Recommend a DIY-able laptop

iSeezAll

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Alright so i already did some research on my own, not much actually, through the web, word of mouth and over here too.

i'm planning to get a ultrabook/laptop, for programming/web browsing/normal useage in uni for years and that's it (no gaming at all). Specs doesn't have to be high-end, as i'm trying to keep within my budget of $700 ~ $1200. So for that budget i'm already more or less leaning towards the secondary market and DIY whatever upgrades i can myself.

specs that i'm looking for:
i5 or maybe i7?
battery life whatever the best i can get?
as light as possible
12'' to 13''
upgrade-able

Upgrade-able as in storage, ram or anything internally that i can do by myself, not looking for any boutique pc brands here knowing well that any laptop from them will well exceed my budget lol.

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Saw most posts on dell latitude and lenovo thinkpad diy upgrades, question for the old birds here, will a macbook pro 2012 self diy to 16gb and 500SSD suffice in terms of processing speed for light programming and productivity work in 2018?
 
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ZrE0_Cha0s

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Oh I though u mean DIY-able laptop means like Sager or AS that kind.

But all these are side upgrades not said a full upgrade. For Mac book Pro 2012 I think I can check storage, but ain't sure of rams since apple have made quite hard to do a few upgrades.
 

iSeezAll

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Oh I though u mean DIY-able laptop means like Sager or AS that kind.

But all these are side upgrades not said a full upgrade. For Mac book Pro 2012 I think I can check storage, but ain't sure of rams since apple have made quite hard to do a few upgrades.

haha dont know about sager but for AS their helix base model already exceed my budget and the battery juice that it comes with isn't that great

as for the mbp 2012 non retina its upgradeable for ram, storage at least thats what i know. I just wanna know if it's operating speed will suffice for minimal programming and productivity in 2018.
 

iSeezAll

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watzup_ken

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You need to be mindful that thin laptops tend to achieve their form factor by soldering components to the mainboard. Things like RAM in particular are usually soldered on to save space.

Take the Acer Swift 3 as an example, you may find some sale bringing the laptop to about 1.2K. My sister got it cheaper at below 1.1K at the start of the year with Intel i5 8250U, 8GB ram, 512GB SSD and MX 150 graphic card.

It is slim and light to me, and if you Google Acer Swift 3 teardown, you can see that the ram is soldered. Only thing that can change is the SSD.
 

watzup_ken

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It's on my list but for that amount of battery life i'm getting and without OS is already SGD 1384.00. And pretty sure if i just get the stock model SGD 1265.00 and DIY upgrade myself the ram and OS will void the warranty so also not worth it imo.

Already out of budget.

I don't think it will void the warranty. Aftershock is more about DIY. I have bought their gaming laptop previously and upgraded the ram, SSD and even cooling myself. No issues with warranty then. You can give them a call to confirm.

Anyway, the base model is no different from the customized specs less the OS.
 
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