What customization's have you done with your laptop?

[Gung Pow Chicken]

What all customization's have you done with your laptops?

I've moved from my W540 to an old T430, the W540 was just to big and heavy to carry around. I needed a little more power on my T430 so I switched from an i5-3320m to a i7-3630QM and also installed a new HFS. I also switched from an intel n 6205 to a Ultimate -N 6300, I switched the CD drive to an ultra bay battery along with installing an Msata drive as my boot drive and a 850 Pro for storage,

[Kobathor]

I added an m.2 MX300, added 8GB more RAM, and put a few stickers on the back  

I want to replace my WiFi card, too. Haven't done that yet.

[zMeul]

I peeled the protective plastics from the lcd bezels and keyboard, and I scratched the lid a bit - cant' have laptops without some personality

[ShepBook]

The most I've done on my current laptop is put conference and programming language decals on it. (But, then again, I'm a MacBook Pro pleb.  )

[Guest]

Harbinger by Digital Blasphemy 

[porina]

I did a Linus and broke the warranty sticker, in order to access the drives. Replaced 128GB M.2 SSD with 525GB one, and the 1TB HD with a 480GB SATA SSD. No point in upgrading the ram from included 16GB, and nothing else is really removable.

 

I'm debating doing something with the cosmetics but no idea...

[Gung Pow Chicken]

8 minutes ago, Kobathor said:

I added an m.2 MX300, added 8GB more RAM, and put a few stickers on the back  

I want to replace my WiFi card, too. Haven't done that yet.

Wish I had an m.2 port on mine, I'm stick at SATA II for my Msata drive.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

4 minutes ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Harbinger by Digital Blasphemy 

That's awesome. Love the design.

[Guest]

Just now, Icuw1pc said:

That's awesome. Love the design.

Spoiler

 

[asiancorruption]

All of the customizations to my mbp 13 2015 are done cosmetically or through  software. On the software side, i've installed programs such as spectacle, to make my mac more windows - like, and f.lux to imitate the nightshift feature on my iphone for easier viewing at night. on the cosmetic side, i have a black macbook cover from amazon with a monster energy, rockstar, triton gaming and ' FakeTaxi' sticker for shits. 

 

Edit: I also use Monit, very useful if you have a mac, but you're still used to checking up on resource usage like I did on windows. 

[kaiju_wars]

Well, I added a Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD and an extra 8GB stick of RAM for a total of 16GB.

I also added some stickers.

Yeah, also, as nice as soft touch finishes feel (as far as plastic goes) they are fingerprint magnets.

[asiancorruption]

8 minutes ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Harbinger by Digital Blasphemy 

got a link for that? looks dope. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, asiancorruption said:

got a link for that? looks dope. 

https://www.decalgirl.com/artwork/1828/harbinger

[Sazexa]

I actually just wrote a thread about updating my laptop. My laptop is from around 2012 or 2013 I believe, and when I bought it I really wanted something good looking, solid, and premium. I didn't have the money then for the higher end spec'd models though. It came with an i5 3### generation mobile CPU. One of those super low 17W ones. It was a dual core, non-hyper-threaded CPU. It ran at like 1.7GHz and turbo'd up to something like 2.7GHz I believe. The GPU was the iGPU from the CPU, it had 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB HDD.

Recently, I decided to upgrade it. So, for around $200 USD, I upgraded pretty significantly. I upgraded the motherboard in the laptop to the higher grade one. This one has an i7-3687U CPU, 2.1 GHz dual-core, hyper-threaded CPU. It has an NVidia GT630m 1GB GPU. I changed up to 8GB of 1,600 MHz memory, and I changed to a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD. I did some research and saw I'd need a new heatsink thanks to the GPU as well, so I had to find one of those. When the new heatsink came in, I completely forgot about thermal pads which I needed for some GPU chips (I think the memory, specifically.) Luckily I had some old EKWB thermal pads from a GTX 980 block, and they fit perfectly. I tried to boot up after re-assembling, and the first time it just beep three times continuously and the screen showed nothing. I turned it off and re-booted, and a BIOS screen appeared, asking me to reset the included 32GB mSATA drive. The old system had it used as a cache drive, so, it needed to be cleared. After doing that, it's been way faster than I thought it would and running excellently. Here's some pictures.

(Example of the system before upgrading, you can see the empty spot on the PCB for the non-included GPU. You can also see the heatsink not extending over to the empty parts of the PCB)

 

(New board and SSD)

 

(Parts on the PCB with GPU and chips)

 

(Realizing I need thermal pads)

 

(EK's thermal pads fit perfectly)

 

(Finished product!)

[Gung Pow Chicken]

5 minutes ago, Sazexa said:

I actually just wrote a thread about updating my laptop. My laptop is from around 2012 or 2013 I believe, and when I bought it I really wanted something good looking, solid, and premium. I didn't have the money then for the higher end spec'd models though. It came with an i5 3### generation mobile CPU. One of those super low 17W ones. It was a dual core, non-hyper-threaded CPU. It ran at like 1.7GHz and turbo'd up to something like 2.7GHz I believe. The GPU was the iGPU from the CPU, it had 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB HDD.

