A $5 USB hub turned my broken laptop into a working desktop
Normally, once you break a laptop screen, the device is finished. This is what happened to my old laptop, which quickly ended up gathering dust. Then one day I realized that a simple $5 USB-C hub could bring it back to life with an external display.
When a laptop loses its screen, it loses its function
Screens and keyboards are the whole point of a laptop
The whole point of a laptop is that it’s a portable computer, with a battery, a physical keyboard, and a screen. When one of the three fails, even partially, you no longer have a reliable laptop, even if the internal hardware still works perfectly.
The screen on my old Lenovo Miix 510 2-in-1 kept cutting out intermittently, and as I tried to open the laptop to figure out why it wasn’t working, I ended up completely shattering the screen.
A huge black vertical bar appeared on the screen, rendering it useless. Technically speaking, I could still use the right part of the screen, but the experience wasn’t great. Replacing the screen on such an old laptop was out of the question, as the price of a replacement screen far exceeds the value of the device itself.
Unfortunately, the Miix 510’s I/O ports are as simple as possible, with a single USB-C port, a USB-A port, a headphone jack, and a charging port. There’s no HDMI or DisplayPort, and I wasn’t even sure if the laptop supported DP Alt mode for connecting to an external display using the correct adapter. So the laptop was shelved and sat unused for over a year.
A $5 USB-C hub turned my old laptop into a mini PC
It’s still a computer; it just needs an external screen
Powerful USB-C and Thunderbolt hubs are one of the coolest upgrades you can make to your laptop, but unfortunately the good ones can still cost a pretty penny. I didn’t even know if my laptop would support HDMI, so getting a $30-$40 USB-C hub just to test it was out of the question.
Instead, I turned my attention to AliExpress and purchased one of the cheapest USB-C hubs I could find. It’s equipped with HDMI, USB 3.0, Ethernet, USB-C PD (which my laptop doesn’t support), a microSD card slot, and an SD card reader.
I didn’t read the fine print and later realized that the Ethernet port was only 100 Mbps instead of Gigabit, and I’m pretty sure the USB 3.0 ports don’t achieve their advertised speeds either, but I’ll talk about that in a second. If you’re considering purchasing a USB-C hub, don’t be stingy; opt for something reliable from a reputable brand, like this UGREEN USB-C 5-in-1 hub.
The real test for my cheap USB-C hub (and whether the laptop would produce a picture) came when I plugged my monitor’s HDMI cable into the hub. Luckily, I was excited to see the screen come to life. With all these new I/O expansions on hand, it effectively meant that this old laptop could now serve as a functional mini PC.
I immediately loaded a USB stick with an image of an Ubuntu Linux server and, with the help of the screen, was able to go through the setup process without a hitch.
Technically, I could have tried installing Ubuntu without the screen, but the screen was broken in a rather inconvenient place, which would have made the whole process ten times more difficult than it needed to be, thanks to that little USB-C hub.
My old laptop is now a makeshift NAS
Old laptops make great NAS devices
Now that I had a working Ubuntu server on my old laptop, I set up SSH on the laptop so I could access it remotely from my PC.
After configuring the screen to not turn off when I close the lid, I no longer need an external monitor because my PC can now effectively control the laptop.
My original intention was to use the Ethernet port and USB ports to connect a few flash drives and turn the laptop into a NAS for backup storage and a media server, and that’s exactly what I did. Honestly, I used the USB drives just to see if I even wanted a NAS, and when I decided to, I quickly upgraded to a 6TB external hard drive.
At first I thought the USB drives were slowing down my file transfers, but once I got the hard drive I realized the 100 Mbps Ethernet port was the bottleneck.
That’s why I’m going to upgrade to an Acer USB-C hub with three USB 3.0 ports and Gigabit Ethernet. It lacks HDMI, but I don’t need it anymore anyway, and I’ll happily use the extra expansion ports for possible storage upgrades down the line.
Give your old laptop a new life
All it takes is a cheap USB-C hub
If you have an old laptop with a broken screen, you can do all kinds of cool things with it: it’s the perfect homelab starter kit.
Even if it has modest I/O like mine, you can expand it considerably with a simple USB-C hub. Once you have a way to connect a display and external controller or keyboard and mouse, you can turn it into a powerful NAS, a video game emulator for the living room, or a Minecraft server.
Why a Laptop with a Dead Screen is the Ultimate Starter Kit for Homelab
5 Ways to Reuse a Laptop with a Broken Screen
