Salvagable parts from a lightning strike?

[SerialSniper14]

My Gateway M152-XL was struck by lightning earlier this year (I suspect it came through the HDMI cable as it blew my TV and and DirecTV receiver) and as the warranty was voided I decided to tinker with it. I pulled out my 3 GB of DDR2 RAM and put it in my friend's computer; not only did it work, but it tripled his notebooks performance. Now I'm interested in building a laptop.

Since the RAM still works fine and assuming the motherboard is indeed fried, what is the likelyhood that other parts (namely the processor, heat sink/cooling fan, wireless networking card, and even the hard drive) can be salvaged for use? I bought a Sager notebook that is still under warranty so I don't want to modify it and void the warranty.

 

[megamanx00]

It's possible that only the motherboard was damaged, particularly the area where power is drawn from, meaning all the other parts could work just fine. Only way to know is to test them out. If your laptop was running on batteries then it's possible that current went through the HDMI cable and shorted the onboard video, in which case the motherboard is still fried but the rest of it should be fine .

 

[capt_taco]

What's fried and what's not is anybody's guess until you test out the components one by one.

Honestly, I'm not sure how much luck you'll have doing that with a laptop, or with "building" a laptop at all for that matter, unless you really know what you're doing. Most of them are not really designed with interchangeable parts and "getting under the hood and tinkering" in mind.

But hey, if it doesn't work anyway and there's no warranty left, you really have nothing to lose, though.

 

[SerialSniper14]

Well turns out the processor that went to my PM945 chipset isn't compatible with the GM45 chipset of the barebones I was looking into. I still expect to be able to use the RAM and wireless card though. And maybe even my hard drive, if I didn't suspect that Gateway glued it to the damn MOBO.