HCL - Desktop PRE-BUILT - HP Omen 45L

HP OMEN 45L summary:

Before Installation

  • Disabled Secure Boot.
  • Enabled VT-d under BIOS/UEFI.

Installation Process

  • No Errors/Warnings.
  • Went smoothly. :slightly_smiling_face:

Stability and Peripherals

  • USB Keyboard And USB Mouse Worked perfectly without tweaks.
  • System is stable.
  • “Qubes Update” Would get stuck at updating dom0 (fixed by qubes-dom0-update in a dom0 terminal.), Other Qubes update successfully but they take time to update.
  • No GPU Artifacts.
  • No Application crashes.
  • Sound works fine without lag or issues.

Internet and Bluetooth

  • Ethernet worked without any errors or hiccups.
  • Bluetooth untested.
  • Wi-Fi untested.

GPU Pass-through

  • Experienced black screen followed by hard reset.
  • Reasonable cause: Wouldn’t work due to system having only 1 GPU (no i-GPU). :thinking:

Browsing - Video Playback

  • General Browsing and Chromium applications worked smoothly.
  • Video Playback had dropped frames. :slightly_frowning_face:
  • Youtube on firefox had choppy playback, Switching to Waterfox fixed it.

Performance

  • Really smooth and fast however Qubes starting takes some time.
  • Fans are silent and they are un-tweakable due to lack of drivers for linux. (Decision by HP.)
  • OEM GPU fans are tweakable using GWE for nvidia. (Unsafe, GWE has to be installed on dom0! Also GWE Requires NVIDIA proprietary drivers). I personally avoided this step due to safety concerns.

Other

  • Grub Installation Works without any issues. :grin:
  • Motherboard: Stock OEM, (BlizzardOC) HP 8917.
  • Specs: i7 12700K (comes with i-gpu but motherboard does not support i-gpus) NVIDIA GPU (RTX 3070 LHR)

Notes for other OMEN 45L users:

  • RGB on the desktop can be changed with OpenRGB, However it needs to be installed on dom0 which exposes an security risk! I personally avoided this step.

Conclusion:

  • Qubes OS works smoothly out of the box!
  • No tweaking needed for basic activities.

I almost forgot :smiling_face_with_tear:
Here are the documents:

Qubes-HCL-HP-OMEN_by_HP_45L_Gaming_Desktop_GT22_0xxx-20240607-043530.yml (1.1 KB)
Qubes-HCL-HP-OMEN_by_HP_45L_Gaming_Desktop_GT22_0xxx-20240607-051215.cpio.gz (12.8 KB)

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