DreamGot a great idea for a pc? Big or small we want to hear it.You Dream it. ASUS Builds It. Intel Inside It.

GAMER PC : IDEA

Modular gaming laptop
Posted in gamer | November 3, 2008 5pm

Hello!
Building a gamer laptop can't be an easy job, since laptops struggle with various handicaps compared to desktop PCs (cooling, power consumption, ...) and the result of optimizing all these drawbacks to make a gamer laptop even able to work and not melt down can be seen on the price tag. Nevertheless, instead of coming up with a huge set of parameters (hard to resist) of how a good gamer laptop should look like, I'd like to propose an idea inspired, in my opinion, by the greatest problem (gamer) laptops are struggling with.

PCs got the advantage of modularity. If one component doesn't meet the user's requirements, it can be changed to a stronger or smarter one. If laptop components could be changed, then there'd be no need to buy an entirely new machine every 6-8 months to keep our laptop up-to-date for the newest games. I find it very frustrating that since I do need the mobility of a laptop, and I do like to play games, I have to keep a desktop PC and a laptop fair enough to run games decently. I've no ridiculous needs, only 20-25 FPS medium graphics, but some newer games often cause trouble even on a relatively new (4 months) mid-class laptop. Many people don't have the money to change their entire laptop every 3 times a year.

If laptops were built of several (namely 4 components), out of which 3 could be changed, it would very much increase the versatality of laptops vs. desktop PCs. The motherboard would be all too hard to be made removable, so I see no sense in that. The most crucial parts of the machine (from gaming POV) is the CPU, GPU, RAM. I don't know enough details to know how segregated the graphics chipset is on a laptop board, but if ASUS would come up with a size standard for his own laptops (or even an inter-manufacturer standard) and offer several different videocards into it's laptops, everyone could find the optimum for his own needs and budget. Changing the RAM is already available in all laptops, but making the processors also an interchangable part would be another great feat.

Some things to keep in mind:
Optimizing powerconsupmtion beyond reason on a gamer laptop is unnecessary. The battery cannot support the machine with enough power to run games decently, so when running from battery, the GPU, CPU don't need to be optimized as strictly as they are on todays laptops, where everything is optimized to a single constellation of hardware. They should be slowed down the same way they are now. When the powersupply is connected, a few extra Watts could be picked up to make up for the lack of optimization. Cooling could become an issue, but it cannot be unsolvable.
Even on 17" display laptops, making the optical drive an external type could save lots of space. Many gamers would find this sacrifice fair enough in exchange for performance that comes without great jump in price. Optical drives are only used during installation. It wouldn't be too hard to connect in those rare cases when it would be needed. (Just keep it in the pack ;))

As a conclusion: make things modular!