When will we be able to build our own laptops ?

[Valhalla1]

in the very old days, pc's came as build it yourself kits, but there wasn't the selection of different vendor's like today for each specific part... then there were the hellish proprietary systems from compaq, packard bell etc.. with P1 chips and no upgradeability.. nowadays PC users can pick from a plethora of choices for every single component in their pc and build it and customize it as they see fit.. no longer must you pay a premium for a prebuilt machine that comes as-is.

will notebooks ever get to this point? i wish i there was a standard mobile motherboard/case formfactor and many choices of components available with the ability to pick and choose and assemble it yourself, thus saving lots of money in the process and being able to keep current without purchasing a whole new model and lose a lot in depreciation and resale value. a year or two ago my friend paid $3300 to get the latest tricked out P3-800mhz laptop, and now its as good as worthless compared to the purchase price. if you could (simply) swap out the board (and onboard vid) and cpu it would be all good.


so will we ever have close to the flexibility we have in today's workstations in the laptop world ?

 

[FishTankX]

We can do this when people have enough intelligence to do their own thermal engineering and when people know enough about computers to worry about things such as EMI, heat, power consumption, proprietary drivers (I.E. Such Processor when working with such and such driver doesn't like such and such motherboard...) and the real kicker is when are you, Valhalla1, going to be able to solder on something like a 300 some pin Radeon10000 mobility onto your Pentium5 notebook motherboard? It's not like most of today's sollutions are socketed. Notebook's are extremley sensitive machines. Too much heat there, too much power draw there, processor draws too much heat etc etc etc... will make this all but impossible.

 

[McCarthy]

Never.

I mean sure, you CAN build your own now, there's no law against it. But as far as assembling one using off the shelf parts, nope, ain't gonna happen. For that matter I wonder how long we'll continue building our own desktop systems. The 'geek with an evening to spare' crowd is everything here, but as a segment of the marketplace, smaller and smaller by the quarter.

 

[LuNoTiCK]

Sadly, I dont think we ever will.

 

[FishTankX]

Valhalla1, laptops and desktops are fundamentally different. There are 3 things in a laptop that you don't have to worry about in a desktop (Voodoo5 discluded)

Size (BGA and uBGA vs FCPGA etc.. BGA can be 2X as small)
Heat (Wanna fry your lap?!)
Battery draw (2.2GHZ P4 draws 50 watts, folks.. that's an awful lot of battery draw)

This takes *professional* design just to keep the Laptop's processor from being unstable. Do you think you could design a cooling sollution for the P4 that would be 1/2 of an inch high? I didn't think so!! This is why AMD doesn't exist in this market. The Tualatin P3's can manage this much better, it's like 20 watts vs some 40 watts? Ouch!

Then, if you can get this all thermally designed properly (hah! Fat chance!!) you gotta deal with battery draw. What good is your notebook if it only lasts 15 minutes on a battery? Notebooks are roughly 70 watt devices, not the 300 some watts that you've been spoiled with. If you use a low powered processor then you can get it down to 40 watts or so...

Then you've gotta make sure the sizes are all right and your cooling sollution isn't too cramped (Still think 1/2 inch high cooling sollutions are insane.. they hafta resort to heatpipes and put the actual heatsink an inch or so away from the processor)

Then you still wanna be able to *UPGRADE*?!! Just after you got that heat problem fixed? Oh yeah.. Athlon4 1.5GHZ (to replace your 1.2GHZ model) to go.. oh.. why does it BSOD on bootup? WTF?! OMG!! The proc is 90C!!!!! I THOUGHT IT WAS 85 JUST A SECOND AGO!! AIEIEIEIEIEIE! Darn it, now i'll have to redesign the cooling system and put a 4 watt 40MM 8000RPM delta fan on it (And, consequently, empty out the airplane because nobody can bear to be near your notebook since it sounds like a jet engine...) so I can keep it within acceptable temperatures! I thought that 6000 RPM fan woulda been enough for sure!

