masaki 7-11]

Most barebone notebooks that support mobile chips that I've come across either have discrete graphics and no support for dual cores, or have support for dual cores and integrated graphics. If the company selling the barebones was not Asus, I would have been wary of using desktop processors, but Asus makes pretty solid motherboards, and the Core 2 series runs cooler and more efficient than the P4s, so there shouldn't be any problems with this type of notebook (other than battery life, which doesn't matter to me all that much).