Today's ill-advised tech purchase...
...is a new laptop. Specifically, an HP Envy 13 (2021).
It has a Core i5-1135G7, 16GB of DDR4 (non-upgradeable sadly), and a 512GB WD SN530 SSD.
It was a display model at Costco, so I got it for $600. Aside from some minor scratches on the lid, it's basically new.
It came with Windows 11 by default (ew), so I put Windows 10 on it. It was far from a straightforward process, though.
The first issue I had was that my LTSC 2021 installer didn't recognize the internal SSD.
So I did the logical thing; tore it down to pull the SSD out and image it.
The teardown was annoying, but not necessarily difficult. Two Torx T5 screws are exposed and two Philips screws are hidden under the rubber feet. The bottom is then held on with a bunch of clips.
I pulled the SSD, imaged it, and it wouldn't boot to it.
So it turns out that in order to install older versions of Windows 10 onto Tiger Lake, you need to install the Intel RST drivers during installation. With that taken care of, I got Windows 10 installed and everything works now.
It has Thunderbolt support, so I also got a Thunderbolt cable for $40. I can now confirm that my Goodwill-find eGPU enclosure works.