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I’m curious about building a laptop but am getting hung up on motherboards (beehaw.org)

submitted 9 months ago by megopie@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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I’m aware of things like framework and they’re a cool system, but they’re limited in what chipsets can be used by the mother boards they offer.

I’m thinking in the context of a cheap low spec system that can be handed out for use by a group. Most of the options available are just very pricy.

Maybe something like a SBC would be a better fit since there are plenty of cheap options out there and they can be mounted in a custom built shell with the other needed elements.

A thought that crossed my mind was ordering printed circuit board and just soldering on the sockets and the like, but that’s a very involved process with a lot that could go wrong. Especially for someone with very little experience.

Short of custom ordering from a company that does such things, are there any systems for building a mother board?

This is more out of curiosity about what options there are out there. Any other thoughts people have about custom built laptops or interesting things in that space?

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[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 3 points 9 months ago

"Sockets for the chips" are the least of the problems, most chips don't use sockets at all, they instead get soldered to a board through BGAs. Even multi-chip boards like CPUs, usually get soldered through BGAs. Then, what you need to think about is what kind of boards you want to connect and how.

If you wanted to make something low spec, you might look at the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, that only needs a sort of "breakout board", where you could place a bunch of M.2 connectors for daughter boards... but chances are you will be really hard pressed to make a whole laptop that's cheaper than a much higher spec brand one.