Crazy PC build made me wondering... Would this work for Qubes OS?

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So… I stumbled with this YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THZnFkjOu-M

This guy made a beast of a computer with a CPU of 32 cores (64 threads) and a whole lot of DDR4.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809625652245.html

This looks crazy. Does somebody know if this would this work for Qubes OS?
This would make my Active Directory local labs come true hahaha.
Also it would be nice to have that much cores for some multithreaded tasks.

These are the benchmarks of the CPU: AMD EPYC 7452 Benchmark

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Qubes recommends Intel for security-related reasons.

Would it work? Maybe. Generally speaking, I think as your setup gets more niche, you’re more likely ending up having issues, especially with a setup like Qubes. How many people have run Fedora and Xen, let alone Qubes, this CPU and the current kernel and reported issues? Not many I’m assuming.
There is just one single result when searching only for the general term EYPC on the HCL.

I also don’t think I would buy components for this on AliExpress, especially when looking to run a security-focused OS.

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  1. Looks crazy inefficient with 155 W CPU
  2. Will be a bit sluggish due to low core frequency
  3. Do you know if this configuration supports IOMMU? This is the requirement for PCI passthrough
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  1. It’s power hungry, yes
  2. My i7-1360P get laggy when I start spawning multiple VMs for multiple tasks. Do you think this CPU won’t be an upgrade of efficiency? I thought it was okay due to the quantity of cores
  3. Yes it does. A guy deployed a Proxmox on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNJs0YAnWGg
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That’s true, maybe I end up having to tweak things. Anyway I don’t think it will give too much issue, or at least that’s what I think after seeing the HCL reference, thank you so much btw!
About your concerns on AliExpress, I understand you. I mean, although the CPU is AMD and the RAM is SK Hynix, which I trust, the motherboard is from a brand I’m not familiar. Maybe I find a more suitable motherboard…

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Intel Xeons are competitive with Epic with 32 cores.

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A 14900k has 24 cores, a 9950x has 16 cores. And this is well tested hardware not server architecture. They both can handle at keast 128gb of memory. I don’t see how having more cores or memory than this would serve anybody but 1% use case.

My experience is that fewer cores but higher clock speeds equates to a more zippy Qubes experience anyway.

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Unlikely when starting qubes, your storage is the most likely bottleneck at that point. Definitely not for efficiency, maybe for effectiveness but limited to very multi-thread-able tasks, or if you have many actively computing qubes at the same time, and I mean MANY, you already have 12 better cores:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3600vs5198/AMD-EPYC-7452-vs-Intel-i7-1360P

even efficiency cores on i7-1360P are seemingly faster

p.s. I dig large memory pool though, at least you could speed it up by putting your templates in a ramdisk :grin:

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Oh okay, I guess I will aim for a more normal PC then.
I mean, my PC is more than enough for most Qubes OS use scenarios, but my labs project will surely demand more power than I currently have.
I will look for a 14900K build.
Thanks to all of you for the feedback!

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Here is an example product supporting Qubes OS and configurable with the i9-14900K:

See also:

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wow, thank you so much!
i’ll go for that one :slight_smile:

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