Originally slated to begin shipping in December, those that pre-ordered Microsoft"s Surface Studio got an email that the device would be shipping early. Naturally, that means that it was time for iFixit to do one of its traditional teardowns.
The biggest surprise was the presence of an ARM processor, or more specifically, an Atmel ATSAMS70N21 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7. According to The Verge, it"s used to power the PixelSense display. iFixit found quite a bit of hardware behind the screen, saying "there"s way more silicon hiding in this unit than in the base."
Ultimately, the site gave Microsoft"s all-in-one a repairability score of 5 out of 10. The good news is that the base is easy to open, with some modular components, such as SATA hard drive and M.2 SSD, and the display can be easily replaced.
Of course, there"s bad news as well. The RAM, CPU, and GPU are all soldered to the motherboard, so those are not easily replaceable. As iFixit says, "You may want to think twice about that 8 GB configuration." Also, some components of the display, such as buttons and speakers, will be difficult to replace.