Question

Here in the UK, there is not much variety of barebones laptops available. I only seem to come across the Clevo M760TUN or M760TG models. I noticed that in the United States, there are many different models and brands available. So are there any companies that can dispatch to the UK?

Answer 1

the barebones notebook market in Europe (and indeed in the UK) is rather non-existent.

you can get pretty much any barebone (Asus, MSI, Alienware, etc.) on ebay, though you'll have to cope with a US keyboard.

Answer 2

You may be interested in what I wrote here.

Can I Build a Laptop From Scratch

Yes!

My company is a UK OEM and I assemble laptops (not promoting my company here, just general advice!), You want to Google ODM (Original Design Manufacturer) and try to find resellers of the chassis.

It is unlikely as a individual that you will be able to buy direct, however if you find out the chassis and model numbers, you can Google and try to find a reseller.

Typically, you buy the chassis that has the screen, graphics, motherboard, keyboard and mouse in it and you just assemble cpu, memory, optical, one or two extension cards (Such as wireless) and the software.

That being said, I can tell you that it when comparing to off the shelf laptops, it is near impossible to beat the low end models, some are actually sold below cost and subsidised by the software that is included, however on the very high end models, you can usually save a lot (up to, or over 50%)

A downside though is support. Typically on the laptops I sell, it is very hard to get driver support from the manufacturers, until Nvidia released the GPU drivers for everyone, I was stuck with the version that the manufacturer sent with the model which was annoying... there are some other downsides, but typically you learn to work around them.

The honest truth is - Prices suck! by the time you add everything together, you will be paying about £150 more for pretty much any laptop in the <£500 price range.

After this, you can expect to make money on very high end systems, but there are many downsides such as what I wrote above.

You would probably be better off looking for a laptop on sale and upgrading it - Being serious here, even if you replace everything (CPU, Memory, Hard drive) It can sometimes be cheaper than buying barebones and you get driver support from the manufacturer.

If you do manage to find anyone in America willing to send, remember, unless they cheat the system, you will be paying an awful lot of tax.... and it would probably end up costing you a lot more than just buying a system here.

Sorry, I know this is probably not the answer you wanted... but just have to say these points!