Why So?

 

From what? Discrete transistors, logic gates, microprocessor chip, populated motherboard, or a commercial one you disassembled last night?

 

With such a vague question, you’re not going to get a lot of additional questions.

Like what do you mean by “assemble a laptop”? Do you have a laptop in pieces and want to put it together? Or do you want to make a laptop from scratch?

EDIT: BobTPH had the same questions. We must have been typing at the same time.

 

It's my long time dream to buy my favourites pieces of hardware and build a laptop out of those. Possible? Like You know... Each and everything procured according to my requirements and no bottlenecks...

 

It's my long time dream to buy my favourites pieces of hardware and build a laptop out of those. Possible? Like You know... Each and everything procured according to my requirements and no bottlenecks...

But are those favorite pieces compatible with each other? At a size, signal and power level. Are you experienced enough to write or interpret those requirements? Note that a laptop is designed by a large team each with a certain expertise. Can you do that on your own?

Lastly, what are no bottlenecks??

 

My question is, Why would you want to?

 

My question is, Why would you want to?

$

 

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Are you trying to save money? It most certainly will cost you more than buying a new laptop.

One other thing I forgot to mention. Who is going to write the custom firmware for this Frankenstein laptop?

 

..... and even if you could assemble one, the total cost of the components would be much greater than the cost of a ready-assembled one.

Edit: djs beat me to it!

 

Squeezing all of the needed parts into a reasonable sized case is difficult, to say the least. Especially if you don’t control the size and shape of the parts.

 

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Buy a second-hand or third-hand, that is cheaper.

I have three Laptops, the first one that I bought was about US$33.3 and it was damaged and waiting for a fix, the second one(win7) that I bought was about US$16.2, the third one that I bought was new one and it cost about US$833.3, it is working with windows 10.

 

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Where could you buy parts that would fit together to make a laptop that is cheaper than buying a complete one?

 

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While it's still unclear what you mean by assembling a laptop, you won't save any money. You won't even be able to verify the stability of your build.

I used to cherry pick sub-assemblies to build desktop computers because the company I worked for gave us their latest generation microprocessors to encourage us to learn more about what we made and how to use them. While it was satisfying to do that, I could have purchased complete computers for less money.

The first system I built was a dual processor Pentium II system (before Windows supported dual processors). I got a defective motherboard and it was a hassle to troubleshoot. I built 4-5 more systems before I decided the time and money it took to build them was better spent elsewhere.

A laptop is a different can of worms. You can't mix and match sub-assemblies from different manufacturers. If you were to design your own, you'd need a lot of software and equipment to validate your designs. Have you ever looked at the layout of a motherboard? They have to tune the length of traces to get the timing right. No novice is going to ever be able to do that unless you operate at frequencies so low that line delays won't affect timing.

 

How about starting with a Rasberry Pi? Keyboards can be purchased really inexpensively, probably not worth making your own and if you are happy to use a TV as a monitor I imagine you could make a useful device for not a lot of money.

 

In the very early days of Clone PCs, it was easy to put a system together because the parts were limited and and their specifications were based on the IBM PC. Once the 80286 machines came out and various PC Clone manufacturers had gone into business things changed quite a bit and specifications were all over the place. So, the likelihood of building a complete system that was reliable dropped considerably. I don't think I would even consider doing it today and have been very skeptical of the teenaged kids making outlandish claims of their homebrewed Frankenstein machines. FWIW The first time I decided to change the internal hard drive on a laptop I decided that laptops were not for me and have had tower systems under my desk ever since.

 

It's my long time dream to buy my favourites pieces of hardware and build a laptop out of those. Possible? Like You know... Each and everything procured according to my requirements and no bottlenecks...

Then forget a laptop. In a laptop, all of the various parts are designed by the manufacturer to fit together in a very compact space very much like a puzzle. Many of the components will only fit in that brand and model and no one else's components will. You have very little flexibility; even your choice of hard drive and memory modules is often very limited.

If you want to design a machine to fit your needs, then you need to build a desktop/tower machine. There you have the room and you can start with a motherboard that is specifically intended to let you choose what major things you want to use. Even so, once you choose the motherboard, you will have narrowed your other choices considerably.

 

https://frame.work/laptop-diy-12-gen-intel

AAC has gotten so negative recently.

 

https://frame.work/laptop-diy-12-gen-intel

AAC has gotten so negative recently.

Looks to me like that adheres very much to what I stated, namely that the components fit like a puzzle and you are limited to the options available from that manufacturer for that make and model.

The prices on their pre-built machines aren't cheap, but don't look too outrageous, but I didn't see any of them that will ship before the 4th quarter.

 

The first thing when I investigated assembling a laptop computer was the complexity. And that was just re-assembling one that I wanted to take apart because of a broken connection on the power connector. The dis-assembly instructions were 17 pages long, and the re-assembly instructions also.
And that would be the case where I had all of the parts, and everything fit.

Assembling a desktop tower computer in a manufactured case with a commercial MB and power supply is entirely reasonable, however. Been there and done that.

 

I have always built my own desk-top PC's, using my favorite MOBO's , Asus.
But have usually picked up re-furbished or second hand lap-tops.
Right now WalMart here are selling re-furbished Acer & Asus LAP-TOPS for under US$200.00 !