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

recently I made a video about repurposing old dead laptops and in it we made many cool things from laser vu meters that visualize sound waves in music - fancy heat pipe based desk lamps and even a decent sounding headset microphone but with so many things to cover one last important project couldn't be fitted in you see look at this poor laptop it's been completely smashed the screen doesn't work there's a horrible bend in the side here I mean goodness knows what actually happened to it but it's essentially unusable as you can see but remarkably if I plug in an external monitor the system does appear to still be working now this is I think quite amazing considering the damage but really replacing the screen and trying to repair it it's just not worth it because the plastics are bent and broken and I think that we can do something a bit better than that so what I'm going to do is as the specs in this are still reasonable even by today's standards I'm going to actually dismantle it and use it to show you how to build your very own all-in-one PC with a beautiful modern design now this will have all of the components built into it to make it a fully functional independent PC including an absolutely phenomenal sound system and it should be a fantastic use of an old smashed up laptop so let's get to it so to build an all-in-one PC out of a laptop the first thing to do is strip down the laptop in an effort to remove them of the board this isn't particularly difficult and like is the case here often starts with the keyboard I'm going to keep this to one side though as it's going to be important later on one by one the plastics can be separated and removed as well and all of the cables unclipped as you progress with that done you should now be left with the motherboard tray if you look closely at mine you can see the damage inflicted on it and amazingly it appears as though it's only the heatsink and fan that are bent with the PCB itself having had a very fortunate escape bending it back into position though reveals that one of the heat pipes has collapsed which will definitely harm its cooling ability and could mean that the fan itself will always run at maximum speed as it tries to compensate thankfully though there are plenty of spares available on eBay for this particular laptop model which is easy enough to swap out so at this stage it's important to check whether the system can operate outside its casing like this and the first challenge for me is actually going to be turning it on you see unlike most laptops the power button on mine is actually part of the keyboard membrane itself and cannot be separated this poses a potential problem as I don't really want to leave this keyboard connected but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it another potential issue for everyone this time is that without the built-in display we can't use it to access the BIOS which is important for changing system settings and even sometimes installing Windows afresh thankfully though most laptop manufacturers have thought of this and added a function button that can be pressed to cycle through the various display outputs allowing us to access everything with ease so one sucked up to a power brick and monitor the motherboard still starts up just fine despite being out of its casing having a look at the BIOS menus I found a few options which will help a lot for this particular build the first thing the boot display priority setting 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 labeled power on with AC attached which may help me to still boot this while ditching the keyboard but we'll see if that's possible later spec wise the laptop appears to have a reasonable processor but the RAM is a little low at 4 gigabytes so I replaced this with 2 8 gigabyte sticks to give me a total of 16 gigabytes bringing it in line with modern machines as it didn't have any USB 3.0 ports though I slid in a USB 3.0 expansion that I had lying around and also added a SATA SSD for the operating system storage these upgrades should ensure that the system runs smoothly and will assess its performance later on in the video so with the motherboard now checked and upgraded it's time to really get going on this project starting with a very important decision as to what monitor to build it into originally I was just going to use this old Dell which while it is a good monitor with good color accuracy it's awfully big and bulky and will only be made even more bulky as we add more components to it on this build to be as sleek as possible so instead I've decided to go with a low-cost slimline monitor which will not only make the build much easier to put together thanks to the flat back but it should also look very professional once completed due to the design we'll be using so to get things going we're going to mount all of the components onto a single piece of MDF wood that will then be mounted on the back of the display you might think this is a rather unusual material to use here especially in a narrow way you can easily order our mininum sheeting but I'll go through my reasoning for recommending it as we progress so the first task is to mark the motherboard mounting holes onto this MDF and drill these out with an appropriate drill bit the underside of these holes can then be countersunk so that the heads of the screws will be using can be flush with the surface meaning that they won't be in the way when it gets mounted to the back of the monitor this is actually the first reason why MDF is a good choice here as its thickness allow screws to be countersunk like this these screws are actually for mounting some PCB pillars to support the motherboard but before adding all of them I purely for aesthetic reasons added some vinyl up to the MDF which makes it look quite smart for this video presentation the pillars can now be added to and the motherboard screwed in place on top of them this brings me to the second reason for choosing MDF which is that it's actually a great material to glue of the woods to allowing us to simply glue in place some pine edging to function as the outer perimeter this is an unusual material to use for a computer but I think it will look rather nice once it's on the back of the screen so before gluing on the rest of the edging is a good point in time to add any additional components and wires like say the monitor cable and in my case a USB 3.0 hub and card reader so that these can be accessed on the side of the case any holes and slots for things like this can be cut in the side edging before they too gets stuck in place now to get the angled corners so that they fit together at 90 degrees I suggest using a miter saw now some of you eagle-eyed viewers will have probably noticed that I've included the laptop's battery here and I'll explain the reasoning behind this later so with most of the major components now mounted in place we need to tackle something quite important for an all-in-one PC which is the audio as the laptops original speakers are unusually abysmal and the ones built into the monitor aren't much better I'm going to experiment with using some integrated speakers that I salvaged from an old TV big shout out to Bob trade for this as they gave me the TV plugs guys what's quite exciting 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 prevent damage to the main drivers bite stay straight fingers I glued in place a thin mesh to the front and then added some thin fabric for appearances which I kept in place with a little 3d printed border these units could then be glued to the monitor at a downwards angle to project the sound waves underneath and forwards towards the listener these look reasonably presentable from the front and should provide excellent clarity the subwoofer on the other hand can be mounted in the rear casing as base frequencies pass around objects more easily so it doesn't matter that it's on the back here with these speakers being pretty powerful an amplifier needs to be used to get the