Youyeetoo K1: palm-sized modular PC pairs a swappable Intel N100 module with SATA, eDP and 27 GPIO pins from $210

The budget mini PC market is crowded with near-identical Intel N100 boxes, but the Youyeetoo K1 stands out through its construction rather than its silicon. Instead of a single fixed motherboard, the system splits into two parts: an 82 x 71 mm processor module carrying the quad-core Alder Lake-N chip and up to 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory, and a 134 x 92 mm carrier board it slots into, SO-DIMM-style, much like a stick of RAM. In principle, that means the compute portion can be replaced without discarding the rest of the system. 

In principle, the compute portion can be replaced without discarding the rest of the system. Moreover, the core board can even run standalone, with its own USB-C, MIPI display output and 12 V power input for space-constrained installations.

The carrier board is where the K1 earns its keep. Alongside the expected dual Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, mini HDMI, USB-C and four USB Type-A ports, the full-featured carrier variant adds connectors rarely seen on consumer machines, an eDP output for driving bare laptop-style panels, MIPI-CSI and MIPI-DSI for cameras and displays, plus 27 GPIO pins and UART, I2C and SPI headers for hardware tinkering. Storage is similarly flexible, with eMMC on the compute module itself, an M.2 2280 slot supporting NVMe or SATA SSDs, and a dedicated SATA data and power connector pair. An M.2 E-key slot accepts an optional Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 module with Bluetooth, with 4G LTE also available as an add-on, and the board even integrates NFC for tap-to-configure deployment.