Laptop Redesign

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gunter
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Laptop Redesign

Post by gunter »

Greetings,

I was wondering how feasible this concept would be. The idea is to take the cpu out of a laptop and mount it on the backside of the lcd. Removing the cpu from inside of the laptop would remove most of the heat from within the laptop. Rather than design a system around a case I was thinking about designing a case around the system. The idea in the interim is to create a fake cpu with a wire bundle that will be placed into the existing cpu socket. The wire bundle will be brought out of the laptop and will interface with another cpu socket on the back of the lcd. The real processor will interface with the socket on the back of the lcd. Basically wire jumpering the motherboard socket to another one on the back of the lcd. Once the processor is out of the case I think it might be possible to cool the chip in imaginative ways (water cooling / cryo cooling). I understand the wire bundle will be excessive, especially in the case of lga 775 (a 775 wire bundle). The ultimate goal would be to redesign the laptop with the processor outside the housing with minimal loss of portability. Hope to hear from you gurus as to the feasibility of this one. Thanks and regards.
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dyarker
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by dyarker »

Wow! A 700 plus cable of microwave transmission lines, plus 12AWG power wires, and all terminated at both ends with characteristic impedence. It will be larger than a old tower PC.

Or, you could slow the CPU clock from a few GigaHertz to tens of KiloHertz. Then maybe you can get away with wires because signal wavelength will be a lot longer than wire length.

Sorry to give bad news, but IMO you'll waste a laptop, un-cheap socket, couple spools of wire, and time. You may invent some new curse words though.

Good good good good luck if you try it anyway!

Cheers,
Dale Y
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Lenp
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by Lenp »

This is the seed of an idea, that should not be grown!

Sorry, but I'm just being honest!
Len

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a big pile of junk.” (T. Edison)
"I must be on the way to success since I already have the junk". (Me)
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dacflyer
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by dacflyer »

not to mention parasitic interference from the wire length that will seriously degrade performance and probably lock up a lot..
project is not feasible ..
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gunter
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by gunter »

Always good to get some feedback. Sure appreciate the replies. :D
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Janitor Tzap
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by Janitor Tzap »

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Wow!

This reminds me of the old 386 to 486 CPU Adapters.
Image
They were popular for a little while.
But when Motherboard prices fell, and the 486 Motherboards were incorporating the Hard Drive, Floppy, and even I/O ports on to it.
It didn't make much sense to just upgrade the CPU on an old 386 Motherboard system.


Signed: Janitor Tzap
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haklesup
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by haklesup »

would never work, the signal integrity over a cable at the Ghz speeds, you would end up with the logic spread over every wire due to crosstalk, Even with coax or other shielding would still result in delays to signals you did not anticipate sometimes resulting in race conditions. High speed PCB design is an art and it does not include long traces or a cable bundle like you describe.

As for putting a CPU on the back of a monitor, isn't that a tablet computer?

If your laptop is running hot and you don't want to add a fan, you can try slowing the clock speed if the BIOS allows it.

BTW, the cable you are describing is called an Emulator cable but I have never heard of one for an X86 CPU. Last time I used one was for a Z80 decades ago. here is a similar one
http://www.eecosales.com/IceTech/68HC12 ... pters.html.

Assuming you could design a flex board, it would cost over $1k to fabricate the prototype then you have to assemble a header and socket onto it, I wouldn't charge less than $3k to do a custom job like that. (yes, I quote test fixtures all day long)
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gunter
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by gunter »

I was thinking more along the lines of a laptop over-clocking project. I see what you mean on the wire harness. That emulator cable is a nice piece of work. As always, I sure appreciate the replies. I really haven't seen any overclock/cooling solutions for laptops while maintaining case integrity. So just thought I would ask here first. It's good to learn something new everyday.
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Lenp
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by Lenp »

Eons ago, when circuit board card cages first became popular, there were card extenders that moved the card out of the rack so it could be tested while in operation. These were simply male/female sockets on each end of a circuit board that mated with the cage and board connectors to extended the circuits. They were a great time saver for audio and the early low speed logic circuits but as the signal speeds went up, into and above the RF range, the extender cards often caused more problems with cross talk, signal timing and degradation then they were worth. Ultimately they became historical curiosities.

It's amazing how many unintentional 'antennas' can be made by circuit layout errors, and with clock frequencies going higher all the time I wonder if the multi-channel logic analyzers suffer from similar problems? I still like relays :grin:
Len

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a big pile of junk.” (T. Edison)
"I must be on the way to success since I already have the junk". (Me)
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haklesup
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Re: Laptop Redesign

Post by haklesup »

the simplest and cheapest way to improve laptop cooling without mods is as easy as an external fan to increase airflow through the case. There are off the shelf solutions but also many custom solutions possible too. It may seem bulky but not as much as what was proposed

Extender cards were basically at their limit with ISA bus speeds 8Mhz max. I never saw a PCI extended that worked.
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