online venue to buy customized laptop

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I'm looking for a site that will sell me a customized laptop. I would prefer an ASUS because they seem to be durable (my current one has lasted about 8 years despite constant use. it's dying now) but the Asus site doesn't seem to allow customization. I'm looking to at least 2TB SSD drive and 16B dram and other stuff. If that option doesn't exist, can someone recommend a good shop in Chiangmai that will accommodate what I want?

[fdsa]

I'm afraid there are only two options - either order your dream laptop somewhere abroad and have it shipped here or buy a base model (with your desired CPU and GPU but minimal amount of RAM and cheap HDD) and stuff it with RAM modules and SSD bought separately.

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2 minutes ago, fdsa said:

I'm afraid there are only two options - either order your dream laptop somewhere abroad and have it shipped here or buy a base model (with your desired CPU and GPU but minimal amount of RAM and cheap HDD) and stuff it with RAM modules and SSD bought separately.

So far my experience has confirmed your assessment of the situation. Thanks.

[tomazbodner]

Some products now have RAM and flash chips soldered to the mainboard and cannot be changed/upgraded. That mostly goes for ultra-slim notebooks but some not so slim models do the same.

 

If you see something like above, it is basically not upgradeable.

 

Assuming you are picking a model that has M.2 and RAM sockets, you could likely get the shop selling you the notebook to upgrade it for you.

 

Some models like HP's ZBook 16/17 Fury/Studio Workstation have a no-screw removable bottom plate, where you can insert up to 4 RAM SODIMM and 4 M.2 SSD sticks. You don't need any tools, and can do it by yourself in 3 minutes. Just make sure you power it off first, before plugging RAM or SSD in.

 

 

This way you can add (say base model has 16 GB RAM, you can increase that to 112 GB, and say it has 512 GB SSD, you could increase that by added drives to 12.5 TB without removing what's installed), or if removed and replaced to max out, usually a bit more complicated to reach, to 128 GB RAM and 16 TB SSD over 4 drives.

 

I am not aware of any other notebook that can do that. But for most of others, upgrade is possible by removing bottom plate and replacing the original parts. To see whether your desired model has replaceable RAM and SSD, search for that model's teardown or iFixIt repair pages, which show how they look inside and what can/cannot be replaced.

 

Edited January 6, 2023 by tomazbodner

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1 minute ago, tomazbodner said:

Some products now have RAM and flash chips soldered to the mainboard and cannot be changed/upgraded. That mostly goes for ultra-slim notebooks but some not so slim models from other brands do the same.

 

Assuming you are picking a model that has M.2 and RAM sockets, you could likely get the shop selling you the notebook to upgrade it for you.

 

Some models like HP's ZBook 16/17 Fury/Studio Workstation have a no-screw removable bottom plate, where you can insert up to 4 RAM SODIMM and 2 M.2 SSD sticks, some also additional SATA 2.5" drive. You don't need any tools, and can do it by yourself in 3 minutes. Just make sure you power it off first, before plugging RAM or SSD in.

 

 

This way you can add (say base model has 16 GB RAM, you can increase that to 112 GB, and say it has 512 GB SSD, you could increase that by added drives to 8.5 TB without removing what's installed), or if removed and replaced to max out, to 128 GB RAM and 12 TB SSD over 3 drives.

 

I am not aware of any other notebook that can do that. But for most of others, upgrade is possible by removing bottom plate and replacing the original parts. To see whether your desired model has replaceable RAM and SSD, search for that model's teardown or iFixIt repair pages, which show how they look inside and what can/cannot be replaced.

 

Thanks. I once considered replacing on my own the battery of my ASUS laptop and was frightened when I saw what that would entail. 

[Boomer6969]

16 minutes ago, fdsa said:

I'm afraid there are only two options - either order your dream laptop somewhere abroad and have it shipped here or buy a base model (with your desired CPU and GPU but minimal amount of RAM and cheap HDD) and stuff it with RAM modules and SSD bought separately.

