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Laptop builds possible?

tinpanalley

tinpanalley

Golden Member
The community here was so awesome for helping me put together my first computer build. Still working perfectly.
What I'm wondering is... Is it possible at all to build your own laptop? Do people do this? Is it something that's considered worth doing or is it considered more financially worthwhile to just buy commercially available laptops from recognized brands?
I do have specific things I'd like my laptop to be useful for. It's not just productivity.

Thanks all!
 
Possible? Yes. Worthwhile? Not usually.

You basically buy a barebones chassis and install your own CPU, RAM, storage, and WiFi. That's about all the customization you get, so it's usually not worth it to roll your own.

About the only thing that OEMs really hit you hard on the SSD. That's usually one of the easiest things to replace yourself though, so it's usually better to just buy the laptop you want and add the SSD after the fact.
 
I really love the Lenovo's I've seen. Any particular brand you'd recommend? I remember about 5 years ago, Toshiba's were great but things change. Asus is out there now too in the laptop market, right?

What I need is productivity, ability to do some light video and photo editing (Sony Vegas and Photoshop), but most importantly to playback video and burn data onto disc media smoothly (BD and DVD). And lots of I/O ports (USB, compact flash, DVI, HDMI)
 
All three brands that you mentioned are good. The only two requirements that you'll find are difficult to meet at a reasonable price point are an integrated DVI port (HDMI is a simple pin adapter to DVI though) and CF reader (the market has pretty much moved on to SD, easy to add via USB though).

I recommend perusing the Lenovo and Toshiba sites to focus in on some models that you like (I would say ASUS too, but their web site is crap) and post them here.
 
DVI and HDMI I can figure out with adapters like you mentioned but CF cards are the standard for video and photo shooting on DSLRs.
 
tinpanalley said:
DVI and HDMI I can figure out with adapters like you mentioned but CF cards are the standard for video and photo shooting on DSLRs.
Click to expand...

Like I said, the laptop world has moved on from CF cards. You're unlikely to find a modern chassis with an integrated CF reader. I just checked, and there are literally zero laptops on Newegg that have a Blu-Ray burner and a CF card reader.

Even if you found a chassis with a CF card reader, they are all USB internally. There is no performance difference between one of those and an external USB adapter.
 
Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you meant nobody used CF cards anymore. No of course, finding CF anywhere is tough now. And just wait... the day they figure out how to have a wirelessly connected camera that shoots onto onboard memory and uploads straight to dropbox or other cloud storage, the world will become littered with "old" SD cards that nobody will use anymore.

Anyway, back to our subject, I guess then that buying a barebones chassis is pointless. As long as I can upgrade RAM on a laptop and buy one with a decent GPU, I'll be fine. I guess I'll look at what newegg has and go from there. Speaking of a barebones chassis, I couldn't actually find ANY at newegg. But that option doesn't appear worth it anyway. Is it the same with intel vs AMD on laptops as it is on desktops?
 
tinpanalley said:
Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you meant nobody used CF cards anymore. No of course, finding CF anywhere is tough now. And just wait... the day they figure out how to have a wirelessly connected camera that shoots onto onboard memory and uploads straight to dropbox or other cloud storage, the world will become littered with "old" SD cards that nobody will use anymore.
Click to expand...

Oh, don't worry, those exist already.

tinpanalley said:
Anyway, back to our subject, I guess then that buying a barebones chassis is pointless. As long as I can upgrade RAM on a laptop and buy one with a decent GPU, I'll be fine. I guess I'll look at what newegg has and go from there. Speaking of a barebones chassis, I couldn't actually find ANY at newegg. But that option doesn't appear worth it anyway. Is it the same with intel vs AMD on laptops as it is on desktops?
Click to expand...

You're right, barebones laptop chassis are an extremely niche item and Newegg doesn't stock them. A Google search for "laptop barebones" will turn up some vendors though.

I agree that you shouldn't bother with trying to get a barebones chassis, just find something that gets as close as you can to your needs for a good price and go from there.

Intel vs. AMD is actually even worse in the laptop world. AMD just can't make a chip that can compete with Intel's offerings in terms of performance per watt. If you need any sort of mobility at all, I would strictly limit my search to Intel machines.
 
Cool, Intel it is. Keeping up with different CPUs for desktops is hard enough for me so I may have to stick to specs rather than chips for finding myself a laptop. As long as I can upgrade RAM, the harddrive, and watch video without choking the GPU, I'll be fine. You can't upgrade GPUs can you? No such thing as a video card for laptops right?
 
tinpanalley said:
Cool, Intel it is. Keeping up with different CPUs for desktops is hard enough for me so I may have to stick to specs rather than chips for finding myself a laptop. As long as I can upgrade RAM, the harddrive, and watch video without choking the GPU, I'll be fine. You can't upgrade GPUs can you? No such thing as a video card for laptops right?
Click to expand...

