Upcycling broken laptops

First thing - try and fix it, and donate it to someone else! But if it’s beyond repair, there’s a bunch of things that you can do with individual parts.

This video from DIY Perks has a whole bunch of cool ideas for projects to do with parts from end-of-life laptops: Things you can make from old, dead laptops

• turn the speakers into portable speakers
• use the heatsink to cool high-power LEDs and make a lamp
• screen where the LCD is broken - use the rest of it with the soft diffused light, make a tracing backlight, or a false window
• or use the various bits from the display assembly
  • diffusion sheets to make a nice lamp
  • fresnel lenses to make another nice lamp
  • get creative with the acrylic and make a feature light
• if the screen is OK, turn it into a secondary display of some kind
• make a headset/comms mic from the laptop’s microphone
• storage drive
  • external drive in USB caddy if it’s working
  • a gimmicky tool cleaner
  • mirror to make an analog clock
  • turn the read/write head in to laser VU meter
• batteries
  • take the cells from the batteries into mini battery banks to power the other things
• webcams turned in to a security system