Project: Building a whitebox notebook

[Illuminati]

I'm sure most of you remember the LR Whitebox Notebook Series of articles (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) which detail the steps we took in creating and testing our own notebook.

Well, over a year after our original Whitebox article, I'm venturing out and building a whitebox (barebone) notebook for my wife's parents. Their requirements were 4+ hours in battery life, 6 or less lbs., and travels easily. Nothing better fits that than a Centrino notebook.

I must say that a year after companies like Asus started spreading the word about how easy it is to build your own notebook and how much money you will save, I'm surprised that whitebox notebooks are still not readily available from the big-name online retailers. I spent about 4 hours in research time to find a decent online retailer that sells a variety of whitebox notebooks. I finally ended up finding a notebook that will fit the requirements at thenerds.net.... never heard of them, but they had the best price. I found this retailer by searching for my part number on http://froogle.google.com. Froogle turned out to be my most usefull tool in searching for retailers that carried the whitebox models I was most interested in. And to help the readers, I must say that the only way I was able to easily find the specs of barebone laptops was to go to the major manufacturer's websites and just browse there. Once I got a list of model numbers, I then used Froogle. Asus and AOpen were the two manufacturers that I concentrated on. Although there are more, like Acer, I had hard time finding any retailers that would sell just the barebones laptop without requiring the purchase of a custom, prebuilt laptop.

Now that I have shared my research experience, here are the parts I ended up getting!

Whitebox Notebook: Asus M3Np $595 @ TheNerds.net
Processor: Intel Pentium M 735 (1.7 GHz Dothan) $269 @ ZipZoomFly.com
Memory: 1GB (2x512) Kingmax PC-2700 DDR SO-Dimm $88 @ NewEgg.com
Hard Drive: Western Digital Scorpio 60 GB Hdd 5400 rpms 8mb cache $89 @ NewEgg.com
DVD Burner: Asus 90-N801W2020 DVD-RW DVD Burner $117 @ Buy.com
Port Replicator: PortBar III $87 @ TheNerds.net
Intel Pro Wireless Card: 802.11a/b/g wireless m-pci card $36 @ NewEgg.com

The total price (including shipping) turned out to be $1,360 on the dot. If you take a way the port replicator, You are talking $1270 for a decked-out laptop. Good thing I waited to order the DVD burner because I found out when I got the M3Np that it only takes a special-order burner. I was able to find the special Asus DVD burner for sale at buy.com. Only thing this thing is missing is a decent graphics chip... but that's really the main place I skimped to cut costs... and the wife's parents won't be running any 3D games on there anyway. I think I found that for another $100-$150, you can get a whitebox notebook with ATI's Mobile X700 graphics card... if you look around enough.

Well, when I get stuff in, I'll try and remember to post some pics! Hope this info will help the next guy thinking about getting a laptop!

[Illuminati]

I've got a series of pictures of me putting this laptop together. I am still waiting on the wireless card and the DVD-RW drive, but when I get those installed, I'll take more pictures and update my photo gallery site.

Link to pics

[gvblake22]

Awesome pictorial and thanks for the great links! My mom was buying a new computer and wanted a laptop and I almost built one for her but she ended up going behind my back and bought one from some guy who offered a "warrenty"

Anyway, thanks for the useful imformation and for sharing your experiences. In your opinion, what was the hardest part of the whole project?
Also, why did you have to remove the keyboard at the end of the whole thing?

[Illuminati]

I'd say the hardest part for me was finding a legitimate reseller that carried whitebox notebooks.

The primary memory slot and the wireless card are located under the keyboard. So I removed the keyboard to insert a memory module and I'll have to remove it again when the wireless card comes in.

[gvblake22]

I'd say the hardest part for me was finding a legitimate reseller that carried whitebox notebooks.

The primary memory slot and the wireless card are located under the keyboard. So I removed the keyboard to insert a memory module and I'll have to remove it again when the wireless card comes in.

AAHHH, I see. Thanks for clearing that up

[Illuminati]

Just in case anyone was wondering, I did get the wireless card and the DVD burner installed and everything is running perfectly right now. Looks like I'm getting right around 4.5 - 5.0 hours of battery life on this beast in "max battery" mode with active usage. Not too shabby and right at what the advertised max battery life was listed as!

[-mogwai]

how long does it take you to burn a dvd, justin?

[Illuminati]

havent done that yet... I'll get back to you.

[killswitch83]

well, I do want to know one thing.....is building a laptop a difficult thing, aside from finding the whitebox parts? I have a pretty good handle on building some decent desktops, but it's about time for some more in-depth "experimentation". Let a brother know something

[Apoptosis]

building a laptop takes less than 10 minutes to do and is far eaiser than building a desktop.

[Sovereign]

Most people I talk to don't believe this can be done. I'll have to point them to this thread!

[killswitch83]

It's something that used to sound impossible to me, to be honest. I guess that's because I was like the majority of people who thought that laptops were more dominant on the retail side, and not on the builders' side. I'm gonna build my desktop first, then I will most definitely give building a whitebox laptop a try. Thanks for that thread, it was extremely helpful

[drdbf]

The article and update post were great, thanks.

You mention Asus and AOpen as makers of whitebooks. Are there others (that you consider legit)? Specifically, I am hoping that there is someone somewhere who manufactures a barebones notebook with the IBM-style TrackPoint (nub) rather than a TouchPad. I've only had one notebook in my life (an IBM Thinkpad which I love, but is so old that it is terribly slow), and have never become comfortable with a TouchPad.

Near as I can see, neither Asus nor AOpen has one with the nub.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[killswitch83]

Well, the big thing about the touchpad is that it's pressure-sensitive, as well as repetition-sensitive (how many times you press the pad in other words). This is the first I've seen of Whitebox units, so I'm pretty sure there isn't any like IBM's ThinkPad that would be reputable (after all, the nub is an older technology that I never got used to myself, but to each his own right?). Anyways, Asus seems to be the winner here as far as design and appearance is concerned IMHO.

[Illuminati]

As Apop said, building the laptop is extremely easy... the only challenges are finding the parts and figuring out how to remove the laptop keyboard for memory and wireless card installation as each laptop seems to have a slightly different method of removing the keyboard and it is usually hidden so the everyday user doesn't notice it.

[killswitch83]

Yep, thank God for the notebook thread, otherwise I wouldn't know about the metal clips between certain keys on the keyboard. And the links I think will prove helpful to help me find the parts. I definitely don't want to pay anywhere from 1300-1800+ for a high-end laptop when I can build one for close to 1100.

[regikunster]

This is a nice little gold nugget for me, as I have just started looking at the option of building a notebook but cannot find anywhere that has the "barebones" preferably a UK internet store. Does anyone know of any stockist?? (like http://www.scan.co.uk)


Great Topic!!