prototype The DIY LAPTOP PROOF OF CONCEPT ( NOW CALLED THE LANTOP)

[CircuitBear]

Gud day,

 

This is my first time posting on this forum soo hello there, and this is my second ever Small form factor build, with the Node 202 by fractal design being my first ever project.

I leave you with some pictures for now, of the components that i have gathered so far and the chassis build, that I hand crafted for this project that will house the motherboard and other internal components, with some small notes. I do apologies for the bad lighting, i do not have a very good setup for such things.

 

I have begun this DIY laptop hybrid, so that i could use it as a future proof portable system with fully up gradable components, including the screen, which I will be working on in the near future as the project progresses.

 

For a quick Overview, the built chassis is made of aluminium that is 49 cm long X 29.5 cm wide and 2,7 cm thiCC (the pictures don't do the build any favors.)

The layout is currently presented with the Motherboard, a thin mini itx board from Asus, facing down and I intend on completing the build that way. I am sporting some corsair vengeance ram at 2400 MHz and a I5 8500 coupled with Intel's thin thermal solution for cooling and finally, a 500 gb WD SSD as a boot drive.

For the moment I am going to power the build via a HD PLEX 160 and a 230 watt power brick. 

 

In the future I intend on filling that empty space with a small form factor graphics card that i haven't picked out yet. Furthermore, the screen I intend on placing will be a 21.5 inch monitor that I will mod (now you know why i chose such a long build length ) to be powered via the Psu.

 

I will update the post as I go but for now, enjoy some bad pictures of my current build. Cheers.

CircuitBear

 

 

[CircuitBear]

Hello again,

 

It has been a couple minutes and I have a small update to add about the project so far.

 

So I have acquired a fair bit more components for my build, and that has led me to change some aspects of my chassis. The dimensions are the same for the over all specs but the internal volume has changed as well as the thinkness of the aluminium sheet from 2.3 mm to 1.5 mm. The internal housing for the main components such has the motherboard and the recently acquired graphics card, has changed from 17.3 cm wide to 18 cm, allowing me to fit the majority of the pieces a lot better.

 

The newly acquired gtx 1660 ti from gigabyte, and the HD Plex 400 will make a great addition to my future proofing of this setup. I disassembled the 1660 ti, removing the radiator, Fan, and bracket in preparation for mounting. I have yet to decide on what setup I will use for the cooling of the Gpu, although I have plans to have a slimmed down radiator and a 120 mm fan mounted, to cool it off. The position of the gpu is not final has i am awaiting a shipment from the China with my special M.2 to Pcie 16x slot adapter, and yes the motherboard has a M.2 slot with a Pcie 3.0  4x connection which for now until more thin mini itx motherboards surface for purchase, will suffice.

 

The SSD will retain a place under the keyboard supporting section.

 

As for the Hd Plex 400, the unit itself requires no modification, it is 26 mm thick. However the cables that fit into the Psu needs some modifications, I intend to slimmed them down and/or have them be tilted to a 90 degree angle. Larry from HD PLEX ( great person btw) hooked me up with a elusive cable as well, that I needed for the Mod, which is a 4 pin to 2 pin atx power cable, to allow me to power the motherboard internally.

 

Furthermore, I have acquired my keyboard, which is a Anidees slim keyboard which is only 19mm thick at its highest point, and it features some very nice blue switches and Rgb back lighting, whilst being connected either via a wireless or wired setup.

 

That's it for now, I have work to do for sure, and i will be posting an updated once things are mounted with a further update on my screen setup and how I intend on mounting the hinges to the whole system.

 

Thanks for tuning in.

[TheElectronicGeek1]

So it's a huge ass laptop that needs to be plugged in?

[Heesleemer]

nice , looking forward to seeing this come together. Curious on the GPU cooling! 

[CircuitBear]

Sneak peak... that is all for nowzz..

 

 

 

[Adsome2007]

I’m not sure if you can still call that a laptop

[richie30]

Im just picturing back before we had mp3 players and phones.. people walking down the street with boom boxes

 

However i admire your enginuity n persistance n cant wait to see the finished thing..

 

Ps make it like a tablet instead to reduce the thickness and have stands come of the back

 

[Xychic]

Love the idea,I've though of doing something like this in the past but never got around to it. One thing I have been doing is converting a laptop to work as a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, like the lapdock. I found this video very useful and think you may too as it would allow you to use a laptop keyboard which could save you even more space:

 

[00100000]

This is such an impractical idea, which makes it all the better

 

but a build laptop would be really, really, hard to move around.

[rpdk]

Very cool but why not use a 60 percent mech keyboard with this?

[CircuitBear]

Action is Coming.. IMB 1215 from asrock

Edited October 26, 2019 by CircuitBear
Extra info

[Evolution.]

id say ditch the gpu and any other stuff that might make it extra thicc tbh. Laptop meant for practicality and portability. 

[Exia 00]

I really like this idea. Sure it's not exactly going to be the most portable version, but a great build to look forwards too

[Faisal A]

@CircuitBear That's the most IO I have seen on a laptop

[CircuitBear]

So I am back... been busy but. I finished the lower half of the build just took forever to get the time to get some pictures all setup. I Installed the IMB 1215 mother board inside along with a 2tb 660p intel m.2 ssd and got a really nice 16x pcie extension cable that wraps around the motherboard and connect the gtx 1660 ti. In the pictures below you will see the adapter I built for the graphics card. It is crude I know...and it sits on thermal paste to ensure good contact. So for now everything works, I have a issue with the motherboard not recognizing the graphics card, it detects it but does not seem to like it, so I will be working on that next, as well as the upper chassis for the screen and all. Also this is still just very prototypish so to be honest there might be some changes to certain components like the cables and possibly even the Hd Plex DCATX 400w psu since I might not be utilizing all of the capabilities of this psu. AANNYWAYYS I will try to keep this going, been busy.. and things are a bit slow for now. Cheers.

[CircuitBear]

Some more photos.

[CircuitBear]

Better Light on these pictures.

[CircuitBear]

On 3/1/2019 at 2:19 PM, TheElectronicGeek1 said:

So it's a huge ass laptop that needs to be plugged in?

I guess yes, I might need a better name though because laptop might not be appropriate.

[TheOcularMan]

2 hours ago, CircuitBear said:

I guess yes, I might need a better name though because laptop might not be appropriate.

"ultra portable desktop with integrated keyboard"

[Oleksii]

Couple years ago I have similar project. Main goal was to build laptop chassis for high performance desktop hardware as core i7 and GTX 1060/1070.

[Nikon_12]

On 11/30/2020 at 3:31 PM, Oleksii said:

Couple years ago I have similar project. Main goal was to build laptop chassis for high performance desktop hardware as core i7 and GTX 1060/1070.

hello by chance you will have more photos or measurements of your project?, which looks very good :)

[CircuitBear]

This project has changed and is now completed. I will post on a new post. Stay tuned.

[CircuitBear]