Assemble laptop?

[-sandro-]

Is it possible to assemble laptops like we do with desktop PCs? I don't mean custom built like Dell online builder.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Not really. Some companies sell "whitebox" laptops without HD/RAM, and sometimes they even have socketed CPUs. GPU options are usually meh; either you're stuck with integrated, or you have a choice of 2-3 proprietary expansion cards.

Clevo was one.

But generally speaking, no.

 

[D2ultima]

expansion cards use a standard; the MXM 3 standard right now. You could swap many different compatible cards BIOS-and-heatsink-allowing on such a machine.

As for being able to build one up, you could. Some places like RJTech sell barebones clevos etc, but you'd be hard pressed to find another manufacturer that'd let you do so, as dave said. I do know of someone who buys them barebones and sources his own CPU/RAM/GPU/heatsinks/fans/HDD/SSD/Optical Drives/wifi cards/screens/etc though.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

There was a very brief time when I saw some articles in Maximum PC offering a blueprint for "laptop building."

See -- I'm almost dumbfounded that I've come 14 years after the "millennium" without acquiring a laptop -- OR -- a freakin' "smart-phone."

This has been a watershed year. Instead of "looking forward" as I have with all my desktop building projects and over-clocking, I had acquired a surplus-refurb laptop -- C2D circa 2007/2008. [And I've repeated this story in too many threads already.]

It was an opportunity to "explore" without hesitation using a Phillips screwdriver. I replaced the mini-PCIe wireless card; swapped an SSD for the HDD; took a gamble (and won) by installing RAM that was double what the chipset-spec . . . uh . . . specified.

All the damn motherboards are proprietary. You don't get any surplus "expansion slots." If there are "kits" or some . . . inventory of parts you could buy, it doesn't really seem like a productive use of money and time. You can't really overclock the lappies beyond their existing thermal limit, and you can't expand that limit with any custom-cooling.

An entire culture of "beam-me-up-Scotty" mobile-fanatic a**holes!! Well . . .

I just acquired an IPhone. Can you imagine trying to read THIS forum web-page on your cell-phone? I'm thinking of special prescription eyeglasses on top of the progressives I just bought last month. This is in-freakin'-sane!

And -- I can watch "Barney and Friends" during the morning evacuation in the warm and quiet place.

Imagine Tolstoy, trying to write "War and Peace" with a stylus and an itty-bitty touch-screen.

It's the 21st CEN-tury!! The Golden Age!! Excuse me, while I adjourn to that room and tune in Barney. . . .