Hello, it’s July 2024 and I want to put together a new PC for Qubes.
I need help choosing the components.
It’s particularly important to me that the graphics are displayed in high quality and smoothly without interruptions / flickering, even when scrolling or playing videos (e.g. YouTube).
Although I don’t plan on doing much with the system, I would like to have a particularly fast system if possible. I’m happy every time the Qubes start or shut down half a second or a second faster.
If I was building, I’d do something like renehoj since he gets good results in tests
The biggest improvement in snappiness has been sata ssd to nvme, higher core CPU and memory 32-64gb. I use a lot of qubes and have some large qubes. If you are a light user, it’ll be less noticeable
The 13th and 14th gen Intel CPUs have a critical error, this could be an unfixable hardware issue. My CPU has the same issue, it’s stable running at a reduced clock speed. Some say the issue gets progressively worse with time, and eventually even down clocked CPUs start to fail.
You really don’t want to buy an Intel CPU right now, 15th gen gets released at the end of the year, maybe the issue is fixed in the next gen.
The new AMD CPUs are released next month, which seem like a better option. The downside with buying AMD is Qubes OS compatibility, lots of people have issues with getting AMD to run Qubes OS, and there is no clear information about what motherboard to buy.
If you want the best possible desktop, wait until next month and buy the fastest AMD released. You can go through HCL reports and look for AMD socket AM5/Ryzen 9000 CPUs, it should at least give you some hope a similar motherboard would work.
I don’t know if Xeon CPUs are affected, anything based on the Raptor Lake designed could potentially be affected.
Xeon CPUs are not the best desktop CPUs, they are typically 4.8GHz where high-end desktop CPUs can run 6.2 GHz without overclocking.
Lots over everyday desktop applications only benefit from high clock speed, where server workloads a designed to take advantage of high core count CPUs like Xeon.
Qubes OS especially benefits from high clock speed CPUs, because tasks that would normally be done with GPU acceleration are delegated to the CPU.
Hello, I am currently running Qubes on 3 systems for testing purposes:
-Lenovo Thinkpad P15 Gen2 with i7-11800H
-Lenovo Thinkpad P16v with i7-13800H
-Desktop PC MSI B450 Tomahawk Max 2 with Ryzen 5 5600G
Qubes runs on all 3 systems immediately and without any help. Qubes runs pretty quickly.
The only problem that exists on all 3 systems under Qubes is that it is not very comfortable, for example, to watch a YouTube video or to scroll from image to image on news sites with the mouse.
While the things described are displayed quite smoothly under Windows, under Qubes (on these 3 devices mentioned) it is rather bumpy or jerky and flickering, so the display is very, very unpleasant.
That puts me off. Until there is a solution for this, I have to stick with Windows (which I am very sorry about, because I really like Qubes!!).
I was hoping that the solution would be a new system with Qubes-friendly hardware.
Does the bug you described in the 13th and 14th generation CPUs have anything to do with the problems I described? Or how does the bug you described in the 13th and 14th generation CPUs manifest itself?
I also have the problem that the fan on both laptops remains loud all the time, even when Qubes is not doing anything or not doing much. I assumed that the CPU might be under above-average load because the graphics cards are not being addressed properly and everything is running via the CPU, which is why there are output problems with scrolling and video output?
Not quite a critical error: Many motherboard vendors were running the CPU out-of-spec to eke out the last bit of performance, like up to 4,096 watts and 512 amps, and it starts to behave erratically: Go figure. Lot of recent BIOS updates to keep the motherboard vendors from setting up their motherboards this way (or at least provide the option to run it within the expected power envelope).
I can’t comment on newer processors. I have a t480 Thinkpad and it runs qubes pretty cool and quiet at idle. Around 40C on the processor. It did improve when I did a bios update. My xeon desktop idles at 27C and fan never spins up at all
OK, there are problems with Intel CPUs of the 13th and 14th generation. How do these problems affect Qubes? And does it have something to do with the smooth graphics output (as described above)?
Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen (K/KF/KS) desktop processors can get an elevated voltage input to the processor due to previous BIOS settings which allow the processor to operate at turbo frequencies and voltages even while the processor is at a high temperature. This is not good and a mid-August for patch release will become available if interested in one of those specific processors.
From a Qubes perspective, I don’t think it really matters since each Qube uses two vCPU or so and the Efficiency cores are not impacted (I’m using the top of the line i9-14900K and 16 of the 24 cores are Efficiency cores.) Maybe if you pin the CPU core and crank it that may produce an issue, but I’ve found pinning cores a lot of effort for little gain. Besides, if you run big jobs a dedicated machine is way faster than using Qubes as that is not Qubes’ strength (I have a number of 24x7 jobs and they run in a fraction of the time on a “slower” dedicated non-Qubes system).
I’ve used Qubes on many different platforms and my i9-14900K (up to 6Ghz on performance cores) is faster than my 22-core Xeon (2.4/3.6Ghz), but not by that much. Qubes focus is on security so benchmarks don’t really represent actual use with so many virtual processes running in the background. My 4-core 2.5GHz i7-4710HQ with 16Gb RAM and an NVME M.2 can easily meet your needs on a 1080P display. If interested in a laptop used Thinkpads can be a great deal. For a 4k display the video card choice will be the greatest factor.
EDIT: Be mindful of the base frequency. Processors rarely run at their top speed for very long, especially in a VM-centric Qubes OS as it switches from process to process. It may sound odd that the i7-11800H and i7-13800H didn’t work well, but for notebook systems and Qubes the Base frequency is really key. For example, the i7-13800H is listed as a 2.5/5.2GHz system, but most of the cores are Efficiency cores and they run 1.8/4Ghz (my very old i7-5960X would crush it). Also, hyper-threading in the Performance cores is turned off in Qubes due to security issues (Efficiency cores don’t use hyper-threading).
If you don’t want any hassle with compaibility I’d advice to take a look at the tower PC from nitrokey.com - it is Qubes OS certified, which means that before a new Qubes version comes out, they cooperate with nitrokey to make sure it all runs smoothly on it.
PS: Qubes and gaming is not much of a thing, you most likely will want to dual boot. That also has some security implications… You can physically detatch the qubes SSD before booting the windows SSD for gaming for example. However a compromised Windows (read: Windows) can still tamper with your BIOS, which would affect qubes. It depends on your threat level if you can do that or not.
Do you know if the 14500T (i.e. low power) Intel CPU has this error, too?
Is there a way to find out if a processor is affected, like checking the logs?
That’s not a good look. And Intel is expected to lay off thousands soon to cut costs and fund a rebound (Bloomberg). If people question the quality and support of your products, cutting heads isn’t your solution. Just bean counters at work. I miss Andy.