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Scavenging old laptop for new PC
Captain O G Readmore
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My old laptop's screen died and the machine was on life support for some time so I decided to let it go and get a new computer. My laptop was a Dell Studio 1737. Specs as here:
http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/studio/17/specs/
Sorry for the link. My new computer's specs are here:
Corsair SPEC-01 Case
Intel Core i5 4690K overclcoked to 4.2GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Geforce GTX 760 2GB Video Card
Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Motherboard
16GB 1600 DDR3 Memory
120GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD
2000 GB 7200rpm HDD
FSP 500W PSU
24 x DVD RW
I guess I can take the hard drive out and use it as an external hard drive but can I make it internal? Can I use the RAM? Stick the DVD drive in there so I have two for no real reason? Add the fan (the case apparently has room for four fans)? Anything else I'm not thinking of?
http://www.engadget.com/products/dell/studio/17/specs/
Sorry for the link. My new computer's specs are here:
Corsair SPEC-01 Case
Intel Core i5 4690K overclcoked to 4.2GHz
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler
Geforce GTX 760 2GB Video Card
Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Motherboard
16GB 1600 DDR3 Memory
120GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD
2000 GB 7200rpm HDD
FSP 500W PSU
24 x DVD RW
I guess I can take the hard drive out and use it as an external hard drive but can I make it internal? Can I use the RAM? Stick the DVD drive in there so I have two for no real reason? Add the fan (the case apparently has room for four fans)? Anything else I'm not thinking of?
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You should be able to set the hard drive up as a slave drive fairly easily. It should fit in one of the 3.5 inch trays.
The fan might work, but in my experience they tend to be one of the faster parts of a laptop to wear out or slow down. Granted my laptop experience generally involves a lot of dust, so your situation may be different if you took better care of the machine. Probably be better off popping the additional 15 bucks for a new fan if you're worried about cooling.
The optical drive is probably not going to work out so well unless you have a decent way to stabilize it in the case. In bit aware of any adapters for that purpose but they might exist.
That's about it. Dead laptops are the worst. Followed closely by printers, working or not.
Wait for your family to start coming to you for tablet tech support...
Can't salvage shit from one of those. Even if you can get it open, everything is integrated into the board.
Agreed - with the hard drive being a SSD(Solid State Drive) it will work pretty well even as the system drive for a new machine as SSD's are usually fast (even the slow ones). the 120 GB isn't a huge drive, but combined with a traditional drive for big storage it should do very well.
On the ram it may be that you can reuse it, but that will only be if you build your new machine using parts that are really motherboard tech. If you look for a motherboards meant to use a "laptop"/"low power" CPU then most likely that motherboard will need laptop type ram as well. However going that route is only really worth it if you want a very silent low power computer, as it will really be a laptop in a big case and that does bring compromises.