Building a Gaming Laptop ?

Hey Guys and gals
I just found a hp nx9600 that my boss said i can have HP Compaq nx9600 Notebook PC - North America/U.S. QuickSpecs
saw it and its really cool. I wanna build it in to a gaming laptop. i wanna gut it out and ebay a motherboard and just blow it up. question is, is it possible ???? I love the laptop cause its heavy has 4 fans and is wide screen, can you help a fellow hp'er out

 

This is absolutely ancient. Even with the best configuration the cheapest IVB machine you can buy today will be faster w.r.t. to CPU and GPU power.

As for replacing the motherboard with something recent; that is also a practical impossibility. Laptops don't feature standard-sized/shaped motherboards.

 

is there no way to use it as a case then

i wanna gut it out and replace everything. is there anything i can do. I really wanna BUILD something

 

If you really want to build a gaming rig, your best bet is to either 1) build a DIY gaming desktop, or 2) look into buying a current gaming laptop.

Unless you have the ability to make a custom motherboard to fit your HP's case (highly, *highly* doubt that you would), then there's really no way to turn that into a gaming rig. Even if it was possible, it's very cost prohibitive and with the money you'll spend, you'll be better off doing either one of the two options I mentioned.

 

If you want to gut it out anyways, why do you want to use this very chassis? The husk is meaningless. Like ^ said, if you really wanna BUILD something, build desktop. There's not only a lot more you can do, there's a LOT, LOT more options and a LOT, LOT more you can tinker about.

 

*giggles* That was from back in the day when I joined this forum, I had a bit of a time warp feeling.

Even then the P4 + X300 combo got blown away by the Pentium M + X600 combo instead, machines tended to be 33% lighter with longer battery life and cooler operation.

Cases are in no way standard on notebooks so you cant just re-use an old case like a desktop.

However there are reasonable barebones which you can put your own CPU/memory/HDD/wireless into.

 

Alot of Clevo resellers will sell barebone gaming laptops, as well as MSI for ~700-900 depending on your budget. There was an MSI one with a 670M for like ~850 and all you need to add is CPU, RAM, HDD, WLAN.

 

i like this chassis cause its bulky and its tough

 

Yes check out the large clevo barebone notebooks. They will have multiple fans and dual graphic card slots. Sometimes even a desktop cpu.

So you could have the fun of sourcing the components you want to install.

 

Visit rjtech.com and get a barebones, even configure all the options but you have the option for them to ship the parts to you for a DIY project. However the mobo and LCD will already be pre-installed.

As already stated, and I'll say it again, laptops do not have standard form factors. They are designed unique for the chassis. Sometimes they maintain a similar chassis and next gen mobo may fit, but it's unlikely, and even then you're still talking about Core 2 specs at best with a GPU that is soldered to the mainboard and anything circa 2006 or earlier the GPU has less performance than any new integrated graphics in the CPU. Not to mention things like wi-fi cards maybe limited to G only (if even), ethernet 10/100, and USB 2.0.

Your best option for such a machine, if it works, is to take it apart and clean it really good, install some variant of Linux on it and use it as a web terminal or minecraft server or proxy server or something like that. It will likely even struggle with web content from today and sure as heck won't be able to stream HD.

It is what it is, so use it as it is, or just tinker with it, donate it, or throw it away.

Just go buy one of the AMD laptops for $400 and it will way outperform this machine by a country mile.

 

WOW! Honestly not bad, it has an ATI video card. You will NEVER be able to cutting edge graphics games but you WILL be able to play some indies games and TON of older games.

you can play ALOT of fun games on that. most of the command and conquer games. GTA - GTA_SA. Alient shooter. Age of empires 1-3. and a crap ton of game from here, GOG.com

 

The aforementioned $400 AMD laptop will do this as well. There is absolutely zero reason to spend any money on that relic.

 

I could play CnC Generals (and Zero Hour) and GTA: SA on a laptop with an Intel GMA 4500... let alone a current $400 AMD laptop.

 

These are games that could be played on it as is, so long as it has decent amount of ram. i wouldn't spend much more than 20 bucks (tops) on it if i was gonna keep it. The idea is find a use for it instead of throwing it away.