Due to unfortunate circumstances (me dropping the laptop) I have now ended up with a half broken laptop that has a broken screen and a dying battery. I could repair it, however, I don’t wanna bother as I’m very likely gonna be getting a new one soon.
The laptop itself still works fine, however the broken screen and dying battery make it pretty much useless as a laptop and I already have a home lab NAS thing, so I’m kinda out of ideas on what to do with it. Any ideas?
Here are the specs:
CPU: i5-8300h
GPU: intel HD830/GTX1050ti
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 128GB SSD
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Remove the battery, take the motherboard out of the case. Plug the motherboard in, and voila you have a larger and more powerful raspberry pi. You could use it as a second node for control, management, observation purposes, etc.
Great suggestion, but I’m not entirely sure it’s 100% possible on all models? Some models are built so that it won’t turn on without a battery installed (much like phones) and that the power has to pass through the battery before it reaches the motherboard.
I believe that scenario would take much more knowledge of electricity plus some soldering skills to bypass the battery. They gave specs, but not make and model. I don’t trust companies like HP to not take the route that requires you to send it in to them for servicing.
It does work without the battery and the model is: dell G3 3579, I just didn’t think the model was that important to mention.
95% of the time the exact model isn’t super important, nowhere near as important as specifications, but when it comes to the physical build like whether it can run without the battery, it can be useful to know.
Not really necessary to take the mb out of the case, but removing the battery is a good idea. Tuck the laptop somewhere out-of-the-way and install your preferred Linux (like Debian stable). Set up some services on it, and enjoy having a nice, decently low-energy server.
If you remove the battery it will either A not work or B run extremely slowly. Always have a functional battery in your laptops.
Ideally find a way to limit the charge of the battery. But if you can’t nuking your battery is better than running at 800mhz or whatever your lowest clock speed is.
I’ve run laptops before without batteries a few times and never had issues, is there a reason for the slowdown?
Power consumption. Especially with turbo boost power consumption can easily spike well above what the power brick can deliver, so the battery is used like a capacitor. Or shit even without the spikes chargers can’t keep up. My laptop will actually discharge under full load with the full 240 watt charger.
It’s not normally an issue on REALLY low end devices (sub core i, like pentiums or atoms), but anything high end will reduce it’s power consumption without a batter installed.
That’s not something that should ever happen on most devices. If your battery is discharging under load you likely have a faulty device.
There’s nothing wrong with the device, Lenovo has confirmed this, and both motherboards my laptop has had have the same “problem”. This isn’t my only machine like this either, 16" Intel MacBook Pros are also known to discharge under full load, but that’s because they’re limited to 100 watt USB C.
There’s a reason why those devices run at minimum clock speeds when their battery is sub 5%.
That’s a terrible design then. I would never want a device that would do that
Well I hope you don’t like ThinkPads…
Interesting, never had that happen to me, but then perhaps you are using a laptop with a dgpu? I have not been. My laptop generally consumes 4w at idle and up to 15w under load, so I don’t see this ever outpacing the 60w charger. The CPUs with the highest tdp are only around 100w anyway right? And in that case the laptop comes with a higher wattage charger. But you’re right I guess it could happen depending on the hardware, never personally seen it however.
It even happens with power efficient devices. All Macbooks will run at their lowest clock speed with a dead/low battery (even my M1), My Thinkpad T14 with an ULV CPU and it’s odd. It tries to limit total system power to around 25 watts, even though I have a 100 watt power supply connected. My theory is that since 30 watts is the lowest power supply it will run off of it’s trying to keep that 5 watt buffer. Unfortunately that means my CPU runs at 800mhz doing anything but idling. Laptops with dGPUs often just wont work at all, or are so far limited they’re unusable.
Some older laptops like my Thinkpad X220 will run at 800mhz on a 65 watt charger, but on a 90 watt charger it will run at full speed. But unfortunately in the days of USB C that makes things a lot more difficult.
Why remove the battery when it is a perfectly working built in UPS?
Because over time the battery degrades, swells, and becomes a fire risk.
Keeping it only 80% charged can help mitigate it but not fully.
That is largely a myth and in my experience never happens with higher quality laptop batteries. But yes limiting charge doesn’t hurt if it is only used as a UPS anyways.
Not a myth. Better batteries might have better safety measures, but none is inmune. It might not have happened to you but I’ve seen it happen in several high end/expensive brands already.
What part is the myth?
Which batteries are “high quality”?
Cause it happens… Pretty regularly if you’re not limiting charging. The older the battery the more likely.
This isn’t something you should fuck around with either: if it pops it’ll burn too hot to extinguish and could take out your house.
Happened to my ladyfriend with a macbook pro. Cracked the shell of the laptop. No fire, but it sure did swell.
