Should I repair/restore a beast laptop?

AlienALX

AlienALX

Well-known member
Hi guys.

About two years ago now my wife's laptop packed up. It was just some generic HP thing. In the end the CPU fan entrance got completely blocked with chocolate (lmao) as it was under the laptop. So it started over heating so we just sold it to some laptop breaker dude.

Any way she needed a new one because she was still well into Stronghold Kingdoms at the time so I decided to poke around and see what I could find for £500. Any way I came across a company selling refurbished Asus laptops and they had one of them Q ROG things. The spec is pretty evil, Sandy I7 as well as a pretty much desktop GTX 460.

Over the last couple of years it had a pretty hard life. My wife doesn't really care about her gadgets and thus doesn't treat them too well. In the end she dropped it (three keys flew out and the keyboard came out) and I managed to get it running again before she decided she wanted something smaller. This laptop is a fudging beast.. 17" screen and the base is massive and heavy.

It's been in storage for about a year. She bought a HP with Beats laptop (the one with the Beats logo on) as it was smaller and about half the weight.

I asked her about a month ago if I could have the Asus and she said I could..

Should I restore it? no idea what I would use it for, but I can get a 480gb SSD for £120 or so..

What should I do?
 
I would restore it there buddy it will give you something to tinker with and its always useful having a spare PC :)
 
Only thing is I'm pretty certain it would need repasting and trust me, it's ridiculously complicated. This was a £3000 laptop new.
 
SPS said:
Worth a try. Always good fun disassembling a laptop.
Click to expand...

Never done it before and I must admit it makes me nervous. That's why it's still sitting where it is, under the bed in a box lol.

I'm not so good with small screws and things. Might just sell it..
 
AlienALX said:
Never done it before and I must admit it makes me nervous. That's why it's still sitting where it is, under the bed in a box lol.

I'm not so good with small screws and things. Might just sell it..
Click to expand...

It certainly requires a level of perseverance and patience if you're not comfortable doing it. Why not see what you can get for it first?
 
SPS said:
It certainly requires a level of perseverance and patience if you're not comfortable doing it. Why not see what you can get for it first?
Click to expand...

Yeah might do. I remember looking into it when I got it and apparently it's one of the hardest and most complicated laptops to work on. To re paste the CPU for example you need to remove the entire motherboard from the shell. I just have a horrible feeling that if I go in that deep I will never get it back together.

TBH the paste might even be OK. Maybe I should give it a bloody good clean and throw in an SSD and see how it goes.
 
AlienALX said:
Yeah might do. I remember looking into it when I got it and apparently it's one of the hardest and most complicated laptops to work on. To re paste the CPU for example you need to remove the entire motherboard from the shell. I just have a horrible feeling that if I go in that deep I will never get it back together.

TBH the paste might even be OK. Maybe I should give it a bloody good clean and throw in an SSD and see how it goes.
Click to expand...

I've re-TIM'd a few laptops and by the time you're able to see the chip there's often nothing left assembled so it does require a full tear down.
 
It's definitely the GPU I am more concerned about. I remember she was playing "The Forest" alpha and the laptop was getting stupidly hot.

I *think* it was all repasted just before she bought it. It was an Asus refurb from Mexico or something like that.

Just a shame it's sitting doing nothing really. It really is a beautiful laptop. Dare I say, nicer than the M17 was any way. It's got a backlit keyboard that you can customise and many other really nice options.

I'll probably dig it out tomorrow, get it running (I think one of the SATA ports are iffy as it takes two drives) and then consider putting an SSD in. Don't have any spare ATM which is unusual for me but would be prepared to stick in a 500gb or so if I can get it all running OK.

Getting the keys back in was a nightmare though. They have like a scissor mechanism underneath so are a real faff to get back in.
 
well my Dad always used to say to me "if something doesn't work whats the worst you can do make it not work" :)
 
AlienALX said:
It's definitely the GPU I am more concerned about. I remember she was playing "The Forest" alpha and the laptop was getting stupidly hot.
Click to expand...
That game is pretty poorly optimized (and laptops run warm anyway) so I don't think that is a true sign of its condition. Its probably just full of dust.
 
I've decided to give it a go :) I don't think I am going to take it apart (well, not more than the drive bay area etc) though. I'm on meds that make me tired and not give a crap so taking it all apart is off the cards.

I will need to buy some canned air though. It's going to be filthy inside.

Will take some pics tomorrow when I get it out :)

barnsley said:
That game is pretty poorly optimized (and laptops run warm anyway) so I don't think that is a true sign of its condition. Its probably just full of dust.
Click to expand...

Yeah troo.

Thing is this laptop has a full blown desktop GTX 460 in it. Asus actually bragged about it when it was launched. So even though it was never a full on Fermi it still gets ruddy hot. IIRC it might even be modular, so I may be able to pull it out separately.

Time to do some serious Googling I think... Find a few teardown vids. Right, off to find the exact model number of this beast which means getting it out..

Now.. Where the hell is it?! :D
 
Last edited:
Id say referb it, laptops are a daunting task if it's your first one.. I've lost count how many I've stripped. If you need help at all hit my inbox I'm always here somewhere.

I know what you mean with women and treating hardware poorly my missus is the same, if it's not chocolate it's bloody coffee, she killed the last laptop through overheating now the DC circuits are fried, that was a Aspire 8940 :(. The other was when she had a melt down and drop kicked the PC I built her, just because it was a little "slow".
 
OK well here's the news so far. It was covered in blonde hair, thick dust and scratches. However, near on all of the scratches are in the under body which is like textured plastic so with some T cut metallic (that I used to use on my clear coat glossed Alienware) I have managed to pretty much remove them all, leaving the bottom looking like new.

The keyboard is ever so slightly bent from where she dropped it, but I also managed to remove that, straighten it and then put it back.

The top of the laptop is covered in that Bitfenix soft touch rubber stuff, so the one minor scratch in that will have to stay there. Other than that it is now looking like new.

More good news. I found a 60gb SSD that I forgot about so I have fitted that. When I was inside I remembered that we never did get the proper drive sleds for the laptop so over time the boot drive would work its way free from the SATA connector, leaving you with no drive. So I have fitted soft foam wedges to keep that from happening and then simply put a flat piece of tape over the drive and the connector to keep them together.

The screen is pretty much mint, though it's one of them glossy bar stewards so was a right pig to get it clean and streak free !

Now I need some advice. I'm at the OS stage but I know that a 'normal' Windows 7 may not work on here. It's a Asus COA (that thankfully is crystal clear and hasn't rubbed away) so would I need a special OS for it? or will any Windows 7 HP do?

Once I get 7 on there I can concentrate on upgrading to 10.
 
Posting from the laptop now !

Installation was easy though slow (slow laptop DVD drive) but it's scrubbed up beautifully.

Very happy. Just installing an absolute mountain of drivers now. This thing has a metric ton of drivers :S
 
I don't think I will need it tbh. Looks like I'm staying on Windows 7 so no need to get one as I have a 750gb drive in here too :)
 
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