Turning Laptop Motherboard into Home Server

[afrobacon]

Long story short my laptop was destroyed. The board still posts; the OS is not (so I assume the HDD is dead). I had this eureka idea when I thought to turn it into a low power web server for playing around with.

My question is: What issues will I have plugging in a new SSD, keyboard or other components? Is it just a simple matter of finding the right adapters and ensuring the power adapter can handle the load or is it more complicated than that?

 

[USAFRet]

Long story short my laptop was destroyed. The board still posts; the OS is not (so I assume the HDD is dead). I had this eureka idea when I thought to turn it into a low power web server for playing around with.

My question is: What issues will I have plugging in a new SSD, keyboard or other components? Is it just a simple matter of finding the right adapters and ensuring the power adapter can handle the load or is it more complicated than that?

The main issues the power and display.
Anything else is mostly standard ports.
SATA for the drive, USB for the mouse/keyboard.

 

[Scottray]

I can think of 2 issues with trying to do this:
1. Laptop mobo's are configured for that particular laptop. You'd have to figure out how to custom set up standoffs to mount it it in a desktop case.
2. This is the big one - the ports are significantly different. You'd need to figure out how to power it on. Connect up secondary laptop boards and cables, such as, USB, power, drives, video out, etc.

This may be a good tinkering project. But not easy/practical.

 

[afrobacon]

These answers came much quicker than expected. I might push this project off a bit after getting a chance to look inside the case. As many PC's as I've put together laptops still make me nervous and this is unfamiliar territory. I'll probably toss what I have and pick up a motherboard with a better CPU in the near future for something to play with.