Build your own laptop

sullydoggy

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People have been building awesome desktops for a long time. My question is why have people not come up with a way to build custom laptops from scratch like you do desktops? Is it that hard to produce and sell the individual parts to sell like they do to desktop parts? I figure it would be harder without a doubt, but I also figured the world would have found out a way to make a market for it by now. I built my first PC a couple of years ago, and I absolutely love it. I wish I had the chance to build a laptop the same way.
 
Size, customisation and the fact that laptops were never designed as self build machines whereas desktops were initially. It would not be cost effective for manufacturers to make custom laptop parts for the small number of people that would want to build their own. Laptops were designed really "to go". So you bought your lappy built and set up and away you went. In a similar way to tablets which are rapidly overtaking laptops as the preferred "to go" computer.
 
That, and simply because no one want's an oversized laptop. Laptops are designed to have as much hardware in as little space as possible.
When building a mini PC you have to be very specific about choosing hardware in the right dimensions. imagine building a laptop.
 
Don't hear much about it anymore but seems like about 10 years ago you used to be able to buy a 'barebones" laptop and "build" it by installing cpu, memory, hdd, optical & floppy drives, etc... Not really the same but about as close as I ever recall to being able to build your own.
 
Yes, they did used to have build your owns. They were quite boxy, and I don't recall them being that spectacular for quality in terms of screen or battery life. It was also far and away more expensive to do so. I got excited, took one look, and then ran the other direction and never again considered it.

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The problem is, there is no generic standard even within one company. The motherboard will be a different shape/size depending on where the battery is, how the RAM fits. Some laptops even run on different voltages. Even the power jacks aren't standard! Screen sizes are different, the cable routes in a different way, the input on the monitor itself is often in a different place so you have to buy a very specific model of replacement screen.
That's all before you take into account cooling, which works differently in practically every laptop model, heatsinks are different sizes, GPUs and CPUs may be in one chip or two, further apart or closer together, run hotter or colder. Chips in laptops tend to run hotter, so you have less movement in the size of the heatsink etc.

Totally different to buying a big box and sticking bits in it really (desktop), hell, somebody I know built his PC and pretty much plopped the bits into a big fish tank, and filled it with oil for cooling. You just don't get that flexibility with a laptop!

Some laptops do have removable CPUs, most have removable RAM, most have removable HDDs, some have upgrade screens available, few have upgrade graphics cards available (often alienware etc, not integrated cards etc). That's the best we're going to get with laptops I think!
 
Get a Mini ITX case, screw a couple hinges into the side and mount an LCD screen to them. There, DIY laptop.
 
You have make every thing fit in a very small space so parts have to be made in specific sizes and shapes. Changes with each lab top body.


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