Technically, you can upgrade the GPU on certain laptop models, but there is no standard for the module. That means you're stuck with the options that were available at retail, which kind of defeats the purpose.

As for the CPU, just stick to Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge and all you need to worry about is the number of cores and clock speed that you want. If video editing and Photoshop is going to be any significant proportion of the usage, you will want a quad. Video playback is a complete non-issue on a modern machine, any Sandy or Ivy is powerful enough to do the entire decode in software if it needs to.
 
tinpanalley said:
Up to how much is RAM usually upgradable these days on laptops?
Click to expand...

This will depend on what laptop you buy. But with Sandy Bridge processors 16-32GB, most are in the 16GB; while i7 Extreme Processor supports 32GB. Ivy Bridge processors, 32GB. The above is in general.

Some Sandy Bridge laptops will say up to 8GB in the specifications, but many people have used 16GB with no problems; YMMV. For example a Thinkpad x220 will use 16GB, while the specifications say 8GB[1].

If you want a sturdy laptop that will last you a good while. I'd get a Thinkpad T,W or X series.

[1] http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.page?DocID=PD015812
 
Yes sturdy is one thing, but what I need is a laptop that can handle the following...
- at least some light video editing with Premiere or Vegas
- audio editing with Sound Forge
- photo editing with Photoshop without needing a minute to apply every filter or edit
- good for web downloads and good wifi understanding that this has more to do with the online connectivity and the strength of any nearby routers (although I assume this is pretty standard on any laptop today)
- Light gaming. I don't need to run Call Of Duty but I'd like to play games at least on medium graphics settings without my laptop melting
- playback of video on an external hardddrive. This is a big one because I'm moving in 3 weeks and this laptop will be my stereo (with external speakers) and viewing device with lots of media on an external harddrive. The screen should be good quality not only for the video editing but also for the watching of movies.

You ready to think I'm nuts? I'd like to keep all of this at $1000. Am I nuts?
 
You know what I get when I put <$1000 and a good GPU requirement into Newegg? Refurbished, refurbished, refurbished.

Here's one with a 1080P screen.

Edit: I guess there's this non-refurb Lenovo too, but the screen isn't as good.

The gaming requirement is the toughest one to fulfill in a laptop. And I hope you didn't need good battery life.
 
Ken g6 said:
The gaming requirement is the toughest one to fulfill in a laptop. And I hope you didn't need good battery life.
Click to expand...
Scrap the gaming, then. It's simply not as important as the other stuff.
Order of importance:
- Video/audio playback
- basic, quick video/audio editing
- photography editing
- efficient productivity (no slowdowns with word, excel and email all open)
 
tinpanalley said:
Scrap the gaming, then. It's simply not as important as the other stuff.
Order of importance:
- Video/audio playback
- basic, quick video/audio editing
- photography editing
- efficient productivity (no slowdowns with word, excel and email all open)
Click to expand...

Lots of options in that case. This ASUS NS53SV-DH51 looks good. It's $800, so that means you can stuff a 128GB SSD in there if you want and still be under budget.
 
A bit off topic...
Do processors get better as you go from i3 to i7? Is it a question of speed, how much RAM it can run, etc? Or am I missing this?

What I'm trying to figure out is if it's better to go for i7 over i3 every time.

Also, when you say stuff a SSD in there, do you mean to replace the one in the system? Is there actually another drive slot on laptops?
 
tinpanalley said:
A bit off topic...
Do processors get better as you go from i3 to i7? Is it a question of speed, how much RAM it can run, etc? Or am I missing this?

What I'm trying to figure out is if it's better to go for i7 over i3 every time.
Click to expand...

Generally speaking, yes an i7 is faster than an i5 which is faster than an i3. It doesn't honestly matter all that much in a laptop though because there are a million other things that are more important like size, screen resolution and quality, disk drive performance, amount of memory, keyboard quality, etc.

tinpanalley said:
Also, when you say stuff a SSD in there, do you mean to replace the one in the system? Is there actually another drive slot on laptops?
Click to expand...

Some big 17" laptops do have multiple drive slots, but in this case I meant to just replace the HDD with an SSD.
 
The Toshiba is sub par with respect to the other two, so I'd forget that one. The ASUS is better built whereas the Lenovo has a better GPU to either is a good choice IMHO.
 
That's what I figured about the toshiba.
If there's something slightly better in a Lenovo I wouldn't mind hearing about it even if it's 1 or 2 hundred more.
 
The next step up in terms of quality would be a Thinkpad, but those don't have as good of GPUs because they're more business oriented.
 
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