Recently, I decided to upgrade it. So, for around $200 USD, I upgraded pretty significantly. I upgraded the motherboard in the laptop to the higher grade one. This one has an i7-3687U CPU, 2.1 GHz dual-core, hyper-threaded CPU. It has an NVidia GT630m 1GB GPU. I changed up to 8GB of 1,600 MHz memory, and I changed to a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD. I did some research and saw I'd need a new heatsink thanks to the GPU as well, so I had to find one of those. When the new heatsink came in, I completely forgot about thermal pads which I needed for some GPU chips (I think the memory, specifically.) Luckily I had some old EKWB thermal pads from a GTX 980 block, and they fit perfectly. I tried to boot up after re-assembling, and the first time it just beep three times continuously and the screen showed nothing. I turned it off and re-booted, and a BIOS screen appeared, asking me to reset the included 32GB mSATA drive. The old system had it used as a cache drive, so, it needed to be cleared. After doing that, it's been way faster than I thought it would and running excellently. Here's some pictures.

(Example of the system before upgrading, you can see the empty spot on the PCB for the non-included GPU. You can also see the heatsink not extending over to the empty parts of the PCB)

 

(New board and SSD)

 

(Parts on the PCB with GPU and chips)

 

(Realizing I need thermal pads)

 

(EK's thermal pads fit perfectly)

 

(Finished product!)

Nice! I almost upgraded the board on mine to one with a GPU but I would defiantly have cooling issues when installing a QM i7, I decided not to and just went with an Express card GPU adapter for on the go gaming.

 

I'm hoping to get a 9cell to go along with my Ultra-Bay battery.

 

How's the performance difference?

[Sazexa]

1 minute ago, Icuw1pc said:

Nice! I almost upgraded the board on mine to one with a GPU but I would defiantly have cooling issues when installing a QM i7, I decided not to and just went with an Express card GPU adapter for on the go gaming.

 

I'm hoping to get a 9cell to go along with my Ultra-Bay battery.

 

How's the performance difference?

The performance is unreal. For it's time when I first got the laptop, it performed well. Average all around. But after setting up my desktop as it was now, it felt like using from a PC from 2006 lol. Now it feels more like a typical/fast desktop. The SSD is definitely what gave it the biggest boost, but, the RAM and CPU bump didn't help. And now, though some games don't run well on it, I can actually stream games to it too. Before, I couldn't stream games even from my Xbox One to the laptop without choppy screen issues. Thanks to the NVidia GPU, it does pretty much everything you'd expect a four year old laptop to do very well.

[tlink]

replaced the thermal paste 4 times thats about it, everything else works as intended so there's not much use in modding it. the airflow is quite bad because it only has 1 air intake the size of a SODIMM slot so there's quite a thermal hard limit. its 17 inches too, don't understand why they made the intake so small. it already had an MQ i7 4 cores 8 threads running at 2,4 ghz and an nvidia 630m 2gb vram. the only thing i want to upgrade eventually is the 8gb ram it currently has and an ssd whenever i have money i can miss. i don't really mind the HDD speeds that much and it doesn't affect its overall performance for me.

[Dash Lambda]

Thus far I've only changed the thermal paste on my T450s, though I've been thinking about upgrading the 2.5" SSD, adding an M.2 SATA SSD, and maybe swapping out the Intel 7265 for an 8265 (though I don't think there's much reason).

 

This seems like a topic @Dackzy would like.

[Dackzy]

3 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

This seems like a topic @Dackzy would like.

Does it have to be my own laptop? Because it is basically stock.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

2 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

Does it have to be my own laptop? Because it is basically stock.

not really just a laptop you've customized.

I've changed the CPU and other components on a ton of different friends laptops.

[flibberdipper]

Other than replacing a broken screen lid, I've thrown in a 120GB 840 EVO and that's it.

[Dackzy]

1 minute ago, Icuw1pc said:

not really just a laptop you've customized.

I've changed the CPU and other components on a ton of different friends laptops.

okay this is coming off my head.

- Repasting a macbook with LM and making fan hole cuts on the bottom of it

- Making the buttom of an Acer nitro look like an mesh and be one

- Changed CPU in a T420

- changed screen on many different laptops

 

Actually I don't think there is something I haven't done.

[TheKDub]

I replaced the 250GB Samsung SSD that used to be in my laptop with a 512GB Samsung 850 Evo (M.2).
Nothing else yet. If I can find a good skin for it, then I might throw that on there.

Laptop is a Lenovo Yoga 710-15IKB

 

As for my past laptops, I've swapped RAM, WIFI cards, cooling fans, HDDs, SSDs, and who knows what else.

[Gung Pow Chicken]

15 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

okay this is coming off my head.

- Repasting a macbook with LM and making fan hole cuts on the bottom of it

- Making the buttom of an Acer nitro look like an mesh and be one

- Changed CPU in a T420

- changed screen on many different laptops

 

Actually I don't think there is something I haven't done.

I know the feeling, I've even started board repair on MBP's gets pretty fun lol

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

On my netbook I

• replaced the 120GB 5400RPM HDD with a 250GB OCZ Agility 3
• Upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 1.5GB (the maximum that it can use, it just doesn't see anything larger)
• Removed the camera and the microphone (the mic was malfunctioning and causing the laptop to throw errors, the cam was for security)
• Replaced the 2200mAh 3-cell battery with a 14.400mAh 12-cell affair, boosting the battery life from 2.5-3h to around 14-18h depending on use.
• installed an XP/Vista/Win7/Ubuntu quad-boot setup at some point, but I'm now back to an XP and Mint dual-boot

 

 

 



 


 

 

 

On my regular laptop (a Samsung NP900X4D-A01) I merely

• replaced the 120GB Sandisk U100 (known for choking hard when having to read and write simultaneously) with a 120GB 840EVO
• upgraded the RAM to a pretty trick set of 8GB (2x 4GB) Adata 1.35V DDR3-1600 CL9.  (based on my searches that was the only 1600 CL9 set that ran on 1.35V at the time)
• put some tape over the webcam
• installed Linux Mint