Specs:
i7 4790K ($50)
9020 Optiplex Motherboard ($10)
32GB DDR3 RAM ($35)
7900 XTX 24GB VRAM ($900)
1TB M.2 NVMe ($50)
EVGA 700 BR PSU ($50)
24 pin to 8 pin adapter for motherboard ($20)
NVME PCIe x4 Adapter ($12)
Molex to fan adapters ($7)
Power button adapter ($6)
Total: $1140
Using Arch GNU/Linux (Tried installing Debian, couldn’t get the AMD drivers to work properly, so I’m using Arch for the moment)
Can run Stable Diffusion, LLMs, and basically all my games at 1440p High to Ultra settings (RDR2, GTA V, Arma 3, etc.)
GPU passhtrough doesn’t work for the moment, but I can still run virtual machines. This is a Haswell motherboard, which can be 100% freed in the BIOS over time when we have enough Libreboot devs who can reverse engineer the rest of the blobs. Intel ME is also disabled (theoretically, since you can’t actually fully remove it). This is a build that I did for fun, in the future, I’m planning on switching to a Z690-A motherboard with DDR5(can be flashed with Dasharo firmware). If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
i5 4790K and a… 7900 XTX?
You are not supposed to power the GPU like that. You should use two separate cables from the supply. The other connector of the same cable is intended to “daisy chain” low power cards.
It will probably work anyway, but better safe than sorry.
Edit: I think it’s needed because:
- The power supply might have separate circuits for separate cables and might not be able to supply all the power needed by the GPU through just one
- The cable might not be rated to have that much power flow through and might overheat and melt over time
- If you could just fork the cable into two why would they put two connectors on the GPU, it’s not like they have different voltages, they are literally daisy chained
This picture raises some questions.
- Why do GPU vendors make the top look all fancy if no one sees it, because it’s always mounted upside down?
- And why no one mods the GPU itself for looks, adds crawly legs or whatever, if the case is a glass box anyway?
I’m quite curious, are there many advantages to building a libre PC? Last I checked, my hardware doesn’t bombard me with ads, AI and other manifestations of enshittification. Yet.
You can encrypt your /boot partition with Argon2, which allows you to have a fully encrypted disk. You can check the integrity of your kernel at boot via Libreboot GRUB using GPG. Not as much spyware as you get with modern day computers. I know there is still proprietary ECs, microcode, etc. but we should all be trying to minimize proprietary software as much as possible.
Nice. For folks who wouldn’t need a lot of storage space I guess this could make a nice rather low budget Libreboot computer.
