mITX Laptop case - Viable?

[Misanthrope]

So I am checking a friend's laptop right now, totally D.O.A. and looks to be a shorted battery or mobo (though mobo and cpu looks completely fine no physical signs of a short) and while talking to him I suggested a desktop but he made a pretty sound argument about why he needs a powerful laptop: He both works and studies, uses the laptop for both and needs to have a pretty beefy set up for his audio processing needs, however this sorta backfired now since this particular laptop model is quite rare (Acer aspire v3-471-6880).

 

Anyway I was thinking I've seen plenty of mITX cases that are getting increasingly small, those steam boxes are almost portable. Would it be too difficult to built my own mITX cases to act as beefy laptop cases? I'm thinking basically APU or something like a 750ti max so they might do some gaming but not much, the power supply could end up being external. Something sort of the size of a smallish breefcase or so (2 or 3 inches tall max). I think there's potential to sell this as sort of in between machines, better than even a good desktop replacement laptop in performance but not really mobile and just sorta transportable.

 

Thoughts? (I'll make it a poll)

[MogIsWinning]

If if needs to be portable, just get a laptop

[Misanthrope]

If if needs to be portable, just get a laptop

 

I should clarify: I'm not looking to get these, I'm looking to build em and sell em myself (I'm sorta in the mobile and tablet retail business, starting up, and I might cover custom desktops and laptops and such). I'm thinking about building up laptops with barebone kits but I though, just how much work would it involve to just build some sort of cases myself (another FYI: importing here in Mexico is pretty much a huge issue that would tax small guys like me right out of business, so I must work with what I can find locally already and there's little in the way of laptop DIY kits)

[Anthony10]

I've had this idea forever, it would be too hard to cool it. Things would overheat.

To make it work you'd have to have a gpu mount, with a riser card. And when you got to the point of where it could fit a high tdp cpu/gpu cooler, it would be too thick.

You'd have to do something like run integrated graphics or something. Super small market too.

[Misanthrope]

I've had this idea forever, it would be too hard to cool it. Things would overheat.

To make it work you'd have to have a gpu mount, with a riser card. And when you got to the point of where it could fit a high tdp cpu/gpu cooler, it would be too thick.

You'd have to do something like run integrated graphics or something. Super small market too.

 

I though that cooling would be an issue as well. And I don't think water cooling would go well with something portable. However I've seen some that are as low as 46mm so it's not completely out of the question to have something like 3 inches thick?

 

 

But that does leaves the question of GPU I haven't thought that one out other than APU.

[MogIsWinning]

.

[MogIsWinning]

I don't think it's a very profitable idea

I though that cooling would be an issue as well. And I don't think water cooling would go well with something portable. However I've seen some that are as low as 46mm so it's not completely out of the question to have something like 3 inches thick?

But that does leaves the question of GPU I haven't thought that one out other than APU.

noctua ln9i and a apu would be best possible but they case will be tuff to make

[WinNut]

Plus you would have to go ghetto for the power, possibly get both a 5v and a 12v battery.

 

You should consider the thin Mini-ITX standard.

[Misanthrope]

Plus you would have to go ghetto for the power, possibly get both a 5v and a 12v battery.

 

You should consider the thin Mini-ITX standard.

 

Thanks for the tip. I'm digging the so-dimm slots and other laptop friendly extras like support for external power, mPCIe and such. However I'm not finding many with PCIe or AMD based (afaik APU's are better going with AMD right now)

[Scheer]

I'd go with laptop styled coolers, Gigabyte used them for their AIO that surely didn't sell many, so there is likely a company out there with thousands on hand that they want to get rid of.

I'm sure there would be a way to modify it for a GPU as well.

 

Externally supplying power to a high end GPU would be a bit difficult though, 150w bricks are plentiful and cheap, but it gets quite expensive and large for a 400w one.

 

[Misanthrope]

Nice, I've been looking at those AIO kits and I think it would be relatively ok to fit them in a large briefcase. The only thing is that I can't seem to find an AMD motherboard with so-dimms and built in dc power supply option. I'll keep looking I think I'll do a briefcase PC for me first and see how it goes, if it's not viable to sell at least I'll have a nice portable pc for myself

[Scheer]

Nice, I've been looking at those AIO kits and I think it would be relatively ok to fit them in a large briefcase. The only thing is that I can't seem to find an AMD motherboard with so-dimms and built in dc power supply option. I'll keep looking I think I'll do a briefcase PC for me first and see how it goes, if it's not viable to sell at least I'll have a nice portable pc for myself

If you are going to use a standard ITX board, I don't think the RAM wouldn't be any taller than the I/O shield, so it wouldn't cause an issue would it?

 

EDIT: This is sounding like a fun project... 

 

For a somewhat powerful PC, you could use these two: 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?gclid=CNSyn6e8ib4CFe9r7Aods3kAfA&Item=N82E16813128587&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Intel+Motherboards-_-N82E16813128587&ef_id=Ur8xRgAAADlzdQbd:20140501003016:s

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161417

And throw in a PCIe riser to lay the card down. Experiment to see what the GPU temps are like with the CPU cooler below blowing the air across the GPU fins vs having a small dedicated case fan blowing across it. For me personally I wouldn't mind a loud computer like this as it wouldn't be something I would use all that often, and would prefer the noise to excessive heat on the components.

 

Another option for cooling the CPU:

May be some way to modify this: http://it-tech-uk.com/pc-accessories/coolers/diy-heat-pipe-intel-1155-socket-cpu-mini-itx-silent-fanless-htpc-cooling-system.html