# Before You Slabtop Your Laptop: A Brief Warning > PSA: Check if your laptop needs an LCD for POST before removing the screen. Learned this the hard way after 5 hours and a fried motherboard. Learn from my dumb mistakes. - Page: https://blog.chaoticgood.computer/content/notes/scratch/warning-about-slabtops - Author: Spencer Elkington - Published: 2024-03-03 - Updated: 2026-01-10 - Tags: projects/homelab, engineering/devops, writing/notes --- I recently had [a misadventure](https://bsky.app/profile/spencer.chaoticgood.computer/post/3kljmrvqd2u2q) while trying to [**slabtop**](https://www.theverge.com/22965732/macbook-decapitation-slabtop-mod-mac-studio-event-rumor-keyboard-computer-diy) (remove the LCD panel of a laptop to use it as a server) an old Dell Alienware G2 15. I didn’t see this piece of friendly advice while Googling around before making my attempt. I really wish I had - it would’ve saved me a lot of time, trouble, and a motherboard to boot (pun intended). To contribute to the body of all knowledge, I hope you (*you*, the person googling “how to slabtop a laptop” *right now*) see this before you whip out the screwdriver and go to town on your old burner: **Search [“ LCD Panel POST Check Beeps”](https://gprivate.com/69t8y) before you attempt to slabtop your laptop!!** Computers run without screens all the time - we call them *servers*, and they run *everything*, so the possibility of a laptop manufacturer literally not letting a computer complete POST check without an LCD panel wasn’t even something that crossed my mind. However, if you google the above, you’ll run into *lots of posts* of people who hear a handful of beeps when their LCD display is disconnected, signifying that the POST process didn’t complete. *This will absolutely fuck you over if your laptop manufacturer is one of the **many** who have this check in place.* While I believe it is *possible* to do this on a PC (not a Mac, where slabtopping has been documented extensively), I personally ended up frying the motherboard after about 5 hours of cutting away at the stupid fucking thing. If this helps even a single person, I will be immensely happy.