Transform a Damaged Laptop into an ALL-IN-ONE desktop PC

I recently made a video about repurposing old dead

laptop

s and in it we made a lot of interesting things from laser vu meters that visualize sound waves in music: fancy heat pipe based desk lamps and even a headset microphone that It sounds decent, but with so many things to cover. The last major project could not be installed. Look, look at this poor

laptop

. She is completely destroyed. The screen does not work. There's a horrible curve on the side. I mean, God knows what really happened to him, but he's essentially unusable. Look, but surprisingly, if I connect an external monitor, the system seems to continue working.

This is pretty surprising considering the damage, but replacing the screen and trying to repair it just isn't worth it because the plastics are bent and broken. and I think we can do something a little better than that, so what I'm going to do is, since the specs on this are still reasonable even by today's standards, I'm going to dismantle it and use it to show you how to build your own all-in-one PC. one with a beautiful modern design, it will now have all the components built in to make it a fully functional standalone PC that includes an absolutely phenomenal sound system and should be a fantastic use of a beat up old laptop, so let's get to it, so To build an all-in-one PC from a laptop, the first thing you need to do is disassemble the laptop in an effort to remove it from the board, this is not particularly difficult and it is.

The case here often starts with the keyboard. I'm going to leave this aside, although it will be important later, one by one, the plastics can also be separated and removed and all the cables can be released as you go. Done, you should now be left with the motherboard tray. If you look closely at mine you can see the damage inflicted and surprisingly it looks as if only the heatsink and fan are bent, with the PCB itself having had a very lucky exhaust bend. Returning to its position reveals that one of the heat pipes has collapsed, which will definitely damage its cooling ability and could mean that the fan will always run at maximum speed while it tries to compensate, thankfully although there are plenty of spares available. on eBay for this particular laptop model it is quite easy to change so at this stage it is important to check if the system can work out of its case like this and the first challenge for me will be to turn it on.

Unlike most laptops, the power button on mine is actually part of the keyboard membrane and cannot be detached. This poses a potential problem since I really don't want to leave this keyboard connected, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, another potential problem for everyone. The fact is that without the built-in screen we cannot use it to access the BIOS, which is important for changing system settings and sometimes even installing Windows again, fortunately, although most laptop manufacturers have thought about this and have Added a pressable function button. to cycle through the various display outputs, allowing us to access everything with ease, so one plugs into a power brick and monitors that the motherboard still boots up fine despite being out of its case.

Looking at the BIOS menus I found a few options that will help a lot for this particular build, the first thing I did was setting boot display priority, which I set to always output to the display port first, negating the need to use the special function button. Another interesting option I found was the power tag with AC connected, which may help me keep booting this while I get rid of the keyboard, but we'll see if that's possible later. Specs-wise, the laptop seems to have a reasonable processor, but the RAM is a little low at 4 gigabytes, so I replaced it with 2 8-gigabyte devices to give me a total of 16 gigabytes, bringing it in line with the machines moderns as it didn't have any USB 3.0 ports, although I installed a USB 3.0 expansion I had lying around and also added a SATA SSD for OS storage, these upgrades should make sure the system runs smoothly and will evaluate its performance more later in the video, so with the motherboard now revised and updated, it's time to really get started on this project, starting with a very important decision as to which monitor to originally build it on.

I'm just going to use this old Dell which, while a good monitor with good color accuracy, is tremendously big and bulky and will only get even bulkier as we add more components to it in this version to make it as sleek as possible So instead, I've decided to go with a low-cost slim monitor that will not only make the build much easier to put together thanks to the flat back, but should also look very professional once finished due to the design that we will use to get As things are going, we are going to mount all the components on a single piece of MDF wood which will then be mounted to the back of the screen.

You might think this is a pretty unusual material to use here, especially in a narrow way, which can easily order our minimal sheets, but I'll go over my reasoning for recommending them as we go, so the first task is to mark the mounting holes of the motherboard on this MDF and drill them with a suitable drill bit. The bottom of these holes can then be countersunk. so that the heads of the screws that will be used can be flush with the surface, meaning they won't be in the way when mounting to the back of the monitor.

This is actually the first reason why MDF is a good option here. Its thickness allows screws to be countersunk in this way. These screws are actually for mounting some PCB pillars to support the motherboard, but before adding them all, for purely aesthetic reasons, I added some vinyl to the MDF, which makes it look pretty smart for this video presentation. The pillars can now be added and the base plate screwed on top of them. This brings me to the second reason for choosing MDF, which is that it is actually a great material for gluing woods and allows us to simply glue some pine together.

The border to act as the outer perimeter is an unusual material to use on a computer, but I think it will look pretty good once it's on the back of the screen, so before gluing the rest of the border is a good time to add it. any additional components and cables such as the monitor cable and in my case a USB 3.0 hub and card reader so I can access them on the side of the case. Any holes and slots for things like this can be cut into the side edge before also jammed into place now to get the corners angled so they fit at 90 degrees.

I suggest using a miter saw now, some of you eagle eyed viewers will probably have noticed that I have included the laptop battery here and we will explain the reasoning behind this later, so with most of the main components now mounted in place, we need to address something pretty important for an all-in-one PC, which is audio, as the laptop's original speakers are unusually abysmal and the ones built into the monitors aren't much better. I'm going to experiment with using some built-in speakers I rescued from an old TV. Big shout out to Bob Trade for this as they gave me the TV plugs.

