OCZ Avenger AG2 DIY Barebones Notebook Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,705 words · ~8 min read
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so this is my sister's laptop and um as
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you can see it's seen better days the
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actual problem with it is uh something to do with the the the power delivery
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inside it's causing the the AC adapter
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to short out and long story short the shell is pretty much useless at this
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point so it was either throw it away or
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find a more creative solution now it just happens NC just brought in a whole
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bunch of these ocz DIY notebooks so uh
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this one is the Avenger ag2 and it
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happens to be about the same age here I'll flip this upside down so you can
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actually read it it happens to be about the same age as the laptop that I'm
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trying to fix so what I figured I'd do is grab one of these at a good price and
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then just transplant all of the parts from the old laptop into the new shell
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so we're going to see how it goes and I'm going to just unbox the Avenger ag2
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for you today if I could get the tape to break here we go so I actually got the
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pink model um partly because I like pink
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and partly because it's for my sister how much of which of those reasons is uh
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how much each of them is actually contributing to the purchase you'll never
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know okay notebook computer enjoy with
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me this is very this is a very odd package for an
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ocz like barebones computer but um I
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guess I can't really complain here why don't we go over the basic specs so you
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can see on the side here this is model M70 r-p it has a modem okay it um has a
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four cell battery it has a DVD writer
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okay it has oh these are optional so
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optional webcam Bluetooth and antenna so
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I know that this one does have Bluetooth but I don't think it comes with a
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wireless card so I guess that means it just comes with an antenna very strange
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uh okay so it has a 12 .1 in screen and
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it has uh let's see it need okay it requires CPU hard drive and RAM so
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that's what I'm going to pull out of the old laptop cameraman's phone's going off
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he's turning it off that's very polite of him usually it's my phone that goes
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off in the middle of our uh filming sessions but no no cameraman pulled a
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Linus today all right so let's have a look at the wow hey this is pretty nice
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so the package here this is an ocz DIY notebook so they include everything you
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need to do it yourself okay so you've got your your notebook power cord your
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AC power adapter you've got um what's in
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here so you've got a little microfiber cloth for cleaning off the screen or
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what have you and then
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um looks like uh looks like an isolator
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for the bottom of the hard drive to make sure that it doesn't short out on anything I'm guessing okay you got some
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thermal compound very nice very nice and
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you got a couple screws oh hard drive screws there you go so it takes standard
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2 and 1 half inch hard drives modem cable I'm sure you've seen one of those before or like a foam cable okay then in
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here we've got some more stuff we've got a the cheesiest looking driver CD I've
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seen in quite a while so four Windows Vista I'm hoping this thing's going to
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run Windows 7 for her but if not I can always throw Vista on it all right uh
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sometimes Vista drivers will work with seven oh well whatever I've given away
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this CD key now power DVD is included
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Nero seven Essentials are also included
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and then yeah there's the driver CD concise oh man concise users guide look
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at this thing concise wow so uh I'm
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guessing there's a lot more in here than you would typically find in a user's
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guide like I my my guess is that it's going to include instructions on how to
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actually put this thing together and so far I actually I don't see that
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happening here no no instructions on how
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to put it together they really take this DIY Thing
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seriously uh so they show you how to install a wireless card but other than
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that nothing about the CPU or the RAM or anything okay well that's fine I can
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handle that then we've got the um this is a four cell battery all right and
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then we find a little heat pipe cooler module so I'm going to assume that's for
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the CPU and that there's going to be some kind of a fan that blows over that
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so why don't we put this aside for now and then I'll get the actual
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notebook out here now I realized this is a bit of a downgrade for my sister
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versus the one that she was using before it's a 15in whoa there go all the screws good
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thing I'm not trying to put this back together
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whoops okay I'll just put that there it had like an 8600 uh GT mobile GPU in
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it now I have no use for that whatsoever okay let's pull up the notebook moving
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on here it is that is like that is pink
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that is as Pink as I've seen in a while for a pink notebook all right let's get
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the tape off here that's some pretty solid
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tape all right wow even through the blue
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plastic that is like the pinkest
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notebook I've ever seen oh wow this is really hard to open
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see I really should just have a knife on my keychain if anyone wants to get me
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like a Christmas present I need a knife for my keychain all right wow so let's
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take off the plastic oh actually why don't I leave it on because to prevent
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damage to the high gloss style finish top cover follow these guidelines okay
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remove the protective color let's take off remove the protective color slowly
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and carefully do not forcibly tear off the protective covers this may damage
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the surface do not use pointed object oh okay I think I have to actually open up
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the notebook first to take off the tabs on the other side aha yes there they are
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oo this is actually kind of nice looking so uh this is probably going to take me
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like a minute or two and I'm I apologize for that but I've got to take off all of
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these uh all these little tapy things in order to actually get at the notebook
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itself and I'm obviously not going to be able to turn it on cuz I still have to
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build this thing but we'll still be able to have a look at the um at the notebook
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and have a look at the keyboard and you
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know what what the overall fit and finish of it looks like which could be
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very helpful for anyone who wants to grab one of these cuz they're available
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in five different colors I think there's a yellow white blue black and the pink
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one that we have here all right still working on
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this oh I did it again I've had a couple people complain about my little habit of
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coming to myself while I unbox things but it is hard to resist I'll have you
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know okay there we go we finally got it sort of un un glossy package fin this
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thing is pink okay so let's have a look
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at what we've got in terms of IO on this side we've got a Kensington lock a modem
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One USB port uh we've got our DVD drive
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then around the front we've got our headphones microphone and spit if wow
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that's kind of random then we have an SD card as well as our indicator lights for
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wireless battery and whatever else that is then we have two more USB ports on
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this side a firewire port VGA out this is a bit of an older model so no HD HDMI
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or DVI then we have gigabit as well as power in and around the back we find
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where the battery plugs in so I'm going to have to take this whole thing apart
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and install all the hardware inside it but um yeah until then all we can really
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do is have a look at the keyboard keyboard layout is actually very nice
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this is a little bit high so it's um hitting the space bar isn't the easiest
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thing in the world but with my sort of smallish hands I can very comfortably
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reach all of the keys on this keyboard they haven't done anything stupid like
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uh like an abominably short shift key or anything like that you've got a proper
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two space uh backspace key all of your
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function keys are things that sort of make sense brightness up brightness down
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volume up volume down all that kind of stuff the uh fit and finish of it
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actually overall seems very nice there's not a whole lot of flex to the Shell
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itself I mean there's a little bit but once you put the battery in there it's going to be pretty darn good um that
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pretty much does it it's a widescreen LCD and there is the webcam that the
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cameraman is so kindly showing to us and thank you for checking out my
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unboxing of the ocz Avenger ag2
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barebones DIY notebook