@Shion_Valenta You’ve practically described what I’ve done previously on my previous HTPC (a laptop with the top screen removed) and what I’m doing for my primary PC (a Ryzen-based “gaming tablet” with the internal screen disconnected) in order to have my PC not generating heat in the same room that I’m in (the room I’m in is at the end of a hallway, so all I have to do is position the PC at the end of the hall where there’s roughly a foot of “blank” space and run the cable(s) through the gap under the closed door).
However I’m also quite OCD about fan noise, and fan control was non-existent on both devices so, in both situations, I unplugged the internal fan(s) and rig up some 120mm/140mm ATX case fans with the top or back cover of the device removed.
My future plan for my primary PC is to quite literally use a Framework laptop mainboard, maybe with the bottom laptop housing just to hold things in place (though I might just use the inside of a motherboard box or the like) as it ticks several key advantages over other SFF solutions:
- fan control
- battery charge limit functionality
- can boot with the battery disconnected
- can be used in a portable form-factor when I’m on-the-go
- theoretically could support ECC memory via the WIP CoreBoot porting efforts
I really would want at least 6 CPU cores so the Alder Lake version is my bare minimum unless Framework makes a budget-focused AMD Mendocino version that’s substantially cheaper, then I’d be fine with 4 cores.
That being said, I really need to be able to have aspect-preserved GPU resolution scaling on X11 and, while it “just works” on AMD iGPUs, it does not “just work” on Intel iGPUs for external displays (see also: this Linux Mint forum thread where I documented my woes trying to get this to work on Intel graphics).
…unless someone wants to buy me a new monitor that has not only low power draw (my current one is only 10-11w measured from the wall) but also has built-in aspect ratio correction options. 
The absolute perfect solution would be if there were a way to mount a nice large heatsink and fan to the Framework’s CPU. I’m even willing to use a graphite pad so that I don’t have to keep re-pasting if/when I use it in “laptop mode” (I used a graphite pad when fixing my cousin’s RROD’d Xbox 360 under the premise that we’d rather not have to crack open the thing again).
It’d be even better if someone also made a 4x lane m.2 2280 --to-> dual 2x lane m.2 2230 riser/adapter; I can’t imagine that, as m.2 2230 SSDs gain more capacity and PCIe speeds keep growing, such a thing won’t eventually get made at some point (there’s even talk of using only 2 lanes for PCIe gen5 SSDs so as to allow more lanes for other I/O).
…though it looks like A+E --to-> M-key m.2 adapters exist (though they can’t fully sit into an m.2 2230’s spacing) so it’s only work with the mainboard “docked” and not in “laptop mode” unless you fit it into the battery compartment or something (would would obviously only work with the battery removed).
). The user doesn’t care to use the device outside of said two locations. The device is then the minimum amount of hardware necessary to bring along to have all data/computing power/functionalities.