The interesting thing about these is that they appear to be completely enclosed units designed by Harman Kardon and JBL, so I have high hopes for their sound quality to avoid damage to the main drivers. The fingers are kept straight. I glued a thin mesh on the front in place and then added some thin fabric for looks. Held in place with a small 3D-printed lip, these units could then be glued to the monitor at a downward angle to project sound waves below and toward the listener. They look reasonably presentable from the front and should provide excellent clarity, the subwoofer on the other.

The handheld can be mounted on the back casing as the base frequencies pass around objects more easily so it doesn't matter that it is on the back as these speakers are quite powerful, in my case you need to use an amplifier to make the most of them. a stereo one was fine because the speaker drivers have built-in crossover filters, as well as a mono mix for the subwoofer that connects it to the laptop's headphone port. I encountered two problems during testing, however, the first is that it turns out that the audio quality of the laptop's headphone port is very poor, with thin bass and grating treble, and the second is that, because I turn on the amplifier from the same power supply as the laptop, there is some inescapable interference noise that sounds horrible caused by what is known as a ground loop to solve both sound problems.

I bought a USB power isolator and a USB audio interface. Despite its price, this USB audio interface sounds much better than the original laptop output and because it receives its power through the isolator which creates a new virtual ground, the ground loop is eliminated and noise interference disappears completely. This results in extremely clean and clear audio and I will give you an example later as it really is very impressive, so at this stage the system is almost ready to use but there is one last important thing to address which is add a power button to turn it on now, as I mentioned above.

I really don't want to leave the keyboard that has the power button attached as is. It would make the thing look a little bulky and also a little strange, so what I'm going to do is take advantage of the power on bias option that allows the laptop to turn on when it detects that it's receiving DC power to do this. a practical solution. I ran the power through a momentary switch. Normally this breaks the circuit, but once pressed, power goes to the laptop, which then decides to turn itself on thanks to the BIOS settings. By doing so, the USB ports begin to receive power.

I connected a relay to one to take control of the momentary button so that power can still reach the laptop once the button is released through the relay only. Now, when the system shuts down, the USB power is cut off and the relay then turns off and disconnects the laptop, leaving it primed and ready to turn on again when needed. This also means I can power the amp and also the monitor from the same power brick as they both unplug when the laptop is off, making them fine. integrated into the system, a minor disadvantage is that the system does not boot if not connected to the mains despite having the original battery included and built in, that is fine by me as the system is designed for

desktop

use and My only reason. including the battery is to allow the system to be unplugged and moved to an adjacent room without having to power it down first, which I imagine will be useful at times, so the last job is to cover all of these components that we need to cover.

To make a back panel, I'm just going to make mine out of a sheet of aluminum which, after cutting it to size, can have several openings for airflow and the speaker, if you do this to it you may want to sand it down. down in one direction to give it a brushed look and give you something to screw this panel onto. I recommend simply adding some small blocks of wood to the inside of the box, to which you can then add some small inserts that will allow us to use machine screws to secure the back panel in place, looking closely at the fun area, You can see that I also added some small cups to direct the flow of the hair, which are just little 3D printed shapes that I glued in place before attaching the panel, if desired.

Make something similar without a 3D printer, you can probably get away with making them out of acetate, so with the back panel now in place it's ready to mount to the back of the monitor, but before I do that I'll evaluate the performance of these systems. In addition to the audio quality, which should be very interesting with these speakers, I want to talk about this sponsor video. Blink. With so much information literally available at our fingertips these days, it's sometimes quite difficult to condense things and find insights worth listening to. and sometimes the finding can take longer than the reading solution spend hours reading books I don't have time for the Hat this is where Blinka comes into play as it takeskey ideas from more than 3,000 nonfiction bestsellers on many different topics and compiles them into 15-minute flashes that are condensed explanations that help you understand the central ideas at hand and that you can read whenever you want or, better yet, listen, which is great when commuting to work or working in a role I love.

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Here you can see that I have pasted the Wi. -Fi antennas on the bottom so they are not blocked by the aluminum which leaves me with one last very important job, as you can see the build looks modern and sleek and would be great on any

desktop

setup especially thanks to raw natural wood. integrating properly into its design as it provides a contrast to the matte screen and aluminum backplate, so now that it's complete the last thing left is to test it, so here I have the original power connection from the laptop, which you can simply plug into the back and as you can see despite the bias setting it has not turned on and that is because the button is blocking the power from getting to the laptop so if you just i press it the laptop will detect that it turns on and then the power will start going through the relay instead so let's see if it works fine perfect so it showed up the amp also turned on because the monitor and the amp turn on basically as soon as the laptop turns on you have already installed windows the system boots up quickly and gives you a quick test of performance when doing normal everyday tasks it is absolutely fine to the point where you would be happy using this on a regular basis edit Photos or videos can be a little complicated, but that's okay, after all, it's a reuse. project and for the money invested in it, it definitely gives a lot of support to Niq.

Beautiful build that looks good on a desk and has a lot going for it, excellent usability and excellent sound quality, speaking of which, now I hope you listen to this at home, but this is a very rich and full sound, so I hope You may have enjoyed seeing how to make your own all-in-one PC and if you do it yourself, have fun, be creative and just enjoy the process because it's great to reuse something that would otherwise be discarded. something that's actually really useful and incredibly unique, so thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe and like and all that good stuff, but other than that, it's Matt, you've been watching DIY perks and I hope to see you next time , bye bye.

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