Making my own laptop.

[klapse]

Nobody makes the (medium format) portable / laptop I want.

- AMD Ryzen with Vega gfx (skyrim-level gfx capable)
- Full HD 13-14"
- Thinkpad keyboard with Trackpoint
- Passive cooling

-------------------
I bought the Acer Swift 3 with Ryzen 2500u, which is an awesome cpu. But the keyboard is UNUSUABRU!

So i'm trashing the 900 euro laptop to build something fitting my wishes.

First test with the heatsink were today. Even with a poor interface to the APU, results were quite satisfactory!

thanks to rygd for the help with the thinkpad usb keyboards.

The motherboard boots fine without display - grub comes up in hdmi. But I can't figure out how to power on without connected keyboard! Anyone have some idea what trick i could use to achieve this? I can't find any jumper or button on the motherboard to 'turn it on'.

 

[benoitb]

Super cool project. I too would have wanted a thinkpad with a ryzen apu...
Will follow your adventures.

 

[klapse]

Update:

Removing ondemand governor's performance restrictions (now clocking up to 3.6Ghz turbo burst) only increased max temps to 74c. Odd thing was with the restrictions in place, all 8 cores were running 1.7Ghz steadily, while with the restrictions off, a few cores bumped to 3+Ghz while usually 4 others were at 1.1Ghz. I might investigate the performance impact of ondemand governor tweaks at some later date.

The test did confirm that with CPU-intensive jobs, heatsink is adequate - even with a fairly shoddy thermal interface to the APU. I will try the CPU+GPU under load when AIGLX works with AMDGPU, which it doesn't yet.

It's just wonderful to watch a high performance computer do its work in silence.

Power Switch:
The Swift 3 power button is integrated into the keyboard, which means no seperate connector on the motherboard. Since I want to get rid of this abominable keyboard entirely, I have a problem.
The diagnostic-center trick of unplugging the cmos battery then attaching power did work to boot the motherboard with only USB keyboard attached, but I'd rather not pull the CMOS battery every time i want to boot.
After some hours of searching and chatting, I decided to try sequentially pulling each of the keyboard connectors' pins to ground, to see if it would boot. Sure enough, last one I tried (pin 1 perhaps by the arrow?) reliabily powers on the motherboard.

Now; how do i make a connectinon to that pin? Solder to that microscopic lead? Or is there a way to make a connection to a flex cable, then i just order a flex cable from Acer, stick it in the kbd connector and connect the switch between pin 1 and ground plane?

 

[rygD]

Great project. I was thinking of doing something similar, and having a laptop that I can upgrade instead of replacing the whole thing. For the time being I am sticking with my x220, and getting replacement parts. I will take a look at the retro ThinkPad once those drop in price on the second hand market, but I would still rather make one with the display resolution and other specs I prefer.

 

[levi]

Now; how do i make a connectinon to that pin? Solder to that microscopic lead? Or is there a way to make a connection to a flex cable, then i just order a flex cable from Acer, stick it in the kbd connector and connect the switch between pin 1 and ground plane?

If that's a flex connector socket, you can probably try to find a suitable AWG lead that you can phystically capture inside it. Open it up, insert lead (stripped far enough to not interfere with the closing mechanism), close the socket and bingo.

 

[fusion_power]

Nice project, I also in search for the "perfect personal Multimedia Notebook" since ages, nothing found yet. The closest one in affordable price range was the recent released Thinpad E580. But Lenovo messed it up with a poor cooling solution (single fan!) in combination with a to power hungry AMD RX550 GPU (why no NVidia MX150?). If you don't need dedicated GFX, it is indeed a great Notebook, ~600€ for a well built Thinkpad is a bargin.
Overall I think for power consumption, thermal/heat problematics, there is no way around Intel at the moment, AMD just eats to much power, GPU and CPU. Intels 8xxx series impressed me alot, 15W TDP and real QuadCores. The Ryzen 2500U seems to be also in that range so there could be hope that AMD finaly has some competition in the Notebook market.

I see no need for passive cooling, throtteling is not avoidable this way I guess. I would like to see an decent and active cooled laptop, not to thin, and not to loud. Most manufactuerers seems to build their machines at the edge, often to poor cooling solution even if space would be available for better and quieter cooling. 2 Big fans that can cool a GTX 1080 in a Laptop with a smaller GTX1050, this would be my idea of "decent cooling".

