Barebones Laptops?

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IamSpartacus

Well-Known Member
Mar 14, 2016
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Do and manufactures sell barebones laptops anymore where you add your own RAM/HDD? Laptop manufactures put such a price premium on upgraded RAM/SSD's that it makes it hard to get a good deal.
 

sherwood

New Member
Dec 14, 2015
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To an extent yes.

Laptops / Notebooks :: Clevo :: Clevo Barebone Series - R&J Technology, Clevo Barebone Notebook kits, Laptop and desktop system builder

RJTech sells the Clevo laptops that are popular with many sellers (Eurocom, AVADirect, Sager, System76 etc etc).

MSI used to sell "Whitebook" laptops, not sure if they still do. Depending on which one you buy you can save money going with your own stuff especially on RAM.

They weren’t very popular to begin with but there were a few others as well. Now I think only RJTech has some. Some of the sellers like Sager might sell you a barebones if you ask them directly. They do it for other sellers (a la XoTic PC) and other companies, not sure if they would do it for individuals.
 

sherwood

New Member
Dec 14, 2015
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Of course those aren't the prettiest laptops or the longest lasting. There is not a whole lot of interest or money (i image) in barebone laptops. Also laptops don’t really have many standards like desktops (storage, ram, and cpu/gpu sort of). Manufactures don't really have an incentive to do it unless it is a large order from a reseller.

They are quite limited with variety. If you wanted something specific like longer battery life or super portable (ultrabook) then I would say buy used off of eBay. Unless you know someone or a company dumping some. Same thing with "Gaming" laptops or workstations. If you have a specific use case, your work is buying it, or you can(or need to have) buy something new.

You can get some of the Thinkpad (T440s, T4302, T420s, etc) or the Latitudes (E7270, E7470, etc) for a nice discount depending on what you are looking for.

A good portion of those laptops are off lease so they are still in decent condition.
 

cheezehead

Active Member
Sep 23, 2012
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Midwest, US
BYO is really only in the boutique laptop market (brands as Sherwood listed). There use to be a few companies that did BYO options but those have really gone under in the last few years. Asus ROG models also (historically) were modular...heck my last Asus could take CPU and GPU swaps.

Really get a laptop for the screen size you want, the look/feel (build quality), and aim for something that doesn't have soldered dimms or storage. Also read reviews as sometimes companies do nerfed models to keep people from buying low end models and upgrading them for cheap. Brands don't mean what they use to these days, OEM's spec out laptops that are fulfilled by a half-dozen or so ODM's in Asia. Reviews, service manuals, and not running goofy chipsets are really what will make the difference.