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    what happened to barebone notebooks?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by DeusEx, Jun 15, 2011.

  1. DeusEx

    DeusEx Notebook Evangelist

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    I was wondering what happened to barebone notebooks? My first laptop was an ASUS Z41V and i built it myself. I would like to do that again but im not finding any for sale.

    Does anyone know if any company still sells barebones? Really tired of dealing with middle men that just up the price of the PC for no reason at all.
     
  2. Mr_Mysterious

    Mr_Mysterious Like...duuuuuude

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    Clevo sells barebones.

    Mr. Mysterious
     
  3. DeusEx

    DeusEx Notebook Evangelist

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    i will check them out immediately. Is that the only company that still does this?

    EDIT: Also can you recommend any site that sells clevo notebooks?
     
  4. Mr_Mysterious

    Mr_Mysterious Like...duuuuuude

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    To the best of my knowledge.

    Mr. Mysterious
     
  5. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    I think resellers like XoticPC still have barebones and MSI does. ASUS and OCZ dropped out AFAIK.
     
  6. DeusEx

    DeusEx Notebook Evangelist

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    crud that sucks. Guess there is no choice but to buy from someone then. Shame asus dropped out.
     
  7. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Seeing as some of the best barebones started ridiculously high (1200+) and by the time you got done making one you could have bought an Alienware or an ASUS G series with full warranty, it's no wonder why barebones all but disappeared from the market.

    I'm sure niffcreature can lead you to alot of Acer models where you can buy the mobo/assembly off Ebay and add your own MXM GPU + CPU.
     
  8. DeusEx

    DeusEx Notebook Evangelist

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    No need to be THAT extreme, but i + rep both of you guys.
     
  9. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Well even with Clevo, I've noticed Sager pricing isn't bad at all, and I checked and couldn't build it for any less than what they offered. Plus you can have them build it with or without components so if you already own some components or can get it quite a bit cheaper you can go that route. I did that without RAM or HDD and used my own.
     
  10. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    If you already had an MXM card, CPU, RAM and HDD you could ask them to build without those? O_O
     
  11. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Yes you can. They can price it starting with a bare model all the way up to a fully assembled one. It's more expensive to build a full machine that way, but cheaper than buying a fully assembled one. XoticPC and LPC-Digital (babyhemi here @ NBR) have both been able to configure a few options for me.

    Just keep in mind that GPU heatsink is unique between nVidia and ATI/AMD though.
     
  12. kent1146

    kent1146 Notebook Prophet

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    Is there really any price advantage to building barebones? Especially when you consider that a lot of pre-built laptops can often be bought using discounts and coupons to bring their price down even further?
     
  13. tilleroftheearth

    tilleroftheearth Wisdom listens quietly...

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    No.

    (Last looked at them in 2003/4).
     
  14. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    No, that's what I stated earlier. Unless you already own the components, no real advantage because as an assembled unit it's overall much cheaper than buying them all yourself separately.

    I already had a hard drive, SSD, and RAM to use in my laptop so bought mine without it.