most out of them in my case a stereo one was just fine because the speaker drivers themselves have crossover filters built-in as well as a mono mix for the subwoofer connecting 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 from the headphone port on the laptop is very poor with thin bass and grating treble and the second is that because I'm powering the amplifier from the same power source that the laptop is running off there's an inescapable interference noise that sounds awful caused by what's known as a ground loop to get around both of these sound issues I bought a USB power isolator as well as a USB audio interface despite its price this USB audio interface sounds much better than the laptops original output and because it receives its power through the isolator which creates a new virtual ground the ground loop is eliminated and the interference noise completely disappears this results in extremely clean and clear audio and I'll give you an example of it 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 left to tackle which is adding a power button to turn it on with now as I mentioned earlier I don't really want to leave the keyboard which has the power button on it connected as it would make the thing look a bit bulky and also a bit weird so instead what I'm going to do is take advantage of the power sitting option in the bias that enables the laptop to turn on when it detects it's receiving DC power so to make this a practical solution I routed the power through a momentary push switch normally this breaks the circuit but once pressed the power goes through to the laptop which then decides to turn itself on thanks to the BIOS setting in doing so the USB ports start receiving power so I attached a relay to one so that it takes over from the momentary push-button so that the power can still get to the laptop once the button is released only through the relay now when the system is shut down the USB power drops out and the relay then clicks off disconnecting the laptop leaving it primed ready to be turned on again whenever needed this also means that I can power the amplifier and also the monitor itself from the same power brick as these both get disconnected when the laptop is off making them properly integrated into the system one minor downside is that the system won't boot if it's not connected to the mains despite having the lapse original battery included and built-in that's fine by me though as the system is intended for desktop use and my only reason for including the battery is to allow the system to be unplugged and moved to an adjacent room without having to be shut down first which I can imagine coming in useful on occasion so the last job is to cover up all of these components for which we need to make a back panel I'm just going to make mine out of a sheet of aluminium which after being cut down to size can have various openings made in it for airflow purposes and the speaker if you do this to you might want to sand it down in one direction to give it a brushed appearance and to give something to screw this panel to I recommend just adding some little wooden blocks to the inside of the case which can then have some small inserts adding which will allow us to use machine screws to secure the back panel in place looking closely around the fun area you can see that I also added some small cups to direct the flow of hair which are just little 3d printed shapes that I glued in place before the panel got put on if you want to do something similar without a 3d printer you can probably get away with making these out of acetate instead so with the back panel now in place is actually ready to be mounted on the back of the monitor but before I do that and then evaluate these systems performance as well as the audio quality which should be very interesting with these speakers I want to talk about this video sponsor blink it's with so much information literally available at our fingertips these days it's sometimes quite difficult to condense things down and find knowledge that's 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 scums into play as they take key insights from over 3,000 non-fiction bestsellers across many different topics and gather them into 15-minute blinks which are condensed explainers that help you to understand the core ideas at hand which you can either read at your own leisure or even better listen to which is great for in your perhaps commuting to work or working out one feature I love is the surprise me button which will take you on a dive into topics and ideas that may have never occurred to you otherwise now if you have similar interests to me a good one to start with is the laws of thermodynamics which is a fascinating introduction to the wonderful world of thermodynamics and how it affects our everyday lives so if all of this sounds good to you visit blinka Scop slash DRI perks for a completely free one-week unlimited access trial and if you decide you like it you can get 25% off using that link as well so again that's blinka Strom slash DIY perks to get learning today [Music] so to mount this on the back of the monitor I'm actually going to use epoxy now this is a very permanent solution but I bought this monitor specifically for this project so I'm happy committing it to the job at hand so after mixing this epoxy up on the back of the monitor the system can be carefully placed on top and left to dry on the back here you can see that I've glued the Wi-Fi antennas to the bottom so they aren't blocked by the aluminium which leaves me with one last very important job as you can see the build does look modern and sleek and would be great on any desk setup especially thanks to the raw natural wood being integrated fittingly into its design as it provides a contrast to the matte display and aluminium backplate so with it complete now the last thing to do is to test it out so I've got the laptops original power connection here which can just be plugged in the back and as you can see despite the bias setting it hasn't turned on and that's because the push button is blocking that power from reaching the laptop so if I just press it the laptop will detect it turn on and then the power will start going through the relay instead so let's see if that works right perfect so that popped there was the amplifier turning on as well because the monitor and the amplifier get powered up basically as soon as the laptop turns on having already installed windows the system boots up quickly and giving it a quick test is performance doing normal everyday tasks is absolutely fine to the point where I'd be happy using this on a regular basis doing photo or video editing might be a bit of a stretch on it but that's ok it is after all a repurposing project and for the money invested in it it definitely provides a lot back Niq beautiful build that looks neat on a desk and has a lot where it counts excellent usability and superb sound quality speaking of which now hopefully you hear this at home but this is a very full rich sound so I hope you've enjoyed watching seeing how to make your very own all-in-one PC and if you do this yourself have fun be creative and just enjoy the process because it's pretty cool repurposing something that's otherwise scrapped into something that's actually really usable and incredibly unique so thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe and like and all that good stuff but other than that I'm Matt you've been watching DIY perks and I hope I see you next time goodbye for now if you like my work please consider supporting the channel on patreon at patreon.com slash DIY perks many thanks for your support

Channel: DIY Perks

Views: 11,422,223

Keywords: what to make from old laptops, broken laptop projects, diy all in one pc, diy computer, diy laptop, diy perks, what to do with laptop, make, build, create, diy, craft, computer, hardware, software, laptop project at home, how to make, recycled, recycle, 7 laptop projects

Id: 8jeLCQ62vFk

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020