The Asus ROG Ally is a great portable PC gaming device in its own right: a gorgeous Full HD display and excellent performance, all in a sleek, lightweight form factor. However, a modder sought to improve its design and added an additional screen.
You can find the full project on GitHub, courtesy of modder Kira Patel (YesItsKira), as they describe the process of selecting the 7-inch display and connecting it to the system. The modder had to remove the extra HDMI port and headphone jack, use a USB Type C compatible dock to connect the monitor to the system, and 3D print several pieces to connect and fix the screen to the ROG ally correctly.
The screen itself is a WIMAXIT M728, which is a 7-inch IPS LCD touch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution. The Type-C dock was used as a replacement for this project because the screen typically needs HDMI and USB cables to connect. As for the 3D printed parts, you'll need a new back cover for the system, a case to house the screen, and a 360-degree hinge mount to fold the screen against the screen.
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Modifying is always a fascinating and fun task.
This additional display would be useful for multitasking such as playing games with one screen while taking care of any productivity work, streaming movies or browsing the internet with the other. If you emulate, this would be especially useful for playing DS or even Wii U titles that take advantage of dual touchscreens.
Besides that, it's interesting to see hobbyists take on projects like these and modify systems. Gaming laptops are quite malleable in that sense, as they are essentially mini PCs, which makes them much easier to expand in this way. As demonstrated by user YesItsKira, you can buy cheap parts online and 3D print the rest.
Hopefully, these types of mods will become more popular as we see the best PC gaming laptops gain popularity and increase market demand. Not just dual displays, but also CPU and GPU upgrades, as well as RAM and storage upgrades.
Not only to overcome the inherent limitations of these systems, but also to allow buyers to purchase the lower-end versions and then upgrade without paying an arm and a leg for minimal spec increases. Also just to see how far these mods can go in general, which is always entertaining in its own right.
