what you think of building a micro-atx laptop??

[lewbaseball07]

Alright guys the only way i want to get a laptop is if i can build it. Cant stand to buy a laptop from dell or any system building, just dont want to, i like knowing i built it. Alright so i was thinking this over with my friend and i was thinking just get a micro-atx (intel of course) a big and thick enough laptop case with the lcd (anyone know where i could find one like that, please tell...i remember a while back abs offered them). And add the core 2 duo, some ram and wa bang....yea i wish....

Maybe get a power supply from an old regular xbox and taking that little power supply board out of it( pc power supply boards would be to high from what ive seen). I am pretty sure the xbox uses a 20 pin main connector(20 pin to 24 pin coverter). And theres some molex cables. It wouldnt be to hard to take the molex connector off and put a 4 pin square connector onto it. If i added little tiny fans here and there iam sure the core 2 duo wouldnt run over 60c if it didnt have the stock tall h/s fan on it. Please correct me if iam wrong. becuase they seem to me that there realllly cool i mean i oced my e6300 from 1.8 to 3.15 with stock cooling and the darn thing still wasnt above 40c on load. Maybe some how get a laptop battery...i dont even know...shed some light onto this subject someone it would be soooo sweet having built your own micro atx laptop. If the mouse and keyboard have to be external than so be it.


And if i really wanted to go hardcore get some mad cooling mods and.......add a 8800gt.....lay it on its back inside the case and i wish they would make something that would go into the slot of the motherboard and some how connected it to the card like through a wire. Than i would have to get a pc power supply.


SOMEONE PLEASE SHED SOME LIGHT. WOULD BE AN INSANEEEEEEEEEEEEE PROJECT.

 

[runswindows95]

Yes, and not worth it.

 

[spectre666]

I'm trying to do the same thing! The hard part is finding case to house the components, and the LCD panel. I have looked hi and low tying to find someone who can do it. Dell, so far, (as much as i hate them) has been the only place to say that they could do it. Depending on your needs, a micro-atx board may be too big. I am planning on using a mini-itx board that supports a desktop (or you can get a board that uses the 800mhz FSB laptop chips) core 2 @ 1066mhz FSB. I am planning on putting 2 Raptors in raid 0, an 8800gt, a core 2 q6600, 2x2 gb of ddr2-800, and a 24" wuxga (19200x1200) monitor. Cooling, i kind of have solved. Whereas powering the contration i have no idea. I'm thinking of using an atx power supply, and just removing the housing and mounting the contents directly into my laptop. My goal is to have a sleek, 2-3" inch think laptop.

 

[lewbaseball07]

mini itx is like 160 bucks on newegg and there for crappy jetways. So until they get cheaper and better iam going to stick to micro. Micros are totally small enough. Laptop mobos are usually as big as the laptop. Not planning on having a super ultra small laptop who cares if its alittle big. As long as its not a crap dell!

 

[lewbaseball07]

how would you put a graphics card in it? they make laptop models of vid cards. Do they use a ribbon cable to connect to the pci express?

 

[spectre666]

Here are the parts you were wondering about:
motherboard: http://www.ibase-i.com.tw/MI900.htm
pci-e cable: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/pelx16_c11

I despise dell, too, but they can build a case, i'll go for it.

For cooling i think im gonna use liquid cooling and mount the radiator and fan vertically, drawing in air from the keyboard surface.

 

[lewbaseball07]

niceeeeeee. I was thinking of using a server 1u case and some how possible make an lcd panel flip up on a hinch? That q965 is probably 150 bucks.

 

[lewbaseball07]

hahaha. Wait how is 3 inches sleek?!?

 

[spectre666]

It's all relative, it look sleek considering how big it is. Unfortunately I think I'm gonna give up. Dell can't build it, and I can't find anyone that can. I don't want to build it myself, because it would look look like crap. I don't know I guess i'll have to see what else I dig up online. The project isn't looking good though. Are you having any luck?

 

[zzyzzx_xien]

Just build your on case, its not that hard...

 

[spectre666]

That's what I think I'm gonna do, if can't find anyone to build one for me, I'll build it myself. It just would look as pretty as I'd like.
By the way, a MicroATX will be be a lil' big, but it'll fit. Heck, a full-size ATX would fit (in mine at least).
I'm still gonna have 2 Raptors in RAID 0, even though it'll be costly (I REALLY want the speed), an 8800GT, and the 24" monitor, but I'm not sure whether I'm gonna go Intel or AMD. Haven't decided that part yet.

 

[newbuild]

Why not buy a broken laptop from ebay for £25 (50$)?

You could rip the guts out and keep the screen...

Just an idea. Perhaps not big enough?

 

[spectre666]

that probably wouldn't be big enough.

 

[slayer07mt]

How are ya'll planning on connecting the monitor to the mobo?? Are you going to use the VGA cable that comes with the monitor?? I can't figure out how to do this, I thought about just getting this. http://www.mimomonitors.com/ but I would like to have a bigger monitor.

 

[enzo matrix]

I'm going to revive this thread because I am curious if any of you have been successful?

 

[booper13]

I've been looking at sort of related stuff all day and came across some stuff about people running video cards through the pci x1 slots in their laptops and then essentially docking their laptops with external video cards when they need them. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to build a micro-atx laptop with a motherboard that has x16 slots and then to run a ribbon to the edge/outside of the laptop case so that you could connect it with an external graphics card (the external graphics card being powered by an external power supply). I think this may be the best way to build an actual gaming laptop at this point, since any "laptop" that houses a video card and a power supply big enough to run a video card inside is going to be pretty massive.