Obviously you haven't owned too many recent laptops. 

[BigStar]

You might check with Dell.

[ozimoron]

3 hours ago, placeholder said:

So far my experience has confirmed your assessment of the situation. Thanks.

Do you really need a laptop? I suggest an ASUS PN51 mini computer.

[FriendlyFarang]

15 hours ago, placeholder said:

I'm looking to at least 2TB SSD drive and 16B dram and other stuff.

Many laptops come with 16GB ram, and quite a few allow exchanging the SSD, or have one or more additional M.2 ports to install additional SSDs, every mall has shops that can install it for you if you don't want to do it yourself.

[tgw]

for really custom laptops there is not much choice besides finding a shop that assembles CLEVO laptops.
Sure, some ASUS and Alienware, HP OMEN etc. claim to do custom, but as soon as you want 3 or 4 HDD bays and/or RAID-1 mirroring, they throw the towel. Their motherboards are simply too mainstream.

 

I bought the world's most powerful laptop in 2015 ( CLEVO with i7-4790K with 32 GB RAM, GTX 980M 8GB, and RAID-1 mirrored system SSD, 2 TB HDD ) and I still use it today, it was a real beast at the time.

 

in the USA, there are some shops such as https://originpc.com, I guess they would ship to Thailand (I bought mine there and had it shipped to Europe).

 

in Thailand, I only know https://www.level51pc.com/  who has a website offering that product, but there must be others.

Their website used to have an English version, but not anymore. they do reply on their Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Level51pc/

 

If you are ready to spend a bit, I would check out originpc.com and have it shipped to Thailand. there is no import tax on laptops from the US, so you would only have to pay Thai VAT.

 

EDIT:
I found the English version of that Thai shop:

https://en.level51pc.com/

 

EDIT 2:

relating to what @tomazbodner posted, Clevo laptops allow users to service most parts of the laptops and they are repairable. I was able to swap my CMOS battery, SSDs, renew thermal paste on GPU and CPU, etc. There are only screws, nothing is glued or clipped-on using these annoying plastic clips that seem to be designed for one time use and love to break easily.

 

EDIT 3:
my personal choice is to always buy a laptop with a mirrored system disk (hardware based RAID-1 to avoid OS dependence) to host the OS and important files. I do this for availability, mirrored harddisks do not replace backup, but they do prevent a major annoyance incase of HDD failure.

Edited January 6, 2023 by tgw

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3 hours ago, tgw said:

for really custom laptops there is not much choice besides finding a shop that assembles CLEVO laptops.
Sure, some ASUS and Alienware, HP OMEN etc. claim to do custom, but as soon as you want 3 or 4 HDD bays and/or RAID-1 mirroring, they throw the towel. Their motherboards are simply too mainstream.

 

I bought the world's most powerful laptop in 2015 ( CLEVO with i7-4790K with 32 GB RAM, GTX 980M 8GB, and RAID-1 mirrored system SSD, 2 TB HDD ) and I still use it today, it was a real beast at the time.

 

in the USA, there are some shops such as https://originpc.com, I guess they would ship to Thailand (I bought mine there and had it shipped to Europe).

 

in Thailand, I only know https://www.level51pc.com/  who has a website offering that product, but there must be others.

Their website used to have an English version, but not anymore. they do reply on their Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/Level51pc/

 

If you are ready to spend a bit, I would check out originpc.com and have it shipped to Thailand. there is no import tax on laptops from the US, so you would only have to pay Thai VAT.

 

EDIT:
I found the English version of that Thai shop:

https://en.level51pc.com/

 

EDIT 2:

relating to what @tomazbodner posted, Clevo laptops allow users to service most parts of the laptops and they are repairable. I was able to swap my CMOS battery, SSDs, renew thermal paste on GPU and CPU, etc. There are only screws, nothing is glued or clipped-on using these annoying plastic clips that seem to be designed for one time use and love to break easily.

