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Ben Heck’s Xbox One S Laptop Episode -- Episode 271

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element14's The Ben Heck Show

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Ben assembles an Xbox One S Laptop using parts from a previous teardown of an Xbox One S. The new laptop includes 3D printed parts, an aluminum base cut with a CNC machine, a new power supply to power both the Xbox and LCD screen, and smaller fans powered by a rigged circuit using a Tip 102.

 

The major components of the Xbox One S are a Blue Ray Drive, Power Supply Unit, a Motherboard, and a Hard Drive. Ben takes the motherboard and scans an image of it in Adobe Illustrator. He uses laser patterns to knock holes in the board. This gives him as many options for mounting this as possible.

He puts together all the Xbox One components. He's extended the power cable of the blue ray drive, he's moved the hard drive, he's put the front panel PCB at a right angle and ported out the buttons (eject, bind, and power), he's moved the wifi module to an end degree angle, and he's using the new short HDMI cable to connect to a screen.

He replaces the power supply with a more powerful unit as the added power is needed for the LCD screen. He also replaces the large fans with two smaller fans for his laptop. By keeping the control line, the system can throttle the fans up and down as needed by heat load. To do this he rigs up a circuit using a Tip 102.

The 12 V fans are wired in parallel, 12 V comes from the console and goes into the positive wire, and the negative wire from the fans goes into the collector of the Tip 102 NPN Darlington Transistor allowing you to switch the current on and off. The control line from the Xbox goes through a 1K resistor and into the base of the Tip 102. Finally, the emitter of the Tip 102 goes into ground. The Tip 102 acts as the circuitry inside the fan did allowing the fan to turn on with their speed controlled by the system.

Ben cuts the aluminum base for the Xbox One S laptop with a CNC machine. He can then attach the 3D printed wall sections to the aluminum. Next he attaches the power supply and the blue ray drive to the aluminum base. He then makes adjustments to allow the motherboard to fit.

Before closing the inside off with 3D printed parts, Ben goes over what's inside. There's a new power supply with 13.9 amps, a blue ray player, a wifi module, hard drive, wireless controller module, and a control panel. There's a driver board for the LCD and a heat sink for the APU.

Parents

  • Great job!  Really enjoyed this episode.

     

    Suggestions for improvement from me would be to put a keyboard onto where you normally expect one to be on a laptop.  Although not really necessary with most console games it would still help write messages quickly and easily. 

     

    If maybe a full size keyboard would seem a tad overkill, how about a mini one and for the extra room how about inserting a working xbox controller on the surface as well?  It would give it a real arcade feel to it.  Obviously the thumb sticks and button height would present a problem when closing the screen, but perhaps some sort of spring loaded pop up function would take the entire controller from its position sat inside the base to onto the surface to play with.  The triggers would also have to be replaced somehow to be surface mounted, which seems like a real problem, but its an idea nevertheless!

Comment

  • Great job!  Really enjoyed this episode.

     

    Suggestions for improvement from me would be to put a keyboard onto where you normally expect one to be on a laptop.  Although not really necessary with most console games it would still help write messages quickly and easily. 

     

    If maybe a full size keyboard would seem a tad overkill, how about a mini one and for the extra room how about inserting a working xbox controller on the surface as well?  It would give it a real arcade feel to it.  Obviously the thumb sticks and button height would present a problem when closing the screen, but perhaps some sort of spring loaded pop up function would take the entire controller from its position sat inside the base to onto the surface to play with.  The triggers would also have to be replaced somehow to be surface mounted, which seems like a real problem, but its an idea nevertheless!

Children