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Custom laptop builds

A

Azsen

Member
Hi,

Are there any online sites that let you specify exactly what components you can put in your laptop? I'm edging towards the more powerful type components that would replace a desktop system.

I'm thinking something along the lines of:

Latest Dual Core Pentium-M or AMD mobile chip (what are they called & when are they due?)
ATI Mobility X800 XT or R520 graphics (when is this due?)
2 GB of RAM (possible?)
Lots of storage space
WiFi & Bluetooth support
sound card?

Would have to be a portable/ultra portable notebook, not a big hulky one with a desktop chip in it.

Is there anywhere that could make a laptop to these kind of specs? Or am I dreaming? Bear in mind it would probably be bought at the start of next year.

What kind of powerful components would you like to put in a custom laptop build for yourself if you had the money?

Cheers 🙂
 
Not out yet
Not out yet
Easy.
Heavy
Easy
Dream about it

No way you will get all that in a light system.

Sager or Dell may be making a laptop like that in a year but it won't be "ultra portable".
 
Originally posted by: Kensai
No way you will get all that in a light system.
Click to expand...
What things would you take out to make it into a portable one? Smaller hard drive?

For sound cards maybe I could use Intels 7.1 HD Audio or are there many of those slot in sound cards around like the PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS?
 
What things would you take out to make it into a portable one? Smaller hard drive?

For sound cards maybe I could use Intels 7.1 HD Audio or are there many of those slot in sound cards around like the PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS?
Click to expand...
Depends on what you mean by "smaller". I doubt you'll get more than a single 2.5" HDD in a truly portable notebook (at least if you want an optical drive in there too), so let's call that 100GB or 120GB max for now. If you removed the optical drive, and were a really clever designer, you could well fit three 2.5" hard drives into a reasonably portable (think T4x-size) design. Of course, then you would have three hard drives producing heat and trying their damnedest to fail, and you would also have no optical drive. Alternatively, you could just haul around an external 3.5" drive with all your installs on it.

The big thing would be the graphics card. High-end graphics cards need lots of juice and lots of cooling, both of which will bulk the laptop up (the former only if you want decent battery life). As far as I know, there are only three ways around the graphics card issue:

1. (theoretical) Highly advanced and relatively lightweight cooling solutions-- better than copper, heatpipes, and fans alone can currently offer, that is. Can't really solve the battery issue with brute force, as highly energy-dense batteries would still leave true low-power ultraportables with much greater battery life than this theoretical power portable.

2. (theoretical) Much lower-power high-end graphics cards. This one is not really a practical solution with current transistor technology... see, even if such a thing were developed, the manufacturer would just say "hey, lots of room to grow!" and bump the power specifications and clock speeds (or transistor count, there's always more stuff you could add) to make it go faster.

3. (currently possible) Chunky, heavy laptops with big cooling systems and big, deep batteries. Such laptops often make excellent melee weapons, portable riot shields, and breeze blocks.

So yes, Virginia, there really IS a reason high-end laptops are all bricks.
 
100GB would be heaps. I could just make a fileserver back home with all the good stuff on it.

Those mobility X800 XT cards only use 33W apparently.

With graphics chips like that on a laptop, are they an add-in type thing or are they part of the motherboard?
 
isn't intel's yonah core suppose to come out as a dual core?

edit: or was it conroe? im lost on intel's future lineups cause the last chart i looked at had 10ghz cpus charted for 2006 q4 releases or something along the line.
 
Those mobility X800 XT cards only use 33W apparently.
Click to expand...
33W is a lot, even if that's under full load. The average Micro-ATX desktop might have no real issues removing 150W of heat from its innards, but it takes a real brick of a laptop with a fairly powerful fan to consistently remove even 80W of heat total from the system.
 
The 65nm Yonah might have some low heat/power usage? Dothan 770 is about 27W.

With graphics chips like the mobility X800 XT on a laptop, are they an add-in type card or are they part of the motherboard? Can you even buy them seperately?
 
Originally posted by: svi
What things would you take out to make it into a portable one? Smaller hard drive?

For sound cards maybe I could use Intels 7.1 HD Audio or are there many of those slot in sound cards around like the PCMCIA Audigy 2 ZS?
Click to expand...
Depends on what you mean by "smaller". I doubt you'll get more than a single 2.5" HDD in a truly portable notebook (at least if you want an optical drive in there too), so let's call that 100GB or 120GB max for now. If you removed the optical drive, and were a really clever designer, you could well fit three 2.5" hard drives into a reasonably portable (think T4x-size) design. Of course, then you would have three hard drives producing heat and trying their damnedest to fail, and you would also have no optical drive. Alternatively, you could just haul around an external 3.5" drive with all your installs on it.

The big thing would be the graphics card. High-end graphics cards need lots of juice and lots of cooling, both of which will bulk the laptop up (the former only if you want decent battery life). As far as I know, there are only three ways around the graphics card issue:

1. (theoretical) Highly advanced and relatively lightweight cooling solutions-- better than copper, heatpipes, and fans alone can currently offer, that is. Can't really solve the battery issue with brute force, as highly energy-dense batteries would still leave true low-power ultraportables with much greater battery life than this theoretical power portable.

2. (theoretical) Much lower-power high-end graphics cards. This one is not really a practical solution with current transistor technology... see, even if such a thing were developed, the manufacturer would just say "hey, lots of room to grow!" and bump the power specifications and clock speeds (or transistor count, there's always more stuff you could add) to make it go faster.

3. (currently possible) Chunky, heavy laptops with big cooling systems and big, deep batteries. Such laptops often make excellent melee weapons, portable riot shields, and breeze blocks.

So yes, Virginia, there really IS a reason high-end laptops are all bricks.
Click to expand...

heavy notebook.
 
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