upgrading/building a laptop

[madder]

How difficult is it to build a powerful laptop from parts? How much money can you save if you do this as opposed to buying refurbished or from the shelf? How much would a hi spec laptop cost to build?

Or is upgrading a better option? Can any laptop be upgraded(within reason).

For example, I have a couple of laptops in the house. One is a Dell Latitude D510. It is at its max for RAM which is 2GB. If I change the processor on the motherboard to something faster and more powerful, can I then insert higher RAM power? Can I then install a better graphics card? Or is it more complicated than that? Would I need a new Motherboard to accommodate the faster processor?

 

[Igorian]

How difficult is it to build a powerful laptop from parts? How much money can you save if you do this as opposed to buying refurbished or from the shelf? How much would a hi spec laptop cost to build?

Not practical at all really.

Or is upgrading a better option? Can any laptop be upgraded(within reason).

Not much scope for upgrading to achieve what you are trying to do.

For example, I have a couple of laptops in the house. One is a Dell Latitude D510. It is at its max for RAM which is 2GB. If I change the processor on the motherboard to something faster and more powerful, can I then insert higher RAM power? Can I then install a better graphics card? Or is it more complicated than that? Would I need a new Motherboard to accommodate the faster processor?

Changing the processor (if it's even possible with what you have) won't allow you to have more memory.

Upgrading anything other than memory and HDD would depend on the laptop, but it's extremely unlikely. They are not intended to be upgraded in this fashion like a desktop system might be.

Buy a new one with the spec you want/need.

 

[Trazor]

As Igorian said, it can be done, but not worth the time and money.

The main problem will be cooling your power hungry components.

 

[Monkeh]

The main problem will be cooling your power hungry components.

No, the main problem will be that laptops are in general not upgradable in any significant manner.

 

[Trazor]

The main problem will be cooling your power hungry components.

No, the main problem will be that laptops are in general not upgradable in any significant manner.

He was initially talking about building from scratch, which can be done, just difficult.

 

[madder]

The main problem will be cooling your power hungry components.

No, the main problem will be that laptops are in general not upgradable in any significant manner.

He was initially talking about building from scratch, which can be done, just difficult.

I referred to both things. I wondered could any of my own machines be upgraded, seriously. But I did too ask about building from scratch. Is it worth it? Are there genuine savings to be made? I have built a couple of desktop PCs from scratch, but I have never tried anything genuinely adventurous with a laptop, outside of changing RAM, Hard drive or keyboard and screen.
If anyone feels that there are big savings to be made....feel free to let me know. Cheers

 

[EFCLee1]

Firstly, laptop parts are all bespoke so they are not transferable to any other laptop unless say you have a Dell D610 and want to upgrade it to a D620!

Building laptops? hmm its an insane idea which is possible and would require enormous skill, one guy I remember putting a playstation or an X box into a laptop type machine, looked kinda cool once he'd done it

 

[EFCLee1]

Firstly, laptop parts are all bespoke so they are not transferable to any other laptop unless say you have a Dell D610 and want to upgrade it to a D620!

Building laptops? hmm its an insane idea which is possible and would require enormous skill, one guy I remember putting a playstation or an X box into a laptop type machine, looked kinda cool once he'd done it

 

[Monkeh]

Firstly, laptop parts are all bespoke so they are not transferable to any other laptop unless say you have a Dell D610 and want to upgrade it to a D620!

Not quite true. CPUs are standard sockets (with the exception of ELV CPUs or just plain cheap machines, which are soldered directly to the board), RAM is standard SODIMMs, wifi cards are, for the most part, bog standard, and there's MXM for GPUs, but it's relatively rare. HDDs are bog standard.

Building laptops? hmm its an insane idea which is possible and would require enormous skill

Not really, it's no different to building a desktop PC. The problem is there are only a handful of vendors offering the components and none of them match the quality of a decent laptop. It's not worth doing, really.

 

[TheRunningMan]

It would be a nice project to do and IMO not that difficult to find most of the hardware to put one together. The main issue would come when finding a laptop body for it all to fit in and still keep it nice and portable (maybe you could retro fit a briefcase). Virtually all of the motherboards will be bespoke to each individual series of laptops so you would only really find one second hand on ebay.

Good luck