I know you said that you were mainly interested in thermals but …
4 GB RAM and 32 GB eMMC for storage is fairly limited if you intend to do development work. The Librem Mini has way better specs and even claims to be OK for VESA mount. https://puri.sm/products/librem-mini/
Unfortunately, Librem Mini turned out to be not such libre, because of it’s closed EC.
I hoped my next PC won’t have to have such compromises.
It’s more free than any other NUC style PC or modern desktop.
life is full of them, so you have to figure out what’s important to you.
Chromeboxes might have open-source EC, but that doesn’t do you any good without someone building updates and a mechanism to update (which you lose once you move away from the official Google firmware). They also use low-power audio codecs for the headphone/mic jack that aren’t terribly well supported in the mainline kernel.
The EC on the Librem Mini handles exactly 2 things: power sequencing and fan control. The former isn’t something you want to mess with. The latter might be something you’d like to tweak, but if that’s the only limitation, is it really that big of a compromise?
For me, open-source is a good per se.
Thanks for audio codecs info, it might be something to keep in mind.
Anyway, USB Power Delivery is the other killer feature Minis do not have, unfortunately.
I’m sure Purism would love to offer a no-compromises computer for every situation but … reality intrudes.
Tweak in the sense of having passive cooling only - so that you don’t need to tweak the fan? 
the requirements for enjoing HDR to it’s full pottential are quite involved and costly. mainly in the display panel department even if the firmware/driver/software support from G is there.
at that point you’ll simply dump your ‘cheese’ into G’s ‘pocket’ by getting a fully integrated OLED 4k panel with ethernet support built in. even then you wouldn’t have the FULL experience possible. you would get the MAXIMUM experience possible at the current moment but you still wouldn’t see the full experience that TRUE HDR can bring.
for the time being 1080p SDR is good enough (for ME) if you have a properly color acurate monitor panel that you can ALSO use for everything else to not BURN your eyes from over-exposure of a FULL HDR experience.
i guess everybody is ‘free’ to choose what they want in the end. i just tried to recall this particular ‘compromise’ steps …
So openness is not strong point of the Mini.
By the way, why are you selling it?
Also it’s interesting what other case/hardware you have in mind instead.
So openness is not strong point of the Mini.
Compared to what?
By the way, why are you selling it?
I’m building another system. I need more cores for compiling and video rendering. There is a program I work on frequently that I’m often recompiling and with the mini it takes a long time.
Also it’s interesting what other case/hardware you have in mind instead.
I have built another system with 12 cores and I can compile the same project in 3 minutes.
There are a couple of other slight performance improvements but apart from the compiling and rendering I haven’t noticed much difference than when using the mini. If Purism released a desktop type system with 8 or 10 cores I’d buy it (and put it in a fanless case 
). Using the HDPlex case definitely allowed me to get the most out of the mini because I was able to boost the power limits.
Apart from that I also have an old ThinkPad running LibreBoot and I have a corebooted KGPE-D16 system (which I’m selling if you’re interested )
To any Chromebox?
I suppose ccache didn’t help much here?
I hope one day they will be able to design their own board, liberate it as much as Librem5 one and sell separate from the case. Then I would buy it too.
To any Chromebox?
If we’re talking about < 2015 systems then sure, but I’d rather use my old ThinkPad than a Chromebox. If we compare the Librem Mini to more recent similar systems I think the Mini comes out on top in terms of freeness.
I suppose
ccachedidn’t help much here?
Doesn’t work with multi-file compilation so probably wouldn’t have much effect for me.
I hope one day they will be able to design their own board, liberate it as much as Librem5 one and sell separate from the case. Then I would buy it too.
I’m not a big fan of convergance. It forces a series of compromises both in terms of hardware and software. I like things that do one job well. A good desktop for when I’m sat at my desk (99% of my life), a good laptop/tablet for when I’m travelling, and a phone for… making phone calls. My hope is the POWER architecture hardware becomes more affordable and mainstream, or perhaps Apple’s recent M1 CPU will get other companies developing similar processors (except free).
What are you referring to here is probably this info https://mrchromebox.tech/#faq:
The days where Chromebooks ran Linux well ended with the 2015 models.
And I’m talking about Chromeboxes, they do not have similar issues apparently (still, I don’t know what was the issue exactly).
Aha yep that’s what I was referring to. Are there any Chromeboxes with 8+ cores that are running on free software? if so I’m interested!
@morgan Not a Chromebox but that is what @MrChromebox suggested to me:
The ITE SIO chip handles power sequencing and other such functions,
just like on older Chromeboxes. Completely configurable from coreboot.Was also looking at this one:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002443541911.html
which has an i9-10885H option that would be very interesting. And same SIO chip.
Probably doesn’t suit for me well becas of lack of USB-C Power Delivery.
Is that board Coreboot compatible?
no, but wouldn’t be all that hard to port it, I wouldn’t think
wouldn’t be all that hard to port it
Is this something a mere mortal can do?
that’s hard to answer. without any previous coreboot experience, it would be a substantial endeavor.
for me, probably a few hours 
for me, probably a few hours
What ever they’re paying you it’s not enough!
Is there any similar board with more cores? Or one with a socketed CPU?
Even better would be a mini ITX board… 
it is called market segmentation. offer some desirable features on one machine but not the other and so on for everything that is called ‘programmable’. starting with the i-ME and ending with the form factor. everything falls in this spectrum.