@MilkySage …well it is highly recommended that you at least have 16gb of ram to work with. Also to have a functional Qubes environment 32gb + memory is what is needed. I am not saying that 16gb won’t do it but you may have some issues and I wouldn’t have running many domains at the same time. Try to find out what max ram your laptop can have.
You need to go into bios and look around. Manufactures have different layouts. It is usually nested with the other VT option… VT-txt is found I think under security. So basically their are 3 options you need to have. Unfortunately to have all 3 of these options you either need a workstation or server. Desktop/laptos very rarely have all 3. The reason why workstations and servers have the 3 options is because they are built for virtulazation and emulation while desktop and laptops will fall short. Also with such power comes heat buildup and yes power usage. Generally speak also workstations and servers can have 8+ cores X2 and support easily 64gb + memory. So their bios setting/setups are more robust and complex but they will easily support Qubes os environments. It’s not to say that desktop/laptop can’t run qubes-os because their are. But if you want a BEAST that run flawless workstation/server. Remember their are tradeoffs you have to think about.