<story><title>How to convert your old laptop screen into an external monitor</title><url>https://www.slashdigit.com/convert-old-laptop-screen-external-monitor/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>d3nj4l</author><text>On the flipside, does anyone know if there&amp;#x27;s any caveats to &amp;quot;recycling&amp;quot; a laptop&amp;#x27;s motherboard? I&amp;#x27;ve got a laptop that has awful thermals but decent hardware. One of the fans is dead, and I&amp;#x27;ve attempted to replace it but I guess the header itself is busted.* The processor and GPU are just wasted in there as they throttle hard on basic workloads. So, I&amp;#x27;ve been meaning to rip the board out and make an HTPC out of it. I&amp;#x27;m not too experienced with electronics to know if there&amp;#x27;s any issues I could run into, so I&amp;#x27;ve been holding off on it. I would love to see if anyone else has done something like that.&lt;p&gt;* Unfortunately, it possible that my attempt to fix a dead fan is what busted the header. I&amp;#x27;m not sure because the previous fan was dead and the new fan I put in didn&amp;#x27;t spin, but that&amp;#x27;s part of why I don&amp;#x27;t feel comfortable just winging it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Abishek_Muthian</author><text>&amp;gt;does anyone know if there&amp;#x27;s any caveats to &amp;quot;recycling&amp;quot; a laptop&amp;#x27;s motherboard?&lt;p&gt;The biggest caveat in re-using old compute hardware IMO is power consumption, power-efficiency has been one consistent improvement in every new generation of computer chips. So, a new Raspberry Pi is &lt;i&gt;almost always as capable as your old hardware for HTPC but more power efficient.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/i&gt;Except maybe say extremely high quality video, say 8K 10 bit video.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Unfortunately, it possible that my attempt to fix a dead fan is what busted the header.&lt;p&gt;You can try passive heatsink or passing the fan thermal management to separate unit altogether like Corsair Commandar(I haven&amp;#x27;t tried it).&lt;p&gt;You can also use your hardware for only GPGPU applications &amp;amp; HW accel on GPU to reduce load on CPU e.g. Separate stream encoding machine.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to convert your old laptop screen into an external monitor</title><url>https://www.slashdigit.com/convert-old-laptop-screen-external-monitor/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>d3nj4l</author><text>On the flipside, does anyone know if there&amp;#x27;s any caveats to &amp;quot;recycling&amp;quot; a laptop&amp;#x27;s motherboard? I&amp;#x27;ve got a laptop that has awful thermals but decent hardware. One of the fans is dead, and I&amp;#x27;ve attempted to replace it but I guess the header itself is busted.* The processor and GPU are just wasted in there as they throttle hard on basic workloads. So, I&amp;#x27;ve been meaning to rip the board out and make an HTPC out of it. I&amp;#x27;m not too experienced with electronics to know if there&amp;#x27;s any issues I could run into, so I&amp;#x27;ve been holding off on it. I would love to see if anyone else has done something like that.&lt;p&gt;* Unfortunately, it possible that my attempt to fix a dead fan is what busted the header. I&amp;#x27;m not sure because the previous fan was dead and the new fan I put in didn&amp;#x27;t spin, but that&amp;#x27;s part of why I don&amp;#x27;t feel comfortable just winging it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whymauri</author><text>I did this for my younger sister&amp;#x27;s first computer. We didn&amp;#x27;t have a lot of expendable cash, so I took my old laptop, stripped the motherblard out, mounted it on a makeshift open-air rig, and hooked it up to a second-hand monitor (laptop screen was irreparably broken). Served her well for three years or so.</text></comment>