It will be a really bad UPS at best
Because it is a safety issue and the battery isn’t designed for that anyway. A UPS is designed to stay charged for a long period of time and laptop is not.
Make sure you have a cooling solution…
you can keep the fan and heatsink on the board
Retroarch box for your TV?
I’d also glue it to the back of my TV and install Kodi or Batocera on it. Next option is give it away if you don’t need it. Either to someone who is still in need of a homelab or to recycling.
Services: DNS (Pi-Hole for example), DHCP, or NTP, off the top of my head.
Already got all of that from a VM off my homelab
Sounds like you’re looking for a solution you already know the answer to; recycle the laptop if you’re not going to repair it.
It would bug me a ton if I were to recycle it, as it still technically works, it’s just not worth repairing, as the total cost pretty much equals getting the same one, but working, 2nd hand…
I get that and I’ve been there, but it sounds like you have an existing homelab that can do most of what someone else might do with a broken laptop.
What ideas did you have?
And recycle it could mean wipe the drive and donate it to someplace that will recondition it and give it to someone who needs a computer for school/work but can’t afford one.
Thing is, it’s gonna need a lot more than a “recondition” to get it back to a “usable as a laptop” status. New screen, new battery, new bottom panel (yeah, that). And I do have some ideas of how to get extra use out of it, occasionally, as my homelab isn’t particularly powerful, I just wanted to get a 2nd opinion about it.
Got it.
Then do what you’re thinking about doing with it :)
Web server for a Smart Mirror?
I run my mirror locally, but you can also pull it from a separate server.
Install Proxmox on it and it could be a second node for anything that you want.
What is the motherboard?
I would pull out its guts and then come up with a solid cooling solution for the CPU. Be extremely careful of the battery and make sure you dispose of it properly.
Yeah, that’s another thing I was gonna ask about… How does one properly dispose of a battery?
Find a recycling center
What your situation for data backup? You mentioned a homelab and a NAS, are you running regular backups to an off-box store? You could mate it with a few TB of inexpensive USB disk, maybe some software RAID, and use it for off-box backups. Doesn’t have to be fast, just reliable.
Specs like that, you have some options. Virtual assistant, IPCam NVR like MotionEye or Frigate, media server for your car (takes DC voltage, right?), weather base station, ADS-B feeder, smart mirrors.
Or (if you’re in the US) you could repair it and then, if you donate it to a suitable charity, you could take the the cost of the repair as a deduction on your taxes. Probably doesn’t help you that much, but it could maybe really help someone else who needs it.
Or, just wipe it and send it to e-waste.
My situation with data backup is… well I have none, nor can i really afford to invest into more hardware at the moment. I am running RAIDz1, on my NAS so that gives me a small amount of protection in case a drive in it does go bad ig.
Had a similar incident with my son’s hand-me-down laptop. It just sits on a desk with a monitor and what-not plugged into it. It’s now a wide flat desktop.
Do you have a media center and/or server already? It’s a bit overkill for the former but would be well suited as the latter with its dedicated GPU that your NAS might not have/you may not want to have in your NAS.
That is a neat idea, however I don’t really have a “media center” or a TV for that matter, as I always just watch stuff on my PC… That and I am not the type of person who’s gonna go buying movies on disc…
I just pirate that sh!t
Take it to an electronics recycling center. Seriously.
If you already have a homelab, you plan to replace it, you don’t want to repair it, and you don’t have an obvious use case for another machine (it’s just another computer; you either have the need for another computer or you don’t), then holding onto it is just hoarding.
I mean, ultimately, if I can’t find anything else to do with it, I might do that.
You could try to convert it to a “headless” laptop.
Some cash savvy people have been buying M1 macbooks with broken screens and converting them into headless laptops. For the price of a broken MacBook and some tinkering, you can get what is essentially a Mac mini with a touchpad and keyboard.
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That is one of the things I’ve thought of doing with it, like a dedicated game streaming machine. It’s got gigabit LAN and a dedicated, even if not latest gen GPU, so yn
Looks like you have a brand new dedicated porn viewing machine
Nah, that’s what my phone is for :)
It’s can be a useful server with a built-in UPS if there’s any services you’d like to isolate from the rest that you’re running. One example is backups as you want a backup system to be fairly well isolated but anything sensitive would qualify.
You could also make use of it for purposes where the hardware can speed things up, I think that GPU could help with encoding etc.
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I wouldn’t suggest a dying laptop battery as a UPS, especially if it’s old. You’re just asking for a spicy pillow in a never observed, enclosed area.
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Email server and password vault This is something that should be a physical object in your own home. And it should be only that (ok, maybe include a notes and calendar app but keep it simple, stupid)
I usually just harvest usable parts like the hard drive and camera and call it a day.
Alternatively, if you’re able to plug an external monitor in and get it to work for setup, you could install some sort of Linux distro on it and run it headless for lots of different purposes.
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