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ladies and gentlemen
may i present to you the most powerful
laptop
in the world this threadripper 16 core
32 thread processor based laptop started
as a quest
for mobile computing power without
paying too severe
premium for mobile hardware i searched
for an itx threadripper compatible
motherboard but
came up empty-handed except for a few
forum posts that said
that a small form factor threadripper
was a terrible idea
and immediately i knew i could be the
one to make that mistake
and set out to put an untamed 180 watt
tdp
processor in a laptop first i had to
establish the design elements that were
nested
i figured that it had to be a fully
self-contained system
including the compute hardware the
familiar clamshell
interface of the screen keyboard
trackpad
and sufficient onboard power to run for
a reasonable length of time
away from an out so it was clear from
the outset that the challenges of
delivering power
and removing heat were going to require
some relatively extreme solutions
additionally to keep costs low most
items would either be used or salvaged
from
e-waste the smallest threadripper
compatible board i could locate
was the micro atx asrock
x399m tai chi which i picked up used
for the processor the current price to
performance trade-off
favored the amd threadripper 1950 x
16 core 32 thread 180 watt tdp
processor again picked up used for the
critical
cooling components i looked at the
server world selecting a dynatron a28 1u
passive
epic heatsink which is also compatible
with the mounting points of the str4
socket
and twin delta 101 2 hh blower fans
some additional heat pipe small fans
power delivery was one of the trickiest
parts of the build
i needed a lot of juice in as little
space as possible
i looked at power stations those giant
power banks
with ac outlets but between the size of
the components plus converting to ac
only to convert back to dc with the then
onboard laptop power supply
this just got too bulky and inefficient
i looked into custom battery packs but
few went to the amperage ranges i was
looking for
and i needed to work out a charging
solution
so i looked at usb-c power delivery
power banks and spoofers that called for
up to 20 volts from the usbc power
delivery system
this could have worked and i almost went
with five zender
super tank power banks in parallel
these support simultaneous pass-through
charging with
100 watts in and 60 watts out
so 5 times 60 watts was 300 watts out
and that would give some overhead to
charge the batteries which could accept
100 watts
in at the same time if they'd been
depleted before plugging
ultimately i went with six del power
companion
18 000 milliamp hour power banks
these are designed to go in between your
dell power brick
and dell laptop topping up the power
companion's battery when you're plugged
in
and keeping the laptop chugging along
longer when you're unplugged
importantly these can deliver 90 watts
well plugged in and 65 watts unplugged
so six times 65 watts
is 390 watts total which is near the max
400 watts of the hd plex dc atx power
supply
this is all fed by two dell 330 watt
laptop
power supplies you might have noticed
the rca wires on the front
these are for spoofing the power
companions that they're being charged by
a dell
adapter or telling them that they're
charging a dell thing
red to red connects one of the power
brick's communication
pins to all of the power companions
inputs
saying it's a dell oem charger the power
companions
seem to pass through power but not
charge themselves if this signal is not
present
white to black connects the power brick
outputs back to their inputs
this is necessary for a battery only
startup
for the power companions to stay active
otherwise they'll shut down after
several
if started via ac power they seem to
keep running indefinitely
even without the loopback signal runtime
on battery is determined by
power capacity divided by usage
the six power companions are 18 000
milliamp hours
which works out to 66.6 watt hours
times six that's 399.6 watt hours total
watt hour capacity is as it sounds
around 400 watt hours together means
these can pump out around 400 watts for
around an hour
supposing their discharge rate supports
this
at full tilt say running a benchmark or
rendering a video
between the 180 watt tdp of the 1950x
the gpu screen and other components dc
conversion and efficiency
and fans that can themselves draw a few
to several watts
let's say we're at 280 watts total so
399.6 watt hours divided by
280 watts of constant draw equals
theoretically around 1.43 hours on
battery
at full processor utilization maybe
around an hour
if it was a very gpu intensive load as
well
and for less compute intensive tasks the
battery run time could extend
the lengthiest part of the project was
building the case and laying
out all the components i repurposed an
hp
media center pc case effectively
shortening it to around
two inches to accommodate the
motherboard io
ram and heatsinks and salvaged some
other parts from an alienware
m18x other key components are
corsair lpx ddr4 3600 megahertz which
fit the bill of being low profile and
matching the motherboard's top ram speed
spec
as well as a zotek gtx 1050 ti
a gpu mining riser in order to mount the
gpu horizontally
an 18.3 inch portable 4k monitor and
panel mount jacks for hdmi and many
sketchy hacksaw cuts later
we have a threadripper laptop now if i
had any sense i would have gone with the
ryzen 9 39 50x
which has similar horsepower at a lower
tdp but this is still quite expensive
for the processor itself
and i just wanted to say thread ripper
laptop
some clevo based builds already used the
3950x
processor which would outpace the 1950x
if it could attain its full tdp but alas
the 3950x is locked into eco mode
reducing the many core performance below
that of the unfettered 1950x
which coincidentally makes this the
fastest laptop
in the world i haven't had a chance to
do much with it yet
a quick xmp profile application to take
the ram up to the 3600 megahertz
boot into bionic pop and blender bmw
classroom benchmark session things are
looking good so far
and i expect this will be my video
editing machine for the foreseeable
future
there is obviously room for improvement
after i ditched a 16x to 16x pcie
ribbon cable i was able to mount the
blower fans lower than expected
and thus can drop the height of the palm
rest to be more consistent with the
height
of the m18x chassis the spiral supports
from
fans can probably be throttled down at
idle while there are low temps for a bit
quieter operation
and i need to run some extended
benchmarks to see if the system is
really tapping into
the additional heat pipes and fins if
you made it this far
thanks for checking this project out and
let me know what you'd like to see it do
or thoughts on how it should evolve in
the future
if you're thinking about tackling a
project like this on your own
a parts list is supplied below
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so
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wow
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you