Building a Mini-ITX PC with Teenage Engineering Computer-1 and Apple Studio Display

Building a Mini-ITX PC with Teenage Engineering Computer-1 and Apple Studio Display

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It's been a while, probably like more than 10+ years since I stopped using Windows and switched to macOS. Recently, after watching a lot of Manor Lords gameplay videos on YouTube, I craved to play the game. I tried several ways like Whisky, CrossOver, GeForce NOW, etc., but none of them provided a high performance or the same satisfaction as on native Windows PCs. Ultimately, I decided to build not just a mini itx computer but also a good-looking one.

I was a little concerned about building a computer from scratch since it's been a long time since I last used Windows and built a computer. I was around 16 years old the last time—Gosh, that felt old—. So I had no idea about the hardware and how to assemble it. I'm a noob in this world... Thankfully I have a smart friend—special thanks to Emre. 😄

After doing some research on the chassis, I just fell in love with the Teenage Engineering Computer-1. It's small, compact, minimal, just beautiful.

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The crucial points for me;

  • It has to work with the Apple Studio Display (I don't want to buy another monitor for that)
  • The GPU options are limited in the market due to Computer-1 size. (It's written on their website as "dual-slot up to 180 x 130 x 40 mm" ↗ which is quite small)

While doing further research, I stumbled upon this Reddit post: orangeboy. Someone has already built a working version that is compatible with the Apple Studio Display. And it seems like you don't need to tackle any complex rocket science stuff.

But... How does it work without any dongle or adapter, etc.?

Well ...

Anticipating a shift to more USB Type-C displays, AMD is also implementing what they call “hybrid graphics” support on AM5. Unlike previous products where this referred to linking up the integrated graphics with a discrete GPU in CrossFire mode, this time around it refers to being able to use the mobo/iGPU’s display outputs to drive a monitor while using a dGPU to render content. This is largely lifted from AMD’s laptop technologies, where similar techniques are used to allow the dGPU to be powered down when it’s not in use. In the case of desktop processors, this just means every display output will work, regardless of whether it’s plugged into ports coming from the CPU or a discrete video card.

Source ↗

In short, the AM5 processor has a USB-C video out port forwarded to the GPU that allows connecting the Apple Studio Display directly via Thunderbolt 4 cable. So, I had a green light.

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patch

Python
pages/bookmarks.tsx
import { categories } from '@/config/bookmarks'
import Sidebar from '@/components/sidebar'
import BookmarkCard from '@/components/unorder-card'

const BookmarksPage: React.FC = () => {
    const [activeCategory, setActiveCategory] = useState<string | null>(categories[0]?.name || null)
    const [currentPage, setCurrentPage] = useState(1)
    const [searchTerm, setSearchTerm] = useState('')
    const [isContentVisible, setIsContentVisible] = useState(false)
    const [isSidebarVisible, setIsSidebarVisible] = useState(false)
    const [isClient, setIsClient] = useState(false)
Python
handsonMl/09_unsupervised_learning.ipynb
def plot_data(X):
    plt.plot(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], 'k.', markersize=2)

def plot_centroids(centroids, weights=None, circle_color='w', cross_color='k'):
    if weights is not None:
        centroids = centroids[weights > weights.max() / 10]
    plt.scatter(centroids[:, 0], centroids[:, 1],
                marker='o', s=35, linewidths=8,
                color=circle_color, zorder=10, alpha=0.9)
    plt.scatter(centroids[:, 0], centroids[:, 1],
                marker='x', s=2, linewidths=12,
                color=cross_color, zorder=11, alpha=1)