I need a creative solution

[joeeer]

Hi there,
I'm new to this forum so allow me to introduce myself first:
My name is Joeri, i'm 21 years old and I live in Holland. I have always been interested in computers and i know my way around them more than the average person. I have opened up a few computers in the past (usually after they died) to see if I could salvage parts, so in some length i am familiar with the insides of a PC. However when it comes to how it actually works i'm a total n00b and thats why I have come here, in the hopes of getting some good advice.
About half a year ago I bought a new laptop (i5 4200U, 4GB DDR3, 320GB HDD, Intel HD Graphics 4400) for the reasonable price of 429 euro's, here in Holland i5 laptops usually start around 480. Last week just before dinner I allowed my mother to use it, and she dropped it . Needless to say I was furious, but after cooling down I had to draw the conclusion that accidents happen. When i started to check out my laptop the screen was busted and so was the casing, they were beyond saving. So I hit up the insurance company and after proof the laptop was busted they're giving me 329 euro's (100 euro's of own risk ). And that's the moment I started thinking: I have a motherboard with i5 processor which still works, 4gb's of DDR3 ram which also still works, can I do something with this? As far as I have ever understood the motherboard and CPU are the most expensive parts of a laptop (and the graphics card off course), and I have both of these.
So then I started to envision building my own laptop with a nice i5 processor, buy another 4gb's of RAM so I have 8gb's of RAM, buy a nice new laptop casing+screen, get a SSD and i'd be having a kickass laptop! I believe the graphics card is built into this motherboard so I can not do a lot about that. However I also know from a bit of research in the past that if some components (motherboard for example) aren't "good" enough, 8GB's of ram might not do much and it all the depends on how the parts in a laptop or PC can work together. The second problem I have is that barebone laptops are hard/impossible to come by, not the way you can get them in PC's anyway. Problem number three is that the usb entries, hdmi entries etc. are fixed into the motherboard, which might make it hard to find an actual laptop casing thats appropriate for my laptop.
So my question is: I have a laptop i5 processor+motherboard, 4gb's ddr3 RAM, can I use this as a basis to build my own 'kickass" laptop for around 300 euro's? And if not, is there anything I can actually do with these components?

King regards,
Joeeer

[evasive]

Standard answer: put the stuff on marktplaats/ebay. buy a new laptop from the revenue and the insurance money. not to be sour, but rebuilding a laptop from the actual replacement components from that manufacturer can already be a challenge, so building something custom requires indeed just that: a custom casing. And they don't come cheap.

Out of the box: with all these 3D printers going cheaper it may be possible to find a person or company that is willing to do a proof of concept on their printer to see if you can actually print a replacement casing.
However: you will still need to buy a laptop-screen since these things are still not standardized enough to just plug one in as replacement. You may get away with using the external VGA connector (if it has one).