Trash laptop turned into media consumption PC for the livingroom

[Vonplaf]

Last weekend I found a broken laptop screen dead, hinges broken off and a ton of scratches and small dents in the machine.
How ever specs made it worth to see if I could get it working again.
Acer Aspire laptop:
Intel Core i5 7300HQ
16GB DDR4 ram
Nvidia GTX 1050 2GB
Intel 256 GB m.2 NVME SSD

So got it all taken apart, cleaned and looked over for defects and the lid for the dead screen also cleaned up and bend into shape as to be a cover for the machine.
Fixed up a 135W PSU whit the correct plug and designed and 3D printed some feet for it to be mounted vertically behind my TV.

There is no build in wifi card at the moment af the wifi antennas where torn off when the screen died so anyway now it just plugged in with an ethernet cable ..

So BOOM and a new livingroom PC for games and media consumption on the TV.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Vonplaf
it was a normal 1050 card and not a 1050 TI

[HanZie82]

Nice, pretty fast notebook too.

 

But i would advice using a notebook in open configuration. Since they made to be used like that. And a lot have heating problems if the keyboard area cant cool tough convection.

But the best test is just to use it, check temps and move on.

 

Also think of using the TV's VESA mount to mount the notebook on. Completely disappears then.

Could always just wire a power button to somewhere.

[FRD]

Nice project, seems like a success!
Actually only recently for me I had a similar chance to restore a defective laptop, it also was an Acer Aspire model. I still recall it had an i7, 8GB RAM and GTX 1050. No HDD, no SSD, broken screen, missing keyboard keys, but still a WiFi card. The thing was, the GTX 1050 was defective.

The seller said he wanted to throw it out, since he couldn't fix it anymore nor want to spend money on it. I offered to take it from him if the price is right, but finally someone else ended up paying more than 80 Euros for it and I didn't want to take the gamble for that amount. I noticed that a GTX 1050 laptop GPU is REALLY hard to find.

[Vonplaf]

54 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Nice, pretty fast notebook too.

 

But i would advice using a notebook in open configuration. Since they made to be used like that. And a lot have heating problems if the keyboard area cant cool tough convection.

But the best test is just to use it, check temps and move on.

 

Also think of using the TV's VESA mount to mount the notebook on. Completely disappears then.

Could always just wire a power button to somewhere.

Have HWinfo running from time to time to monitor the temps when my son was playing fortnite of the thing and GPU and CPU did spike at 75 degree celsius 
But the back of the laptop that normally have the plastic grill infront of the heatsink i have cut away as they some of it where brokken off to start with, this opens up more for the heat to exit the cooler.

I have also removed a plate that are on the bottom of the laptop that would normally cover up an 2.5" SSD but as this laptop dont use that kind of drive it now have a hole larger than the drive in the back where heat also can escape from 
And i also cleaned the heatsinks, fans and applied new thermal paste 

Pics below of what the internals look like in this thing, picture borrowed from https://laptopmedia.com/us/review/acer-aspire-7-a715-71g-review-value-meets-performance/

[Vonplaf]

1 hour ago, FRD said:

Nice project, seems like a success!
Actually only recently for me I had a similar chance to restore a defective laptop, it also was an Acer Aspire model. I still recall it had an i7, 8GB RAM and GTX 1050. No HDD, no SSD, broken screen, missing keyboard keys, but still a WiFi card. The thing was, the GTX 1050 was defective.

The seller said he wanted to throw it out, since he couldn't fix it anymore nor want to spend money on it. I offered to take it from him if the price is right, but finally someone else ended up paying more than 80 Euros for it and I didn't want to take the gamble for that amount. I noticed that a GTX 1050 laptop GPU is REALLY hard to find.

Where i live we have a "shed" where people can dump they e-waste and stuff like that and once a month they come an get all the e-waste sooo lately i have been going there at least once a day..
haul this week and most flipped on facebook market place.
1 Sony soundbar and remote.
1 Nordklang Soundbar and remote.
1 2x500watt car stereo amp.

And previously i have found TVs, computer parts and even a Nintendo switch with out charger and joycons and all of it just needed a little love and care and off to facebook market place with the stuff i could not use  

[FRD]

3 hours ago, Vonplaf said:

Where i live we have a "shed" where people can dump they e-waste and stuff like that and once a month they come an get all the e-waste sooo lately i have been going there at least once a day..
haul this week and most flipped on facebook market place.
1 Sony soundbar and remote.
1 Nordklang Soundbar and remote.
1 2x500watt car stereo amp.

And previously i have found TVs, computer parts and even a Nintendo switch with out charger and joycons and all of it just needed a little love and care and off to facebook market place with the stuff i could not use  

That's so cool. Actually I'm a bit jealous, since I really like to hunt down electronic deals and fix them up if I can, if not sell them as well.

Sometimes you can find rare or valuable items like that, but sometimes you will end up with junk too. It's the advantage of getting things offline, not found by the public yet if you are there first.

[HanZie82]

17 hours ago, FRD said:

That's so cool. Actually I'm a bit jealous, since I really like to hunt down electronic deals and fix them up if I can, if not sell them as well.

Sometimes you can find rare or valuable items like that, but sometimes you will end up with junk too. It's the advantage of getting things offline, not found by the public yet if you are there first.

Me too, a bit jealous.

We have a local dump that gathers all that stuff. But its not really allowed to go into the electronics bin and take stuff out. But that doesnt stop me from trying tho.

Thanks to that i now am using a 2nd Antec 900 case that looked better then my own. hehehe.

[FRD]

40 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Me too, a bit jealous.

We have a local dump that gathers all that stuff. But its not really allowed to go into the electronics bin and take stuff out. But that doesnt stop me from trying tho.

Thanks to that i now am using a 2nd Antec 900 case that looked better then my own. hehehe.

Still, it's something and you have a chance. Nice catch on the case, I'm a big fan of Antec cases myself.
I need to hunt down such place too in my area, would be fun.

[steelo]

Pretty cool, but I'd worry about heat dissipation with the case closed. You could probably get away with running it in low power mode (within Windows) to reduce temps.