I’m wondering if the 12” mainboard can be used standalone (without the need for any preloading/preconfigs in a laptop chassis) and whether anyone has made or plan to make any cases for it, akin to the Cooler Master case for the 13” mainboard.
As for why, budget and necessity mainly, as current gen 12” mainboards are like 30-50% cheaper than the current gen 13” mainboards, and compared to similar priced and cheapest 13” older gen mainboards, the 12”wins. And are wayyy cheaper than Framework Desktop. And I don’t need nor can afford any of the higher-priced features or performance. Just something to run x86 linux distros and vscode.
The BIOS options for the Framework 12 mainboard has an option for standalone mode and standalone mode detection. So yes the mainboard can be used in a similar way to the Framework 13 mainboards. As of right now the Framework 13 is the only mainboard that has 3rd party accessories for enclosures and the like.
This will change over time.
One thing to the note is the the exhaust and intake are different on the Framework 12 and this will require special consideration as well.
Is that (detect) standalone mode enabled by default? Or like the amd boards must first be enabled within a framework laptop chassis before it can be used standalone?
It is enabled, but standalone (obviously) is disabled. I have not verified it, but what I suspect is that standalone detect would see that it is being used outside of the FW 12 enclosure, and then would set it into standalone mode.
For the main board printables contest, can you (we) summarize what we know about the main board cooling on the Laptop 12? What are the best practices? Shall we keep the current cooling solution, or opening up more holes can improve it? I would like to know what the designers intended with the cooling solution, and if there is a chance to improve it with not being forced to work with the laptop limitations as a standalone?