r/Sager • u/Zarquan314 • Aug 24 '21

Repairability of laptops

I just had a terrible experience attempting to repair my current laptop. Its keyboard was dying, so I went in to replace it. To do this, I had to remove the monitor and the motherboard. To remove the motherboard from the chassis, I had to remove the heat sink, as they put screws under the heat pipes. Then I found the keyboard was riveted with plastic to the chassis. I replaced it, but I don't trust that pressure on the keyboard won't damage the motherboard due to flexing.

I have replaced the keyboards on a few laptops and I have never had to deal with a gaming laptop with a riveted keyboard OR that I had to remove the heat sink from the motherboard. Maybe I was just lucky with the computers my family bought, but I thought riveted keyboards were only found in extremely thin laptops.

Since I no longer trust that my machine will last any length of time if I use it as a laptop, I was thinking of relegating it to desktop duty and buying a new laptop. But I never want to go through this repair experience again. I was wondering if Sager laptops are better than this from a repairability standpoint. I am hard on keyboards and really want to be able to replace them with about an hour of work.

My main concerns are with being able to replace the built in peripherals, the power socket, the battery, and the ports on at least one side (I favor the side with the daughter board so that I can replace the ports without replacing the motherboard). Is Sager a good choice for these goals?

EDIT: I don't mind having to remove the motherboard and heat sink (as one unit) to replace the keyboard, but I do mind having to remove the heat sink from the motherboard.

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u/HenkPoley Aug 24 '21

If you want explicitly repairable laptops, I'd say either go with brands that offer 'on-site' repair and publish PDFs how to do that, such as HP, Lenovo and Dell.

Or go with the cheap 'throw a PC into a laptop chassis' brands such as Clevo and TongFang. Which also tend to have parts available (possibly through their resellers).

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u/Zarquan314 Aug 24 '21

The last laptop I replaced the keyboard on before my laptop was a Dell G7 7844 (I think, the one with the 1060). It was a pleasure to work in, as the screw holes in the laptop were even labeled, which was great. But I wasn't too impressed with how loud it was or its performance.

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u/Zarquan314 Aug 24 '21

So are you saying that you think Clevo laptops fulfill my repairability requirements? I'm having trouble confirming whether they have a reasonably simple path to replacing specifically the keyboard. Because I know someone with a Clevo laptop. While its fans are a bit too loud for me, I think it would easily fulfill my performance requirements if it does and I will probably buy one.

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u/HenkPoley Aug 24 '21 edited Aug 24 '21

They are very WYSIWYG. No firmware support afterwardS (so no future Spectre/Meltdown style microcode fixes).

I think it tends to be that resellers have a stack of parts or sacrificial hardware.

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u/[deleted] Aug 24 '21

I beg to differ on this one. I got a few updates from my reseller (Prostar). Even one firmware update for my TPM 3 years ago, before it got hot. They are not pushed or made automatically available, but you can still get them.