I've bought an over-engineered second hand laptop

[Ferd]

Not that over engineered, the cooling is sparse.

Look at a Dell Inspiron 9100/XPS Gen 1

You definitely know what’s up , I was about to comment how my laptop (same model , had it’s gpu fail and I had to bypass it ) . Build quality is meh at best , but hey if he enjoyes it , let it be .

I bought a 10 year old HP Pavilion G6. This was a very special over-engineered laptop. What makes this laptop special was its unimaginable sound quality. I have never heard any laptop or desktop sounds better than this one. So let's take a look at this excellent work of HP:

At first, it was in a very dirty condition, and shuts itself off due to temperature. So I cleaned the laptop completely, and changed the thermals with MX-4
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The fan was working loudly, WD-40 thankfully solved this issue
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This is the best part of the laptop. The sound chip:

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After a good cleaning it is ready for assembly:

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It is bundled with SRS Premium Software and built-in Altec Lansing speakers.
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And here is the final result:
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Hp Pavillion G6 was one of a kind brilliant laptop. I insist the Audiophiles to try this perfectly designed laptop for once. Especially if you have a nice quality headphones, you will get better results, and grasp what this machine was capable to.

Nice one , I always enjoy seeing old hardware being somewhat useful 10+ years later , but u and I know the sound quality isn’t that special. Good to have a nice dac , but there is a lot to sound fidelity than the Dac itself. Have fun , that’s what matters at the end.

 

[johnspack]

Ah jeez.. it's a pretty, and nice old laptop. It kicked butt in it's day!

 

[mclaren85]

Have fun , that’s what matters at the end.

Generally speaking I enjoy cleaning and fixing the old computers & hardwares. so it was really fun to brink this monster back in life!

 

[Bill_Bright]

This computer's sound quality couldn't match with the professional audio equipments since its Altec Lansing speakers have only about 15w of power.

Well, that's another common misconception. Power capability has nothing to do with sound "quality".

 

[OneMoar]

yall need to have your sarcasm detectors calibrated

 

[LabRat 891]

Looks like part of the 'equation' might be exceedingly short traces. Also looks like the audio chip is fairly well 'geographically' isolated on the mainboard.
I recall some of the common upgrades for Sound Blasters being OpAmp swaps; not impossible HP ended up picking out high quality low-cost parts coincidentally. Other than the believable audio quality, these laptops are near the bottom of the barrel on 'quality'. (I've worked on more than a few of the same and similar units)

 

[eazen]

I must honestly laugh at this as a true audiophile. A real audiophile will use a external dac, not inexpensive one, not this. Maybe it’s good, but it’s nothing special.

 

[andreaspujihar]

ah i remember my have neighbour have this but without radeon, he installed windows 10, idk why the volume very small and use idt to

 

[mclaren85]

After an extensive cleaning and re-pasting the thermals, temps reduced further. This machine is probably the 8th wonder of the world

 

[mclaren85]

Guys in its official specs page, it says input voltage should be 18,5V. But since I couldn't find a genuine charger, I'm using the 19v charger. Will it harm my laptops motherboard?

 

[Bill_Bright]

That "probably" is not enough of a difference to matter. But for sure, at least for the first couple weeks, I would not leave the charger connected unattended!. And I would fully discharge the battery, then plug the charger in. After about 30 minutes, I would grab hold of it. If too warm to handle comfortably continuously, you need to find a more suitable replacement.

 

[LabRat 891]

Guys in its official specs page, it says input voltage should be 18,5V. But since I couldn't find a genuine charger, I'm using the 19v charger. Will it harm my laptops motherboard?

No, not unless the replacement charger is junk; and then it wouldn't be because of the Voltage output rating.
Generally, +/-5% voltage tolerance is 'engineered in', and my experience shows most laptops rated 18-19.5V input will take 18-20V power bricks without a problem. (The exceptions have been firmware that refuses to charge the battery w/o a handshake of some kind to the charger.)