Hi folks,
I ordered the argon one up as part of the kickstarter, but I didn’t end up having an extra CM5 module to put it in. Do folks suggest opting for a model with eMMC, wifi etc.? Or simply the most memory possible?
My two cents – I think it kind of depends…
If you plan on having a NVME SSD as well, then I think the EMMC is superfluous, and in fact I decided to go with a CM Lite specifically so I would have an SD card reader available without having to tote around a USB reader (caveat: I have noticed that if I don’t have a microsd card in the slot during shutdown, then shutdown seems to hang for about 30-60 seconds before finishing… doesn’t have to be mounted or even formatted, it just doesn’t like an empty slot for some reason).
And since a laptop is likely to be using a graphical environment, at least some of the time, rather than being strictly command line, my personal recommendation would be to go for at least 8GB of memory (I splurged and went with 16 myself). Certainly no less than 4, but that would be the absolute minimum, and I’d make sure to create a swap partition on the NVME then.
Wifi is pretty much a requirement, in my opinion… otherwise, you’re going to need to have a USB ethernet or wifi dongle with you most of the time. Unless you’re uber paranoid and are wanting an offline work station… but I’m not sure I’d go with a Raspberry Pi in that case – Tails is pretty solid, but requires an Intel or AMD processor.
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+1 
I have a 4GB memory, with WiFi, no eMMC (SKU CM5104000 ) and works great for me. I used to have one with eMMC and while I could separate my root and home, the lack of SDcard slot and hassles of working without it probably were no worth it.
Can’t say that I was too happy with the eMMC on my older CM4, since it disables the SD reader (waveshare board). The constant BOOTSEL switching and flashing (which is really slow) really wasn’t worth it.
So with this project I went on the light. I too, went all in and got the 16GB RAM one, and the WiFi module is I do believe imperative since you’re obliged to get more external hardware to get any connection. In hindsight, the max ram opt was maybe an overkill, but I’d rather have those extra gigs than to get pissed because I lacked the extra 50€ to get the full version.
One plus side on the eMMC version is that you do have a bit of a redundancy at hand, i.e. NVMe failing or needing to fast flash a new one, there’s less physical hassle. But you’d have to get as much as possible (at least 8GB storage), since you’d probably want the fastest cloning option in case you want to flash a new NVMe.