PC makers are starting to ship laptops featuring Intel’s 8th-gen Intel Core “Kaby Lake Refresh” processors. But if you’re having trouble finding one with the exact specs you’re looking for, here’s an unusual option: you can pick up a barebones Clevo model for $669 and outfit it with memory, storage, and an OS on your own.
The Clevo N240WU barebone series laptop is basically a full-fledged PC, complete with a 14 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel matte LCD display and an Intel Core i7-8550U quad-core processor. But it’s missing the components mentioned above.
It features HDMI, VGA, mic, headphone, and Ethernet jacks as well as a USB 3.1 Type-C port and full-sized USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. There’s also an SD card reader.
Under the hood, the laptop has a 2.5 inch bay for a hard drive or SSD and support for an M.2 2280 SATA SSD or a PCIe Gen3 x4 SSD. There are two SODIMM slots with support for up to 32GB of DDR4-2133 or DDR4-2400 memory.
The laptop measures about 13.4″ x 9.5″ x 0.9 and weighs about 4 pounds.
Clevo is a Taiwanese PC manufacturer that sells some laptops under its own name, but the company also sells barebones systems like this to system builders including Origin PC, System76, Falcon Northwest who want to customize the laptops and sell them for niche markets such as PC gamers or Linux enthusiasts.
You don’t often find a barebones laptop sold direct-to-consumers like this, but it’s an intriguing option.
If you’d rather buy the same laptop already equipped with everything you need to get started, that’s an option too. Amazon is selling a Prostar Clevo N240WU model with the same chassis, display, and processor plus memory, storage, and NVIDIA GTX 1060 graphics for $899 and up.
Update: Okay, that deal turned out to be slightly too good to be true. That $899 model features Intel UHD 620 graphics, not NVIDIA GTX 1060.
No displayport?
No displayport?!?!!?!??!!?
I’d be pretty interested if they had a 12.5″ screen option, especially at that resolution.
Too bad you can’t cram your own gtx m1080 in there
Who actually offers that feature and where would you even get your own gtx m1080?
I love the concept of a barebones laptop. The only thing I would change with this one is to get rid of the VGA port.
Another thing that would be nice is to have some choices in Keyboard layout. If they’re going to position this towards Linux users, it would be nice to have an optional keyboard layout that puts the Control key in the traditional location for Unix keyboards (where the Caps Lock key is on an ANSI layout keyboard).
I doubt you’ll see that CapsLock/Ctrl change in a mainstream laptop, but you can easily do that with autohotkeys in windows or x/ebindkeys in linux. In fact I’m doing it.
Yeh that’s howI do it on normal keyboards. I’ve designed and built a few homemade keyboards, and I’ve written the firmware to work that way
Wow. $899 for 1060 gtx is pretty damn good price.
Actually Brad, I think the title in Amazon is a mistake. I can’t find this laptop with 1060 gtx config anywhere else and other than the title, there’s no mention of 1060 gtx in the description.
Correct, they did correct the listing to Intel UHD 620. Brad needs to update this.
Looks like the amazon link was updated to read:
Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 620
I also posted the question and the seller confirms it’s just Intel graphics. Looks like false advertising in the title. Boo.
Of course that was too good to be true.
VGA Port?
For business use cases, is my guess. Lots of VGA monitors and projectors still in use.
While that is certainly true, I don’t think they’re going to get too many corporate orders for these laptops. Most companies that need laptops order from large reputable companies that offer fleet-orders with very attractive long-term service plans.
What about students?
Are students in frequent need of VGA connectors?