iFixit

Open the pod bay doors please, HAL.

Oh…That turned out to be a lot easier than we expected. Apparently our screwdriver is much better at listening to us than a rogue computer.

Although it's easier to remove screws than adhesive, there is no shortage of work. These two metal plates are held in with a total of 29 screws.

We use our ESD-safe tweezers to safely remove the volume buttons and headphone jack, which are tied together in a neat package by a ribbon cable.

So much for listening to the Pro's Grammy commercial.

We've cracked the surface (figuratively speaking, of course—we would never damage a device…), but we continue digging deeper with our spudger and screwdriver until we can remove the motherboard assembly and the SSD.

The Micron RealSSD C400 packs 64 GB of storage capacity. It can read 500MB/s and write 95 MB/s — all in a tiny 1.8" form factor.

Digging a little deeper, we find that a Marvell 88SS9174 SSD processor is keeping all those Micron flash ICs running smoothly.

PSA: The Windows 8 operating system chows down a fair chunk of the 64 GB total storage. After negating 30+ GB for the operating system, the full MS Office suite that you may not have even activated, as well as the factory restore image, the Surface Pro provides users with around 29 GB of usable space.

• 128 GB-outfitted owners make do with 89 GB of free space. Ed Bott performed some tests comparing it to the 128 GB MacBook Air, which has 99.5 GB free space.

This Pro is all party in the front, business in the back—cooling business that is. Two small fans help this Pro keep its cool.

How small, you ask? Here's how the Surface Pro fan compares to a 2011 MacBook Pro fan and FDR's face.

Checking out the top surface of the motherboard:

• 8x Micron 2LEI2 D9PXV 4 Gb RAM for a total of 4 GB RAM
• Integrated Technology Express IT8519G
• Atmel UC256l3U 256KB Flash, 32-bit AVR Microcontroller
• ON NCP6132A 3 Phase Controller
• Atmel MXT1386E Touchscreen Controller
• 3x Atmel MXT154E Touchscreen Controllers (the same controllers we found in the Surface RT)
• Realtek ALC3230 Audio Codec

And tucked underneath, on the bottom:

• Intel Mobile HM77 Express Chipset
• Intel Core i5-3317U Processor
• Marvell Avastar 88W8797 Wireless/Bluetooth/FM Radio Controller
• Novatek NT96132QG46
• 2x Winbond 25X05CL Serial Flash
• Winbond 25Q64FV Serial Flash

A few more flicks of the spudger and out come the stereo speakers.

Next up is the keyboard dock connector. The same type of port is used in both the Pro and non-Pro versions of the Surface, allowing the Type Cover keyboard to be cross-compatible.