Performance on a modern desktop PC

Looking for people who are running on fast/modern desktops.

While qubes is very useful, I find the input latency (especially on web browsers and under a Windows VM) extremely frustrating. Since I’m impatient with a high workload thinking of setting up a bunch of separate physical machines to remote desktop to instead of Qubes.

That being said, I’ve been using dual core i7 laptops which are more than a few years old. If I throw $1-1.5k at a modern desktop is it likely to be much of an improvement?

Broad question not super well written apologies in advance.

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check hcl to see if there any desktop that “good” in your opinion
if not then it quite difficult now, somewhat like a blind-foiled buying computer

Just in case, don’t forget that USB keyboard is not recommended.

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I use qubes on my old desktop pc.
I use qubes on my modern laptop.

How’s the imporivement should fit to what you need.

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I’m running qubes 4.1rc1 on a custom built desktop that is about 5 years old now (I think). ASUS motherboard, with i7-6700k processor and 32gb ram with an nvidia 1070 card.

To me this machine and OS are fantastic. It basically is my daily driver for a lot of things. But, I’m also not doing anything computationally intensive. I’m not running a windows qube either. i would say the key to a nice running Qubes environment, is minimum of 4 cores, 32gb ram(16 is fine to) and an nice SSD drive.

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I doubt there are modern motherboards with PS/2 kb/mouse. USB ones work fine, but the configuration is somewhat fragile.

Speaking of perfromance, starting new DVM is slooow. Why cannot we have a cached pre-launched DVM ready if our RAM resources permit that?

Yes, we could: Proposal and code for instantaneously started disposable VMs · Issue #1512 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub.

See also: Preloaded DisposableVMs · Issue #5822 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub.

The asus z690 apex have two PS/2 ports. Unfortunatly the apex have no igpu support and only two ram slots.

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Wow so I am not the only one who likes this idea :slight_smile: And apparently there is a mechanism that is ideal for this already in place!

I too have a modern(ish) desktop with PS/2 ports - it’s a custom build
with 64GB RAM and multiple SSDs. Qubes is fine.
I also have old laptops with 16GB RAM - is the performance much
different? Not imo.

Ah that’s tricky. Might need to get a PS/2 keyboard just for booting and then use my regular keyboard. Or see if USB-PS/2 adapter works. Thanks for reminding me.

Anyone try to get an PS/2 Card to go into Tower?

I have seen one or two for sale.

I have a PS/2 Keyboard, and mouse.

All things equal, it seems that having plenty of RAM is essential for smooth Qubes operation. If you are always pushing the limits of memory with open VMs and various processes, everything is going to lag and drag and generally suck.

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PS/2 “cards” (PCI or PCIE) are USB controllers with embedded USB to PS/2 converters. The keyboard/mouse will be seen as a USB device.

B

Could we just make USB input devices support more secure and reliable rather than augmenting our systems with obscure hardware?