Build your own laptop

Posted at: Tuesday 1st August 2006 by James Morris

James Morris shows you how to custom-build your own performance laptop without spending a fortune

Another manufacturer that offers laptop carcasses is ECS, and its A980 costs £182.83 (www.redstore.com). This uses the SiS650/962 chipset with integrated graphics, so it supports Northwood Pentium 4s and Celerons with a 533MHz FSB. However, the A980 is missing two important components - the battery and the screen. Getting hold of the LCD to accompany this will be even harder than obtaining the bare bones laptop in the first place. ECS makes a number of other chassis, though, which you can get as kits from www.gemma.co.uk. Both Intel and AMD versions are available, but most are a little pricey at around £500, including a DVD/CD-RW combo drive. Asus also makes bare bones laptops, but its chassis aren't available at all in the UK.

Beyond these well-known brands, some of the chassis that UK retailers use in their designs are also being offered as carcasses. For example, a selection of Clevo chassis is listed at www.littlebush.co.uk, but this was yet another reseller that didn't return our phone calls. So, although it appears as though there are many options, in reality, finding a bare bones laptop chassis can be pretty tough.

In the end, we managed to convince MSI that the UK was now ripe for laptop self-builders, and both chassis featured this month are now readily available to buy. You'll be able to buy the two chassis that we used, plus a few others at www.savastore.com, where you'll also be able to buy a complete kit of compatible components, although you're obviously free to shop around for the best prices.

The first chassis is the MS-1022 (also known as the S425), a Centrino-oriented bare bones system using an Intel 915PM chipset. Coming in at £313.73, it isn't too pricey, and has a plethora of features. The headphone socket doubles as an optical S/PDIF output, and as well as the PC Card slot on the left, there's an ExpressCard slot on the right, which is a version of PCI-E aimed at portable peripherals. There's also a memory card reader situated on the front, and FireWire is built in. Despite weighing under 2kg, it still sports a 14.1in widescreen TFT with a 1,280 x 768 resolution, and it doesn't rely on integrated graphics either. Instead, it incorporates a 128MB Nvidia GeForce Go 6200 TC, which won't have you playing Tomb Raider: Legends with Next Generation Content, but should be ample for many older titles.

The other chassis we used was the MS-1039, which has only just been released. This is based around ATi's RX480M and SB450 chipset, so it supports Socket 754 mobile processors. Best of all, the graphics are far from stingy, with a 256MB Mobility Radeon X1600 on-board - not quite top of the range, but not far off either. There's also a memory card reader at the front, plus FireWire, and like the MS-1022, an ExpressCard slot is available as well as a PC Card slot. A built-in webcam sits on the top of the TFT, of which there are two options. Both are 15.4in widescreens, but one is WXGA (1,280 x 800), and the other is WSXGA+ (1,680 x 1,050). This chassis also includes a DVD burner with DVD-RAM support, making the price of £405.78 for the WXGA version still quite reasonable.