Hello all. I've been wanting a laptop for several years now, but have always been satisfied with the desktops I built for myself over the years. I recently decided to do away with my desktop and sell it off along with a large majority of my belongings becuase I'll be spending the next few years moving around North America and eventually Europe... so I figured between keeping my belongings to a minimum and still having a computer that can handle my needs for a budget I can afford, now would be the perfect time to finally invest in one.
After a lot of shopping around I really couldn't find what I was looking for until I ran across the ABS Mayhem G3. However, the ABS site (and the coboc site) was always out of stock out of one component or another that I wanted. What to do? I didn't want to wait several weeks or however long until they have all the parts to build the laptop I wanted. So I started looking up DIY and laptop building... couldn't be too much different from building desktops and servers, and I came across this place and lurked around for a few days.
So on Friday I ordered all the components I needed to build my own laptop, and found all the best prices by using Froogle.com and running the model numbers to find the vendor with the best deals.
All in all, here is what I got:
-ABS 258KAV2 Athlon 64 15.4" Barebook (Moble Radeon 9700 128MB)
-AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 754
-2x Kingmax 512MB DDR 400 (PC 3200) Cas Latency 2.5
-108M 802.11a/b/g/x internal wireless
-Toshiba 60GB HD 7200rpm 8MB Cache
-Lite-on DL DVD+/-RW
-2 extra batteries
-VANTEC LapCool2 Notebook Cooler
-Extra AC adaptor
-Artic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
-and a nice backpack to carry it all around in
And after getting everything overnighted or 2-dayed to me so I can have all the parts by Tuesday (hopefully) the final price tag for all that was: ~$1,950
I'm primarially going to be using this for DV editing and gaming (MxO anyone?). But since I'm basically building the laptop, I don't want to just have the plain black OEM case... I want to do something unique but not extrememly hard or time consuming, but can't really think of much yet. Maybe a cool paint job? Hmmm.
Ideas?
After a lot of shopping around I really couldn't find what I was looking for until I ran across the ABS Mayhem G3. However, the ABS site (and the coboc site) was always out of stock out of one component or another that I wanted. What to do? I didn't want to wait several weeks or however long until they have all the parts to build the laptop I wanted. So I started looking up DIY and laptop building... couldn't be too much different from building desktops and servers, and I came across this place and lurked around for a few days.
So on Friday I ordered all the components I needed to build my own laptop, and found all the best prices by using Froogle.com and running the model numbers to find the vendor with the best deals.
All in all, here is what I got:
-ABS 258KAV2 Athlon 64 15.4" Barebook (Moble Radeon 9700 128MB)
-AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket 754
-2x Kingmax 512MB DDR 400 (PC 3200) Cas Latency 2.5
-108M 802.11a/b/g/x internal wireless
-Toshiba 60GB HD 7200rpm 8MB Cache
-Lite-on DL DVD+/-RW
-2 extra batteries
-VANTEC LapCool2 Notebook Cooler
-Extra AC adaptor
-Artic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
-and a nice backpack to carry it all around in
And after getting everything overnighted or 2-dayed to me so I can have all the parts by Tuesday (hopefully) the final price tag for all that was: ~$1,950
I'm primarially going to be using this for DV editing and gaming (MxO anyone?). But since I'm basically building the laptop, I don't want to just have the plain black OEM case... I want to do something unique but not extrememly hard or time consuming, but can't really think of much yet. Maybe a cool paint job? Hmmm.
Ideas?
