Printable View
Most places say to get a barebone laptop, and then just build around that. Well, if I can just buy the motherboard that the barebone would have from some palce that sells replacement parts, and it just happens to have the right CPU socket and be compatible with an 8800 video card, then I'm all set.
Knowing the prices of individual laptop parts, your probably better off/spend less speccing out a laptop at a company. Just make one build to order. I know though, this is a modding community, so if you can do it, more power to you. Just too much headache for me though. :D
I'm willing to do whatever it takes. The bigger the challenge, the more fun it will be. ANyone have some ideas of where to start? Like, recommendations for a motherboard or motherboard brand to look into, or maybe a site that would sell them?
uATX by Via maybe. Or, find a laptop whose specs you like and order from their parts outfit. There are no "generic" laptop motherboards.
Alright, so I know how I'm goign to do this, I have it al planned out. Now I jsut need to find places that will sell me all the right parts. Sure, most laptop parts are made to fit specific models. But some laptop motherboards have slots and such for adding a new video card or RAM or whatever. So what I'll do is I'll find a motherboard, and then just build around that and get parts that will fit it.
I just need to find were to get them. I'm looking for a DirectX10 cable card. Not something powerful, just somethingwith DirectX10.
hmm, yeah, would be nice to know where to get laptop parts, I'm looking for an Acer travelmate 4654LMi compatible video card (6600 go or better) because I think it is broken (laptop does nothing anymore).
So far I had not much luck finding one, but maybe I didn't try hard enough...
About the slots on a laptop motherboard: In my Acer I had exactly 3 slots, one for a graphics card, that one you need, because there's no grphics chipset on my mobo. And two RAM slots, that's all. Other parts, like modem, network etc. are all connected with some sort of connector-plug-thingy
I wouldn't recommend building your own laptop. It's pretty damn difficult finding information on what parts are compatible with what laptops. Form factors play a HUGE roll in this because there aren't any besides cpu,hdd, and ram.
I suggest finding a cheap laptop on craigslist or something and upgrading the ram, hdd and possibly the processor (unless the cpu in it is already at the max rating for that board) yourself. Everything else I'd stay away from because you can run into trouble and then you have to worry about selling the parts you can't use.
I'm not a professional but I do buy used/broken laptops, fix them and sell them to make some extra money so I'm just speaking from what I've ran in to.
Craigslist will definitely be your friend here. I'll keep my eyes out for a stteal on a nice laptop if you're still interested and I'll give you first dibs on it on ebay... If you want it, I'll sell it to you for what I paid + shipping. If not, I'll just sell it.
silverdemon, after googling your model laptop, I found that it has "Integrated Intel 915GM with up to 128MB shared" which is onboard. You may be mistaking w/e is it that 3rd slot as a gpu. :(
You have to know that there are many acer travelmate 4654s, mine is the LMi version of that. I am sure it has a stand-alone vga card because I have it right here in my closet... looking fot picture now:Quote:
Originally Posted by Greco101
Here you can see the card fitted on the mobo:
Here's the slot-connector on the thing:
[edit]: did you find any sites where you can order laptop-parts? (say a vid-card for an acer:P)
You guys should be happy to know that I ordered a $1,500 Dell last night. Wewt.
All that on a dell? Garbage.
