Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > How To > Build Your Own > Building Your Dream Notebook

Building Your Dream Notebook

1:04 PM - May 4, 2005 by Harald Thon

1. Does Building Your Own Notebook Really Make Sense?
2. What Is A DIY Notebook?
3. Step 1. Choosing The "Right" Barebook/Notebook
4. Step 2. Component Selection
5. And Where Do You Buy All This Stuff?
6. Video For Download: Build-it-yourself Notebooks
7. The Completely Assembled Notebook In Practical Use
8. Hidden Third USB Port

A hobby for many and a religion for some, custom building your own PC just the way you want it has been feasible for a long time. It doesn't matter whether you go the traditional route and put together a system with a case , power supply and other system components or you start with a SFF PC bare-bones and build from there: you want a PC individually tailored to meet your needs or purposes that you can also call your own. The idea of saving money surely is not a priority, because do-it-yourself PCs are usually more expensive than an off-the-rack model with comparable equipment.

The same points need to be considered when building your own notebook. You don't really save any money that way, but it can be more fun to select your own components, screw them in with a screwdriver and then be able to take pride in your work when you show others the system you built yourself.

We will show you on the pages that follow and in a video how you can build your own notebook.

We also pit what we build against the off-the-rack Latitude D610 notebook from Dell.