I am currently a Mac owner but I have decided to switch back to windows or Linux due to the restrictions that apple imposes on it’s customers. I’m mainly angry because of the fact I cannot upgrade my computer past RAM and hard drives. So I’m building a gaming computer. I know that I will first need to get a barebones laptop. I’m thinking about the Alienware mx11 but I can’t find any barebones kits for that. Any good suggestions/tips?
old mac attack. was windows cleaner. linux for real computer freedom.
let us know how your system runs blender , render and game engines.
fast , faster, fastest is your main goal.
Ill probably make it dual boot with ubuntu and windows. Right now I need to find hardware though.
There were a few companies selling laptop kits a couple of years ago. Maximum PC magazine tested a few kits and weren’t very impressed. There just wasn’t enough customization that could be done and they cost more than an equivalent off the shelf model.
get OpenSuSE and run XEN HyperVisor one click install better than dual boot IMO…
So does anybody know where I can find some kits?
@ed from america
Thanks, I’ll check that out
Although that is true, laptops these days are much more customisable and the only thing that really matters is the stuff inside. (and cooling, of course)
That was a couple of years ago. Not now.
There is plenty of laptop parts available, but not many actual bodies that I have seen. I assume that they hang around, otherwise who builds custom laptops? Somebody must do it.
A few years ago I built a ‘white box’ laptop and saved a couple hundred dollars but it’s probably not even worth it any more considering you can get a fairly decent lappy for less than $300 these days.
i think if you can afford it and can live without the mobility side go with a desktop. you can get alot more performance for the money with a desktop than a laptop.
if you do go with a laptop however, if your using it for gaming you need to be looking at one with a decent graphics card (in addition to decent other components.) for blender however you really want to pack alot of your budget on the processor (if your using cycles then a graphics card, otherwise its very processor intensive.)
Im looking at this alienware when the price drops.
Specs:
Processor: Intel Core™ i7 2617M 1.5GHz(2.6GHz w/Turbo Boost, 4MB Cache)
Graphics: 2GB DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M
HD: 320GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s
RAM: I have RAM to use
I have a friend who built an 8-core laptop. That thing was a beat to cool though, he had to use a mineral-oil colling system, the whole thing cost him about three times as much as a desktop with the same specs. What I am saying is, just because you can build a custom laptop, doesn’t mean you should!
Make sure you have compatible onboard chipset or you could end up with real problems. I run a laptop with Chrome IPG or something like that and had to hunt down a new opengl32.dll just to make Blender functional. I would look for something with Nvidia chipset.
lol yeah I know. I had a computer with an integrated GPU once and I’ll just say… never in hell will I get one of those things again.
@skykooler I need a laptop because I can’t assure I’ll be at the same place everyday or at that place enough to use a desktop.
A laptop is a good idea. What I was saying is a bad idea is building one from scratch. I would rather get a higher-end laptop and use that.
Unix>Windows
unix = win
ok, but whether you go with unix, windows, linux, osx, or something else, you should still modify an existing laptop rather than build one from the ground up.
Just for the record:
Alienware = Dell
The time were Alienware notebooks were almighty are long gone. All that´s left from that period is the pricetag.
And if you build a gaming machine and don´t absolutely need a mobile device you´r ~3 times better off with a desktop.
Ok so what are some good starting points? I will need a GPU with at least 512 mb of video ram(preferably 1 gb) and it needs to be under 600. It will also need to accept DDR3 ram.