Hello all, I am finally out of the medical wood-works for now. Wanted to chime back in on my thoughts looking over things while I sat in bed.
One of the main things i learned while researching which sounds similar to everyone else is, for better or worse, the mobile realm of technology is definitely a wild west of standards being suggestions on the best of days. eDP can have multiple different pin sizes, pinouts, etc. and the info is rarely readily available for verifying.
Likewise, I've been met with similar grief with CPU coolers, you either have to work around Intel's low profile horizontal fan, or enter the realm of costume rigging together an air cooler. A friend of mine did get my interest however with an alternative solution that's still budding, a few manufacturers are making solid state coolers now, he specifically directed me towards Frore's Airjet line as the use cases seems to be CPU cooling. However, much like thin-ITX, we're dealing with something meant mostly for industrial use, is not widely available, and as it stands right now, isnt even something i could see being reasonably mounted onto a motherboard.
I approach this all from the perspective of someone who intends to make a custom built laptop purely for myself, but I'm also approaching this from the basis of "I want this thing to be sustainably able to live as long as I do." which means niche parts that may not survive the decade is not ideal. Its for this reason that I've abandoned the idea of mini-ITX being a viable option, I think removing the I/O nonstop is not realistic every generational update, and most importantly, eDP on mini-ITX is not at all normal or standard. Thin-ITX is the future in that respect as it seems like the standard isnt going anywhere, but I do wish to see a future where its considered commercially viable to ensure industry standards changing over time don't spell the death of it. This is where CPU coolers being "this one specific model of Intel or bust" is an issue. It could just be that setting up a CPU cooler for these "ITX Laptops" is a custom endeavor comparable to that of liquid cooling, but ideally there's a nice middle ground inbetween the realm of "relying on intel to keep a niche CPU fan standard alive" vs "Just custom build your cooling solution".
Wow this is getting long, but i think to try and close out.
I think
@devotion-laptop is on the mark that display panels need a solution that would work with an universal controller board, not just because I don't think there's any way to enforce/establish a standard, but also because ultimately, I think people will want touch panels and the like, and a controller board can come with the option to provide that via USB. For the sake of my project, I'm probably going to be biting the bullet and using a LVDS LCD, but that's largely to simplify the project for myself, I realize this probably will be tech-debt for future me as more and more companies move to eDP.
One last thing that I think is worth bringing up, I think its worth researching and looking into the Oculink standard for graphics.
I've found a group of hackers who have been giving their steamdecks graphics cards via it, you can interface oculink via a spare m.2 slot and the performance loss is actually quite minimal when compared to its thunderbolt cousin. The only issue with Oculink is that it is
NOT a hotswappable standard, meaning you must boot down the computer before and after connecting and disconnecting. This is quite a small price to pay however, as the benefit is being able to push the GPU onto an external GPU/dock setup, which would allow end users to rely on integrated graphics for light workloads/light gaming, and then should they want a more intense workhorse they can dock to a traditional desktop setup, getting a full fledged monitors, keyboard/mouse, and the external GPU to provide stronger performance. Such a setup could also appeal to enthusiast PC builders, who have GPUs way too large to ever fit into a laptop.
@plstcks by the way, amazing work with your project so far, I'll definitely reach out to you I'd love to share notes.
