Building your own laptop

T

TheCzar

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2004
Messages
453
After reading the posting on hardocp.com I am becoming interested in building my own laptop, mainly because I am looking for something with widescreen in the 5lb area. Anyways, it sounds simple enough, except for one thing...I am having trouble finding many options for the chassis itself. The ASUS M6NBE looks nice, but most places say its out of stock, and ASUS website seems to be only selling the D1 system as bare bones these days. I was wondering if anybody out there had built their own, and if they have any tips or recommendations.

Thanks
 
i built mine not too long ago...
i used the FIC chassis (you can find pix of it on anandtech or tomshardware)

yeah the hardest part is definately finding a supplier for the chassis, as most whitebook builders tend not to sell endusers just the chassis by itself.
The easiest way is just to go to local shops and ask if they will sell...

The actual assembly and stuff is a no brainer if you have the service manual. It can be tricky finding how to get to the innards of the notebook.
 
haha i was about to ask the same question. i live in the uk and there dont seem to be NO WHERE that sells barebone notebooks. i'll probably have to import from the US or somethin. what other chassis' do people recommend?
 
Just as an example, this place sells 3 popular models of barebones laptops (all Pentium-M based):

R&J Technology

Mitac 8050
Asus M6N
Compal CL56

To get a barebones, configure them without the components you plan to add yourself (with/without CPU, memory, HD, etc).

Newegg sells refurbed Aopen 1557GL barebones every now and then (currently out of stock).

Check out Notebook Forums for an active community that discusses these barebones and many other pre-built notebooks.
 
i don't care too much for the mitac chassis...i heard that it's kind of flimsy.

if you are looking to build a thin/light notebook, i think either the asus or fic chassis is the best. almost all the thin/light chassis use intel extreme graphics2, so it isn't really that great. it's OK for everything except for gaming, it lags pretty bad. asus also has a couple other styles available too.
if you are looking for a notebook that you could do some gaming on, the compal cl56 is really good. i almost got that one instead of my fic.

compal is the manufacturer for toshiba notebook chassis, so they are pretty good stuff.
 
All the ones I listed are available with at least a 64MB Mobile 9600 or 9700, most are available with the 128MB 9700. The Asus M5N is an ultra-portable (3.4lbs) that is available barebones too.

Here's another place that sells some of the same barebone models:

ALPHAPCSTORE.COM
 
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