Too late. I already bought one prebuilt but I do plan to audit it once it gets delivered.

Yeah, I do have some doubts about epoxying the screws as there may come a time
when I need to replace the thermal paste and clean dust out of the fan...

Thankfully, you can ask Leah to eschew any mods you don't want.

One more thing that RetroFreedom offers which I'm wondering about is this
USB-SATA Adapter? Okay, so by booting your hard drive or SSD through USB, you are less vulnerable to a cyber attack through SATA.

But will the adapter be placed inside the laptop or do I have to carry the hard drive and
adapter around separately and used up a precious USB slot on the laptops exterior, which I could use for a mouse or another flash drive?

What about any caddy adapter I might put with a second drive?
Can a USB adapter be installed for that too?

Lol. He answered you in an hour. I don't think it can get better than that!

It's cool if its worth the risk for you, but... what if you need to replace the parts? That may be a problem for you then...

That being said, I am not convinced anything is fullproof/worth such things, removing the microphone and webcam, and intel me, putting libreboot equivalent stuff on and encrypting your hard drive is within reasonable security as far as im concerned. Unless mnt reform becomes an option for Hyperbola in the future, then well... yeah... you could supposedly do that eh?  And security would be probably twice as good without having to go to such insane lengths...

That being all said, libreboot, no webcam and no microphone should be sufficient for most people.

I emailed Leah, asking about the USB-SATA adapter and she has confirmed it will rely on an external USB port.

Oh well...

did she say it will be soldered to the fingerprint on the mainboard or just using a USB-SATA adapter with the available usb ports

She said it has to be plugged to an available USB port.
Leah never mentioned anything about the fingerprint port, but then again I was asking that
concerning the Thinkpad W500.

You could always ask her yourself.

Anyway, I was about to ask something else concerning Thinkpads in general.
If I ordered for my SATA slots to be epoxied, I wonder if I could boot from a hard drive fitted to a miniPCIe to USB adapter (https://tehnoetic.com/adapters/tet-mpcie2usb) - maybe an NVMe SSD.

Anyone ever tried it?

Do I see double?

I can confirm that for X200, I was able to boot a system from usb stick, using a miniPCIe to USB adapter (a slot for 3g modem). I bought a couple of these adapters pretty cheap and I think that the other one miniPCIe slot (for intel turbo memory) will work as a usb port too (Not tested so far, though). 2.5" HDD with sata-usb adapter works fine, seems like as a regular usb port.
I don't like the idea of external HDD, it's not convenient in terms of mobility,  so I ordered a 1.8" HDD and a FFC cable. And I'm going to place it inside my x200, using a microsata-usb adapter and that miniPCIe to usb adapter.
If someone is interested I can post some photos, when I finish it.
(also I have an idea how to place another one HDD inside a doc station, using a usb port and a flat cable as well)

well im not living in the country who have nuclear war or had an international bounty put on my head by FBI, so standard software level security & privacy is enough for regular user like me.

plain english: isnt it easier to block nonfree bluetooth driver rather than extensively remove it ? what if silly companies soldered the bluetooth chip under the cpu (lol).

what im gonna say:

i think its better for libre folks to put their effort into creating libre driver/implementation rather than liberating or recreating internal parts of hardware.

cracked proprietaries driver/implementation can be distribute freely across the globe without cost, and can easily be reviewed,  no screw and obvious hairdryer called heat gun needed.

libre hardware is great for indepedence but its very hard to catch up with advancement technology led by proprietaries unless you are an million dollar oil baron.

this is personal though, please dont take it heavily

Same as you on major parts, o master dikasp2.
Addendum: Staying as long as possible with hardware as right to repair is the important aspect for me using libre hardware and of course some parts are even not possible to block throughout drivers or they are not even functional without firmware-blobs (for example some graphic hardware especially, mesa-stack could be as libre as possible: without blobs no further functions). And not to speak about "nice presents" being integrated as payloads within the firmware itself and executed from the operating-system. Just to demonstrate this with the "Windows Binary Table", which allows executable files to be stored within UEFI firmware for execution on startup, and is meant to allow critical software to persist even when the operating system has changed or been reinstalled in a 'clean' configuration (quote). For more details just to look for Lenovo Service Engine!

So all in all there are enough arguments for libre hardware, the question is: How many modifications should be integrated? That's the line to draw between Coreboot and others. Nevertheless it is better to have an own compiled firmware without more surprise than needed. I agree, that some special hardware-modifications are not that kind of a goal (major parts mentioned). And of course it is not possible to get running as fast as the manufacturing and producing companies. But the question stays here: What would change if more people lost interest within buying always the newest hardware and components? Could be part of another discussion, perhaps!