 

EDIT 3:
my personal choice is to always buy a laptop with a mirrored system disk (hardware based RAID-1 to avoid OS dependence) to host the OS and important files. I do this for availability, mirrored harddisks do not replace backup, but they do prevent a major annoyance incase of HDD failure.

I'll look into it. Thanks.

[fdsa]

I have a Clevo laptop too and am very happy with it, however it is pretty old (bought it around 2015 too) so I don't know about quality of their recent models. But the old ones are very good indeed!

 

However keep in mind that you won't be able to quickly repair a Clevo laptop if something hits the fan, because their spare parts are not as widely available as generic Asus or Dell laptops. So if you don't have a spare computer to use while waiting for the spare parts to come from abroad I would recommend against buying Clevo.

 

P.S. I've bought mine in Singapore not Thailand, in this shop: https://www.aftershockpc.com

they have some spare parts in stock so you might want to bookmark them just in case.

Edited January 7, 2023 by fdsa

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4 minutes ago, fdsa said:

I have a Clevo laptop too and am very happy with it, however it is pretty old (bought it around 2015 too) so I don't know about quality of their recent models. But the old ones are very good indeed!

 

However keep in mind that you won't be able to quickly repair a Clevo laptop if something hits the fan, because their spare parts are not as widely available as generic Asus or Dell laptops. So if you don't have a spare computer to use while waiting for the spare parts to come from abroad I would recommend against buying Clevo.

 

P.S. I've bought mine in Singapore not Thailand, in this shop: https://www.aftershockpc.com

they have some spare parts in stock so you might want to bookmark them just in case.

Thanks. I will have a spare.

[tgw]

6 minutes ago, fdsa said:

I have a Clevo laptop too and am very happy with it, however it is pretty old (bought it around 2015 too) so I don't know about quality of their recent models. But the old ones are very good indeed!

 

However keep in mind that you won't be able to quickly repair a Clevo laptop if something hits the fan, because their spare parts are not as widely available as generic Asus or Dell laptops. So if you don't have a spare computer to use while waiting for the spare parts to come from abroad I would recommend against buying Clevo.

 

P.S. I've bought mine in Singapore not Thailand, in this shop: https://www.aftershockpc.com

they have some spare parts in stock so you might want to bookmark them just in case.

my laptop had issues last year, I brought it to a repair shop in Pattaya and it got repaired in less than 24 hours both times. Pattaya4U behind Tukcom.

the long wait times can be caused by repair shops not doing actual repairs but rather swapping out whole parts, i.e. instead of soldering in a new power management chip on the motherboard, they would instead replace the whole motherboard because they don't have any repair staff and facilities available. That's common practice in Europe, where it's difficult to find actual repair services.

Edited January 7, 2023 by tgw

[fdsa]

2 minutes ago, tgw said:

my laptop had issues last year, I brought it to a repair shop in Pattaya and it got repaired in less than 24 hours both times.

which issues exactly? I've got the LCD cable (the one that goes from the motherboard through the hinges to the display) worn out over time and had to wait for several days for it to be delivered from abroad, as there are no such cables locally.

[tgw]

8 minutes ago, fdsa said:

which issues exactly? I've got the LCD cable (the one that goes from the motherboard through the hinges to the display) worn out over time and had to wait for several days for it to be delivered from abroad, as there are no such cables locally.

okay, that can happen, of course there are some specific parts that can't be repaired and must be sourced from a spare parts supplier, especially mechanical/structural parts like that display cable.

I had one time the power management chip, one time the GPU chip, and another time something else, unsure what it was, it was power related too. The laptop had been exposed to a thunderstorm that impacted nearby, I guess it had sustained some electrical damage.

 

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by tgw

[Fab5BKK]

I ordered my "bespoke" X13 Thinkpad from Lenovo web site:

 

Lenovo TH in English

 

You can choose your:

* Model,

* CPU,

* RAM,

* SSD,

* Display,

* etc.

* Accessories

 

I got mine delivered in less than 2 weeks... (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U + 16GB RAM + 1TB SSD + etc.)