This Kid Made his Own Laptop and it’s AMAZING!

[LMGcommunity]

Can you believe this high school student made a custom ARM laptop over his summer break? We invited Byran Huang to join us and give us a closer look at his amazing Anyon_e open- source DIY laptop!

 

 

[eLLe7]

Linus got dropped then he made his signature move. Nice 

[techElliott]

Dudes cracked, we need more people like him. Good job and I'm excited to see what you make next

[Haswellx86]

As a high school equivalent student, how do you become this cool and make something this awesome?

 

I am genuinely interested in hardware and LTT has been my unknowing inspiration that got me into tech, but I literally have nothing in terms engineering tech nor any of my own money to buy them.

 

I kind of feel dumb when I say to people that I want to become a "software engineer". When we say "Engineer", a smart dude with a screw driver building something comes to mind but software engineers just know how to type on a keyboard. I don't even consider software engineering to be engineering.

 

The most technical thing I have done is open up a laptop. Maybe I should learn more about electronics and open up anything that I could find though I actually used to do this before.

[TheBean]

that keyboard looks super interesting. is it open sourced / available to buy anywhere? 

ive been looking for almost that exact product

[Chpy]

Loved seeing ZMK get a shoutout.

[swimtome]

Loved this and love having someone who could make all these internal LTT references.

[jaznyxta]

3 hours ago, Haswellx86 said:

As a high school equivalent student, how do you become this cool and make something this awesome?

 

I am genuinely interested in hardware and LTT has been my unknowing inspiration that got me into tech, but I literally have nothing in terms engineering tech nor any of my own money to buy them.

 

I kind of feel dumb when I say to people that I want to become a "software engineer". When we say "Engineer", a smart dude with a screw driver building something comes to mind but software engineers just know how to type on a keyboard. I don't even consider software engineering to be engineering.

 

The most technical thing I have done is open up a laptop. Maybe I should learn more about electronics and open up anything that I could find though I actually used to do this before.

Watch their video. You'll gain a better picture of the "engineering" that went into the laptop:

In short, it's nothing much buying a few products you know will work together after some thorough research, understanding some Physics/Math/Engineering fundamentals, and your own independent work/maybe (if you're in high school) joining clubs and getting guidance from your peers when appropriate. You may not understand these things at a first glance, but taking time to learn what things like PCB boards, circuits (resistances, current, voltage, etc.), schematics, and CAD are, just to name a few 101s, will help you discover resources in something like this as a first step. What is made by humans is meant to be used by humans, so do the "engineering" things - read some books, take a few classes, invest your time in a program over the summer, bug people for help... you get the idea. 

 

Your first avenue might be to better refine your understanding of what an engineer (discipline-specific of course!!!) does.

[schmism]

Shout out to who ever made this video possible!  @LinusTech   byran was awesome on camera brought a great mix of tech and energy for his passion project.   Excited and not to nervous to rib Linus.   It was engaging and entertaining and had me exited to get one the kids in the family.

Id say hire this guy but we all know how well that turned out last time a rando person made a splash on screen.....

[Required]

It sucks that he use an Glossy sshhhttt Pannel to. I dont know why People want that in an Notebook.

Did the never use Public Transport?

[Bramimond]

How do you get access to $5000 in high school to play around for such a project?

[smcoakley]

On 4/26/2025 at 6:29 AM, Bramimond said:

How do you get access to $5000 in high school to play around for such a project?

Affluent parents?

[jfred]

Linus might not remember this, but I sent a merch message a while back about a similar laptop, the MNT Reform. At the time it had a rather slow i.MX8MQ module, and he dismissed it a bit... but it has since had several upgrades, and I'm posting this right now from a Reform with an RK3588 module like this.

 

So there have been upgradeable laptops that made it to market besides the Framework! (And there are actually two models in the Reform line with most modules being compatible between them.)

 

Can confirm, having a mechanical keyboard on a laptop is very nice, and the RK3588 is plenty powerful for a lot of day-to-day stuff. I hadn't heard of the CM3588 until seeing Byran's laptop project, but now I kinda want to pick one up as a CM4 replacement.