 

[comradekingu]

I would glue down a connector and solder to that.

 

[klapse]

Overall I think for power consumption, thermal/heat problematics, there is no way around Intel at the moment, AMD just eats to much power, GPU and CPU. Intels 8xxx series impressed me alot, 15W TDP and real QuadCores. The Ryzen 2500U seems to be also in that range so there could be hope that AMD finaly has some competition in the Notebook market.

"AMD just eats to much power"? "ATE": Past tense. The Ryzen 2500U will do with ~25w what my ~100w 2012 i7 + Geforce GTX 670M could do in 3DMark 2011: about 3700 score.
Look at that, man

Just shelling around with no real heatsink I was at 48c tops, often much lower.

With the Meltdown fiasco and intel's response; i wanted an AMD again and got the Swift 3. Better performance than the HP Envy. Unfortunately there's no laptop made with a good keyboard now.

Now i'm struggling with the form factor - Many tradeoffs. I could use the existing acer 15" screen and make a 'tablet' out of it. I could even use the bottom shell of the laptop as the cover, which would look pretty nice.

On the other hand, acer's motherboard fits perfectly behind a 13.3-14" screen, which would mate nicely with the thinkpad usb keyboard.

Can i hook up any eDP screen to the motherboard's eDP connector, as long as the cable matches?

 

[ible]

neat project. i'd like a 17" fanless laptop with very good battery life, a mechanical keyboard, and decent-quality speakers. most bigger 'tops are beefier CPUs, and while you can get nicer speakers, there's few options that include even one more of my desired features. i actually don't need a super beefy CPU for my use-cases (mostly coding, and, with that size screen, watching movies). i have an "interesting" idea for a novel hinge mechanism, but it might be difficult in practice to get right.

but speaking of making a laptop, does anyone have any plans to take the pyra schematics, scale them up with a mechanical keyboard (@TrashyMG was IIRC making a pyra mechanical keyboard)? or even a huge pyra (even with non-functioning cardboard keys, but a USB input for keyboard), just for publicity? i'm thinking of those ridiculously sized (coffee table-sized) NES controllers...

 

[levi]

Can you get a mechanical keyboard that's thin and light enough not to make your proposed laptop a bit of a brick? As far as I know even the earliest laptops always used little plastic klacky parts above a membrane keyboard. But it's far to say I'm not in the market for an especially slim mechanical keyboard myself, so I've not been looking for slim mechanical switches - maybe they're more common than I thought.

 

[ible]

i don't mind if it's a bit of a brick, more space for the battery i guess. but yeah, i haven't done much research or invested really any time/money into the project.

 

[kuru]

Can you get a mechanical keyboard that's thin and light enough not to make your proposed laptop a bit of a brick? As far as I know even the earliest laptops always used little plastic klacky parts above a membrane keyboard. But it's far to say I'm not in the market for an especially slim mechanical keyboard myself, so I've not been looking for slim mechanical switches - maybe they're more common than I thought.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cherry-mx-low-profile-rgb-mechanical-keyboard-switches,36328.html

 

[fusion_power]

"AMD just eats to much power"? "ATE": Past tense. The Ryzen 2500U will do with ~25w what my ~100w 2012 i7 + Geforce GTX 670M could do in 3DMark 2011: about 3700 score.
Look at that, man

Well the AMD CPU indeed gotten much better, nice to have also mobile alternatives to Intel now. But the (dedicated) AMD GPU could need improvements. Wanna see tests of the upcoming Intel 8. Gen / AMD Radeon RX Vega M GPU combo. Beefy Chipset made for mobile usage.

And of course your experiment shows low temps, you forgot to squeeze everything in a tight notebook case.

 

[TrashyMG]

(@TrashyMG was IIRC making a pyra mechanical keyboard)?

yeah that is on my pile of unfinished projects...

 

[klapse]

And of course your experiment shows low temps, you forgot to squeeze everything in a tight notebook case.

Sorry i missed your comment last year. Motherboard + Passive radiator goes on back of display - radiator is free and fins are aligned upright, so it enjoys the chimney effect also.

Project got suspended cause AMD drivers were so borked. Then the keyboards started dying. Still on the to-do list. Cheers.