Build Your Own Laptop:Finishing Your Laptop Build

SOFTWARE TIME
The only thing your machine should be lacking at this point is some critical software. To add the Windows OS, power down the notebook, turn it back on, and press F2 to enter the BIOS setup screen. Select System Information to confirm your processor speed and memory amount. Then press Esc to return to the main menu, move to the Boot screen, and adjust the Boot Priority setting to put the DVD drive first in the boot order so that you can install the operating system. Place the Windows Vista Home Premium DVD in the drive, start your system, and follow the instructions to install the operating system.

Once Vista's installed, you're still not quite at the finish line: You also need to install the drivers for your notebook's components. Insert the C90s driver CD and install the appropriate drivers, starting with Intel Chipset Inf Update Program. (This enables your notebook's motherboard chipset.) Work your way down the driver list in order, then pop over to the Utilities tab and install Asus' Hotkey Utility, Turbo Gear overclocking program, and any other software you'd like to use.

Finally, open Control Panel, click System and Maintenance, and select "Check your computer's Windows Experience Index base score." Running this test will enable Vista's Aero Glass transparency on your desktop.

Congratulations. Your hot new gaming notebook is now ready to rock.

REVIEWING THE RESULTS
In the feature department, the C90s excels with its large, comfortable keyboard, a bright display with an adjustable Webcam, and a cutting-edge collection of ports that includes HDMI and external Serial ATA (eSATA). There's also the nifty Turbo Gear option, which lets you overclock the notebook's CPU up to 10 percent (in our case, up to 2.93GHz). The overclocking utility is much more stable than when we first tested the fully configured version of the C90s; we didn't have any of the blue-screen crashes we saw in our initial review.

As for performance, the notebook's Futuremark PCMark05 score of 5,823 and Cinebench 9.5 score of 893 are in line with pricier performance laptops we've seen. Gaming was a mixed bag, however. While the C90s turned in an excellent 49.2 frames per second (fps) on Company of Heroes at its native 1,680x1,050 resolution (with anti-aliasing on), F.E.A.R. performance was less impressive: We managed just 48fps at 1,024x768, and a poky 18fps at native resolution. These scores reflect the limitations of the notebook's 256MB nVidia GeForce 8600M card MXM graphics, which is certainly not as speedy as the high-end graphics cards you can find in retail machines. In fact, our card is currently the fastest MXM model available, and we wouldn't count on a more-powerful upgrade option coming out any time soon: Though MXM technology has been available for about three years now, it hasn't received much support from manufacturers. That said, these scores won't thrill die-hard gamers, like other notebooks in its price class, our system can certainly handle newer games played at moderate resolutions with the details set to high.

The C90s demands a few other compromises—namely, a protruding heat sink that adds extra heft, and a power-hungry desktop processor that runs hot and quickly drains battery life. These are issues you may not encounter with other barebones cases, especially those that use mobile CPUs.

WAS IT WORTH IT?
So is the effort spent building your own notebook worthwhile? If you have a bit more than an entry-level budget, you're not a hard-core gamer, and you're willing to spend as much time searching the Web as you would actually building your PC, the answer is yes. In terms of power-versus-price, there's no doubt our C90s trumped the retail competition. There aren't many sub-$1,400 notebooks out there that can clock in at 2.93GHz, and at press time, comparable systems with GeForce 8600M graphics were typically running about $250 to $300 more than our build—and those notebooks had slower processors, smaller hard drives, and less memory. Though the parts you can put in a barebones laptop are limited compared to those you can find for a desktop, you essentially get as much variety as you would when configuring a pre-built system through a big-name or boutique vendor.

The biggest reward, of course, is being able to show off your new notebook and proclaim, "I built this myself."