Make it Portable Maybe?

[JNTK984]

Budget (including currency): ??

Country: United States of America

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Web browsing, occasional light game use from some on it, and GeForce NOW.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Longer post maybe...

 

So, I have a system I put together from 2013. It is a Shuttle XH61V, with a Core i3 3225, 16GB of ram, and two storage drives, plus a blu ray burner. What I'd like to try and do someday, is turn it into a laptop of sorts. I mainly would do this for a bit more portability, and ease of transport. I have ZERO skills in designing an enclosure, choosing a battery pack that I could include, or even any kind of manufacturing skills. 

 

What I seek is a guide on what I may have to discover. I'd love to get some kind of laptop style keyboard, an I/O bridge to have access to all my ports on the back, and in general, turn my small PC into a laptop, with the board it has and all the other parts. 

 

Why not just find a comparable cheap laptop and move my stuff over? I want the challenge of making a system from 2013 get a transplant into a new shell. I also want to keep my blu-ray drive, as I'm a bit old school on media sometimes. I don't mind streaming, but sometimes, I'd rather have physical media. There are many other reasons I want to do this, and I know it would likely cost more to do so than find a cheap laptop. I would rather have the fun of piecing it together, than just data transfer.

 

Some specs: all sata ports are 1.5 Gb/s; There is currently an aftermarket fan on the CPU, and it hums along nicely; front panel is through I believe a daughter board, including power, so that would be part of it; there is an external power brick with specs I don't have at the moment, though I still have the whole thing. As for runtime of a battery pack, I would like to have something like four to five hours.

 

What I'd love to do is find a company who could quote me the design specs for milling or CNC or something to make the shell of the 'laptop' and also the general layout of all the mount points, grounding points, etc. I know of a few though I do not know how to design the lower half of the enclosure. 

 

For the monitor, I'm thinking of getting a 17.3" laptop LCD, though I don't know how it would be driven natively from windows over HDMI. 

 

I'll be happy to get pictures once I can.

 

I hope this project is not something that would take me a few more years.

 

[Biohazard777]

1 hour ago, JNTK984 said:

What I'd love to do is find a company who could quote me the design specs for milling or CNC or something to make the shell of the 'laptop'

https://www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyping/cnc-machining/

Example project using their services:

 

1 hour ago, JNTK984 said:

and also the general layout of all the mount points, grounding points, etc. I know of a few though I do not know how to design the lower half of the enclosure. 

You will be providing the design, I mean you could hire someone to do it for you... but then just buy a laptop.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

i have a similar idea just that id want it to be a 24/27" behemoth and if i dont decide to shove x58 in it probably am5 based

 

someone already built a relatively thin laptop already with desktop parts, might not have to strip the board of its i/o if you can figure out how to desolder and solder them sideways to lower their height

 

i dont think ill be going with this route maybe something inbetween this and a literal suitcase, definitely watercooled cause as fun as making your own heatsinks looks itd probably perform like trash compared to mounting a rad diagonally and using negative pressure to suck air through

 

ill probably buy a car before trying to build one of these since i dont really game on pc =p