Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bserge | Hacker News Reader

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I've only had laptops for over a decade. And I had system board failures.

Honestly, I'd rage if I had to throw it out together with the perfectly good CPU, GPU/VRAM and maybe half the RAM and pay for a used replacement board with all of those integrated.

Or what, buy a rework station and risk damaging them or having them work improperly due to shit soldering skills?

I guess I could learn to fix the board itself. But that's pretty hard, there are no schematics, no components for most laptops, failures are not evident and one component can lead to a cascade of failures across the board. A used board was $100. Now they're ~$500 because there's a CPU and GPU there.

My next computer will be a desktop in a handcrafted case (I'm also trying to fit a Li-Ion battery/UPS between the PSU and components).

> (I'm also trying to fit a Li-Ion battery/UPS between the PSU and components)

This should totally be a thing. I wish it was a thing. It doesn't even have to provide hours of runtime, just needs to be enough to handle the occasional stupid California brownout.

Yeah, it is the most efficient way to power everything (no conversion losses). 30 minutes is enough tbh.

The battery will fit in an empty PSU case, I just need some custom cables and connectors for the passthrough, my biggest problem is charging and switchover. Looks like I will need a custom board for that. I thought it'd be easier heh

Out of curiosity, wouldn't a conventional consumer UPS take care of that?

yeah. but it's more efficient to have the battery be on the output side of a PSU, since that's gonna be DC.

You might want to reconsider. I've found a separate UPS to be invaluable because, as you'll find, just getting power to the box is not sufficient. Other devices need power as well, especially network switches and displays.

Why handcrafted instead of the framework laptop? Are you just itching to do that project, or is there some other issue you had with getting the laptop from them?

It's more future proof. And performance is unmatched. Handcrafted because I want the smallest, lightest microATX case. Should I share the design? I have it ready in SolidWorks.

I will still need a laptop away from home and/or as a portable display, that'll be one of my old 17 inchers or the cheapest one I can get (Haswell gen lol).

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