$60 Windows 10 laptop from Micro Center!

[Lobstar]

I just got one of these: https://www.microcenter.com/product/646649/evolve-iii-maestro-e-book-116-laptop-computer-dark-grey

 

The CPU can be unlocked from 6w up to about 15w. I repasted mine with Kryonaut Extreme and some thermal pads on the hot parts under the heat spreader and can get 10w and 518 points in Cinebench r23. There is zero active cooling on this thing but it does have an LTE modem. You can easily replace that with a cheap SSD. This 256gb was $23 and will fit with some double sided tape or something else to hold it down.

 

CPU Settings (delete gets you in the bios):

 

The bottom snaps on with a few screws. Here the cell modem and battery are removed. I wasn't sure where the SIM ribbon ran.

 

I previously removed the heat spreader. There was a .5mm thermal pad on the CPU and nothing on the memory or power hardware. I put some Kryonaut Extreme on the CPU and some 1mm thermal pads on the RAM and hot bits.

 

The SSD installed and held down with electrical tape. Battery reinstalled.

 

Yay! Pro-tip!! Leave the screen protector on. The display looks waaaaay better with the shiny plastic. Cut the tab off with a razor blade and press it flush.

[YoungBlade]

Nicely done! A quad-core Celeron's not the fastest thing in the world, but I'm sure it runs much better now that you increased the TDP so it can Burst for longer. I'm impressed by how configurable that E-Book is.

 

If you aren't satisfied with Windows' performance on the eMMC drive, you could consider moving it to the SSD, but obviously that's not necessary.

[Lobstar]

3 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

Nicely done! A quad-core Celeron's not the fastest thing in the world, but I'm sure it runs much better now that you increased the TDP so it can Burst for longer. I'm impressed by how configurable that E-Book is.

 

If you aren't satisfied with Windows' performance on the eMMC drive, you could consider moving it to the SSD, but obviously that's not necessary.

The plan is to partition the internall eMMC storage with GRUB and a linux install with the SSD reserved for Windows. Others have this dual booting so that is the next thing to try.

 

Oh yeah, it charges at 12v @ 2A so its very nice for projects in place of a raspberry pi. I'm using it for software defined radio since it's so light and has USB ports for my RTL SDR setup. Those don't need much CPU.

[YoungBlade]

Just now, Lobstar said:

The plan is to partition the internall eMMC storage with GRUB and a linux install with the SSD reserved for Windows. Others have this dual booting so that is the next thing to try.

I like the ambition! Linux will also do better considering you're limited to 4GB of RAM. Most distros are just fine with that, while Windows can be... iffy...

[Lobstar]

I think I'll actually move it over to Windows 11 once I get the dual boot working since, in my experience, it's better with lower power hardware.

[Lobstar]

eMMC vs SSD speeds.

[Lobstar]

Added an SSD heatsink.

[Lobstar]

I got 826 points! 5 minutes in it was still at 2100mhz! The first stock run was 518 points (+59.5%!!!)