Tiny Mini-ITX or Laptop?

Snikerdoodlz · November 26, 2015

**Note: I originally posted about this in General Discussion, but I did not know there was a dedicated planning one. I'm reposting because I think I can probably receive more tips here.

I received my Alienware 14 laptop over a year ago. Back then I wasn't too tech savvy, but I've come a long way (mainly from watching Linus Tech Tips). I've been thinking it would be cool to replace my Alienware 14 and build a mini-ITX desktop using the following specs: (I haven't planned everything out yet, but here are the basics)

Mini-box m350 or Antec ISK 110

AMD APU (a10-7850k, but considering waiting for better ones to come out in the future with Zen, Arctic Islands, and Bristol Ridge (still 28nm) on the horizon)

Asus MB168B USB 3.0 1366x768 (or any other portable monitor)

External battery (12v 10-12a)

I want to go with an APU because I don't really have the need of too much graphical power. Probably the most intensive game I will ever play is along the lines of BeamNG.drive or PVZ Garden Warfare. Mostly I play games such as Terraria, which hardly need any power to run decently. I also sometimes edit videos in Magix 2014. An APU would use less power than a combo and take up way less space by eliminating a dedicated GPU.

My parents are divorced, so I take my laptop from house to house often. At both houses I have desks with external monitors that I use with my laptop, along with an external keyboard and mouse. I sometimes take my laptop to school, but for that I have a roller bag that is just large enough to house my laptop flat on the floor of it (14" screen size)

As I learned more about technology, I became more interested in actual hardware instead of just pre-assembled stuff, which isn't very cool first of all because you don't built it yourself, and desktop hardware can be more powerful and is plainly cooler than laptops for amateur hardware enthusiasts (like me), although laptops are more expensive, they have a great portability factor with built-in screens, keyboards, and touchpads, and internal batteries with monitoring to boot. You really can't have all of that with a laptop. With a laptop you can have it on your lap and use it, while for the mini-ITX built I am planning you would have to deal with the computer and the monitor. I could possibly somehow mount that tiny case behind the monitor and have it stand upright, though.

I don't really need to bring it to school right now, but sometimes the school-provided HP Elitebooks can be a little less than up-to-snuff, but we never really do stuff that requires powerful hardware, anyway. However, I'm only in 8th grade and my requirements as I move to high school might be different. But then again, with a portable screen and a battery if there isn't an outlet, I could definitely make it work.

The portable monitor isn't my main monitor. At home I have external monitors (one 1920x1080, and a 1280x720 and 1680x1050). The portable one is just if I plan on using it on-the-go where there aren't any monitors.

Also, which is the best type of RAM to use here? Higher frequencies will have higher latencies, so the highest-frequency RAM might not be ideal.

What do you think about this? What are your thoughts about this project? Is making a portable, usable-on-the-go mini-ITX computer doable, feasible, or even practical?