Jeez, man.. you ask for too much

 

[Mavrick007]

<< This is why AMD doesn't exist in this market... Then you still wanna be able to *UPGRADE*?!! Just after you got that heat problem fixed? Oh yeah.. Athlon4 1.5GHZ (to replace your 1.2GHZ model) to go.. oh.. why does it BSOD on bootup? WTF?! OMG!! >>



AMD does exist in the mobile market, and not only do they exist but they have very fast processors for laptops. The Athlon 4 is up to 1600+(1.4Ghz) and the Duron is up to a 1.2Ghz chip, that I know of, perhaps there's even a faster version out. Where do you get your info??

 

[Valhalla1]

fishtank whats with the 2 harsh semi insulting replies?

 

[sharkeeper]

Speaking of cooling notebooks...

If you have a high end notebook, install MotherBoardMonitor and check out the CPU temps! Run SETI or another CPURaping program and watch the P3/P4 diode temp approach 100°C! :Q

Cheers!

 

[Slacker]

It is the size of the components and the space available for them that keeps us from being able to build our own laptops the way we build our own pc's

It will happen eventually, as components get smaller the space constraints of current laptops will no longer be an issue, the problem right now is packing so much stuff in such a small area.

I wouldnt be surprised to see laptops using a form factor similar to current pc's only on a much smaller scale. Imagine a post card sized motherboard with five micro pci slots and a micro agp slot that you could connect stuff to just like your current pc, of course the connector (monitor or scsi for example) would also be a micro (scsi/vga-dvi) connector.

The future is smaller and faster but costs more /:frown:

 

[GoodRevrnd]

<<a year or two ago my friend paid $3300 to get the latest tricked out P3-800mhz laptop, and now its as good as worthless compared to the purchase price. if you could (simply) swap out the board (and onboard vid) and cpu it would be all good.>>

Yes, thanks for reminding me. :disgust: Got the last dell line laptop to have an 8mb video card, making the laptop near worthless when I bought it and completely worthless 5 months later when they released the 2000/4000/8000 lines. Even more insulting, they cost over a grand less!!

Anyway, laptop market is getting better even if it isn't more customizable. PIII-M chips are socketed (even if it is somewhat dead technology), and maybe P4-M's are? Still, w/ the P4's you have the cooling solution problem. Also, we're starting to see more notebook manufacturers enter the market. For instance, Asus has entered the market and even offers a competitive solution--check out the S1. Only real weak point is the graphics card, but their prices are pretty competitive.

 

[Valhalla1]

<< wouldnt be surprised to see laptops using a form factor similar to current pc's only on a much smaller scale. Imagine a post card sized motherboard with five micro pci slots and a micro agp slot that you could connect stuff to just like your current pc, of course the connector (monitor or scsi for example) would also be a micro (scsi/vga-dvi) connector.

The future is smaller and faster but costs more >>




thats what I'm talking about... i am sure few people in the 70's with their kit-built Altair's believed pc's would be at the point they are today as far as customizability, universal hardware standards and vendor selection... computers in the 50's and 60's had major cooling issues, they had to pump massive amounts of chilled water through the system to keep it cool.. then look where we are today. I say we WILL be able to built and customize laptops, I just want it now!

yes, I know that with today's issues, laptop models must be precisely engineered, just as older PC's had to.. but someday..

 

[ronnaZ]

hey fishy tank what dya think??? thats no insult thats .....well.....insult.

 

[ElFenix]

<< computers in the 50's and 60's had major cooling issues, they had to pump massive amounts of chilled water through the system to keep it cool.. >>

unfortunately i think we're heading back that way... the passive cooling used in most computers today isn't going to cut it when a sliver of processor is putting out 80 or 100 or 150 watts. we need actual active cooling, where the heat is moved away by something more than natural conduction (which is still what the "active" cooling the HSF does). more thermo-electric coolers and water pumps will be in use. far easier to move heat away when you're actually moving it.

