Why isn't laptop building from scratch more popular?

[powlesY]

I've never owned a laptop in my life but i wonder why people are never interested in building them and why sites like this don't even sell parts for them.

 

[Jay794]

...Because its a ***** to do lol

 

[powlesY]

If it's a ***** to do then you'd think there's more money in it because of the hassle. Meh.

 

[MagicBoy]

Simple - There's no standard form factor specifications for laptops.

 

[shootersam]

Simple - There's no standard form factor specifications for laptops.

This

 

[Ch3m1c4L]

no standards fort the parts, and incredibly hard to get the parts for them as a consumer

 

[reflux]

Laptops are indeed an absolutely pain to modify. Every manufacturer has their own layouts for CPU, cooling, graphics etc and that doesn't even include screen, touchpad etc. It's almost always totally custom.

There was a company that started selling laptop shells... I think they were Clevo-branded or something, and you got the screen, chassis and motherboard and chose everything else yourself. But even that's not really much choice.

Short answer - as MagicBoy says.

 

[acharris]

I work in a computer shop and trust me hardly nothing is standard form factor on a laptop. All the boards have different layout to fit the cases, the screens vary between laptops and basicly it would probably cost a lot more to buy the components than probably it would cost to go to a on-line store or local supermarket to buy one ready to go.

Plus as been said repairing them is a real pain in the backside to do, even the simplest thing can be a strip down like replacing a trackpad for argument sake or on some Sony VAIO's the bottom housing has to come off just to get to the HDD and this involves removing something stupid like about 15 odd little screws which are easy to lose and plus they got the tiny plastic clips holding thing ribbon cables, which if not careful can snap by looking at them wrong.

Very time consuming and people wont always pay the money for parts and to get them done due to cost vs new laptops depending on age of their laptop. And as said getting hold of parts new is hard and usually ebay is the answer for 2nd hand parts to replace boards and stuff.

 

[Jay794]

If it's a ***** to do then you'd think there's more money in it because of the hassle. Meh.

If you charge more money for it then nobody would buy it, just like extreme gaming PC's, it's usually cheaper to build one yourself than to buy a prebuilt one.

There are so many laptops out there, all relitively cheap, all with similar specs. it's just easier to buy an off the shelf model.

Ram and hard drives the only thing thats easy to upgrade on laptops, and even they can be tricky

 

[panyan]

Simple - There's no standard form factor specifications for laptops.

+1

every laptop has different positions of components, different layout motherboard, propriety connections for stuff, etc etc

it is a minefield which is why i always try to use a desktop that i know i can open and have a look around and it will be vaguely familiar