X2100 August update

Hi everyone!

Apologies for a lack of update the past month. I’ve been busy working on the laptops and finalising hardware issues.

Hardware updates

The SD card issue from the last post is fully resolved. The SD card reader can be fully read and detected by the UEFI BIOS (can even boot from it).

The biggest issue currently is that the motherboard has poor support for 4-cell flat batteries. Please go for 6-cell or 9-cell genuine fresh batteries. My personal recommendation are lightly used genuine 6/9 cell batteries instead of eBay batteries which tends to be non-genuine.

Power consumption & chargers

As the laptop tend to draw a huge current on boot, please only use a 90W original charger (included in the box for full builds) or a 65W charger with a 6/9-cell battery. I’ve also been personally investigating a viable 65W small USB PD charger. For now, any 65W charger seems to work fine but at 25W PL1, the machine seems to exhibit hiccuping (charging status alternates between on/off rapidly). At <15W, the machine seems to charge just fine.

A preliminary and conservative estimate on a 9-cell on 25W PL1 gets about 5-6hrs on medium brightness without much BIOS tweaking (slight undervolt etc). However, there are people who’ve reported about 7-8hrs on 15W PL1 on medium to low brightness doing basic web browsing etc.

The machine runs perfectly on a 5W BIOS TDP limit so for those who’re conscious about power consumption, considering using software options to limit the TDP on battery to a much smaller value. At 5W TDP, the fan is practically silent even on full load. The CPU stays at ~60C with a room temperature of 25C during stress testing. An 84WHr 9-cell should last at least 8hrs assuming an average 10W power draw (much less with a lower TDP).

Screen reinfocements

The screen is fully reinforced with epoxied, custom cut 1mm thick 5052 aluminium right-angled bars. They should give a much better support to the frame of the panel and should reduce screen flex significantly.

You can also see how much of the inside is shaved off in the pictures and how all the antennas are routed. The panels are also fixed in place with soft rubber (the clear blocks).

This should be the best case scenario for an ultra-thin bezel modded out of a decade-old chassis short of redesigning the entire display assembly.

Shipping

I have already begun shipping out machines. I’ll contact you personally if you’ve ordered from me. Feel free to hit me up on the progress of your machine.

New orders

Once all the backlogs are fulfilled, I’ll resume taking new orders. I have about 20 more boards once the backlogs are cleared. As there are quite a bit of backlogs, I would like to finish them first and collect feedbacks in order to improve new builds.