I have an old aluminium 17" MacBook. It got retired fairly early because it suffered from a design flaw but was outside the free replacement window.
Its screen is nice, and there looks to be plenty of room inside. I have been keeping an eye on options for putting something else inside. Its mostly the power delivery for the display that I think is beyond my skill that's holding me back.
You may be interested in this Framework build that converted a 17" MBP.
https://community.frame.work/t/i-converted-a-macbook-into-a-...
Melted GPU? I’m still sore about that one.
Mine is a random reset when GPU kicks in, Apparently it's a single tiny component that needs to be changed, but to get to it requires almost complete disassembly. The cost of having it done professionally probably more than it's worth. Chance of breaking it by doing it myself too high.
But now I'm just thinking of it as a solid box with nice screen and keyboard attached.
The worst part is that the discrete GPU was used to drive external displays, so now I’m stuck with a 17” integrated display, which is large for a laptop but still small for a computer that I’ll never again lug with me (it’s heavy by today’s standards).