 

[FishTankX]

Maverick007, how many laptop vendors can you name that use the Athlon4 1600+? It simply uses too much power and eats up too much current to be used in any sort of mini, where even the mobile PIII is pushing it and the crusoe rules supreme. The Athlon4's saving grace is it's super high T-max. 90C if I remember correctly. But it's very challenging to engineer a properly cooled, quiet, and power efficent Athlon4 notebook without resorting to exotic sollutions. Plus, remember that they have to design these notebooks for places like malasia and such where the ambient temps can be killer. The PIIIM right now is a cooler running, adaquetly (As in, compared to the Athlon4 1600+) performing CPU that puts out like, 1/2 the heat and uses 1/2 the power. On top of that, all of these notebooks are locked to an SDR platform meaning that the performance gap isn't going to be as great as you think. Would *You* design a notebook based on AMD knowing that people might just go for dell instead? Not to say that the Athlon4 is a bad processor at all, but AMD is really gonna be hurting when the thoroughbread is released having an even *higher* Watts/CM squared rating.... the Athlon4 and the Pentium4 are simply out of their elements in notebooks. They were designed for the power is no object use as much power as you want we'll always have decent heatsinks desktop market and even mobile parts suffer from massive heat issues.

To Valhalla1, sorry if you felt offended at my remarks, but those remarks were targeted at joe sixpack down the street who is likely to plug his shiny new socketed Radeon12000 mobility with onboard 256MB RDRAM PC12000 into the socket and forget to flip the ziff leaver and complain that it won't boot properly. You know those kinda people? It's these kinda people that really scare the crap out of people who would like to make a potential buisiness out of custom notebooks but have to worry about guys like that.

 

[AA0]

laptops are different, their heatsinks are just a stand alone HSF, they are integrated into the structure of the notebook. There is no way a small HSF can remove that heat, so they spread it throughout the entire notebook be connecting the cpu to a metal structure.

 

[FishTankX]

Guapo:Laptop's are extremley thermally sensitive. Half of the time the HSF structure would be too big so they link a metal plate to a heat pipe which funnels the heat off to a heatsink/fan. Plus, who would wanna engineer thermal sollutions for a laptop? They dunno if you're using a subnotebook or a desktop replacement. Could you imagine this on the back of the box?

This HSF is rated for:
A Mobile pentium5 3.5GHZ in a desktop replacement using spacious configuration (Read manual for details on spacious configuration)
A Banias 2.2GHZ ULV in a sub notebook using spacious configuration (Read manual for details on spacious configuration)
A mobile PIII 1.4GHZ ULV webpad using spacious configuration (Read manual for details on spacious configuration)

A mobile Pentium5 3.0GHZ in a desktop replacement using not so spacious configuration (Read manual for details on not so spacious configuration)
A Banias 1.8GHZ UULV in a sub notebook using not so spacious configuration (Read manual for details on not so spacious configuration)
A mobile PIII 1.4GHZ UULV webpad using not so spacious configuration (Read manual for details on not so spacious configuration)

A mobile Pentium5 2.0GHZ in a desktop replacement using cramped configuration (read manual for details on cramped configuration)
A Banias 1.2GHZ UUULV in a subnotebook using cramped confurgation (Read manual for details on cramped configuration)
A mobile PIIII 600MHZ UberLV webpad using cramped configuration (Read manual for details on not cramped configuration)

sorta confusing, eh? Thermal sollutions are specially made to order for notebooks, so unless there was some standard formfactor for cooler size, configuration, processor height, *AND* airflow, it'd be hard to rate a cooler for such and such processor in your custom notebook. A real headache, eh?

 

[FishTankX]

Uh.. sorry to all who were offended by my comments. Maybe you guys could handle this, but I guarantee you 80% of the population would screw up a project like this. And they can't figure out who will and who won't so these parts won't become widespread until this becomes idiot proof.

But to sum up my comments, in a less offending form, Laptop's are already pushed very far to the edge. Any upgrade in a heat producting section of the laptop could push it *over* the edge and into instability. Laptop's need careful engineering to be upgradable at all. It'll be a while before we return to processors of yore (Under 5 watts heat output) so until then we'll have problems.. and it'll be impossible.