Build Your Own Laptop:GATHER THE PARTS

Keep in mind that, unlike their desktop brethren, barebones laptops are not entirely "barebones." No matter which model you go with, it will likely come with a few built-in components that can't easily be swapped out—most notably, the motherboard and the optical drive. You still get a decent dose of DIY from the parts you can assemble yourself, however, including the CPU, memory, graphics card, hard drive, and wireless card. Most of these components are commonly sold as upgrades to pre-built laptops and are easy to find at competitive prices. Shopping at TigerDirect.com, we picked up 3GB of DDR2 667 SO-DIMM memory (the maximum amount the C90s accepts)—a $44.99 2GB stick and a $24.99 1GB stick. We also got a $199.99 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6700 CPU, a $159.99 160GB Seagate Momentus 7200.2 hard drive, and a $109.99 OEM version of Windows Vista Home Premium.

Rounding up the remaining parts, however, was not as easy: We found only a few online vendors who sold the Wi-Fi card and MXM graphics card we needed for our C90s build. For less-common components such as these, you should consult with the dealer that sells you the barebones laptop to make sure they're available. On that note, we turned to Asus for our 256MB nVidia GeForce 8600M graphics card, which the company sells separately for $90. After a lot of Web searching, we located a hard-to-find $32.50 Intel 4965AGM Mini-PCIe Wi-Fi card at Mwave.com.

Finally, before you hit the purchase button, be sure to carefully check that each component is compatible with the mother-board included in your barebones case. For instance, though the C90s' Intel 945G Express chipset sports the LGA775 CPU socket, it doesn't support newer quad-core processors. Also, note details like slot types: Standard video cards won't fit in an MXM slot, and the C90s uses a newer Mini-PCI Express (PCIe) slot for its Wi-Fi card, rather than a more-common Mini-PCI card. You'll need a 2.5-inch-wide, 9.5mm-thick Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive—older IDE drives won't work here.

All told, our C90s and its installable components cost around $1,352—not a bad figure for what would soon become a reasonably powerful gaming notebook.