Hey friends. Right now I have a Clevo PA71ES-G laptop. It works well, but boy does that Coffee Lake i7 get toasty in that skinny chassis. While I appreciate its portability, I never take it outside my house - rarely even between rooms. So I’d like to get a project started with your help.
2 key motivators:
I’m sick of Microsoft’s shenanigans with Windows 10. If they want to market it as a service, then I’d like to treat it as such and run it in a neat little VM box equipped with GPU passthrough.
I’d love to stop worrying about thermals and optimizing fan curves for each game. Don’t get me wrong; I love getting the most out of my hardware, but with my current rig it’s much more out of necessity than I’d want.
Some thoughts / guidelines:
This is mainly for gaming and tinkering
The overall goal is for this build to satisfy all my nerdy needs. That is to say: Linux as the host OS (probably Mint) and a KVM of Windows 10 with GPU passthrough. A VM / dual boot of MacOS as well. Naturally, I’d want the gaming performance of the Windows 10 KVM to at least match what my mobile GTX 1070 / 8750H gives me right now. Maybe I don’t need to go the KVM route. Perhaps Wine + DXVK is enough - I don’t know!
Budget: ~$1800
I’m not at all averse to team red. I understand AMD is quite advantageous if Linux is the focus.
Either micro-ATX or mini-ITX
(mini-ITX is probably unrealistic, but maybe you all know something I don’t)
My monitor solution is something with no more than 5ms response time and no less than 144Hz. Smaller monitors are fine and even preferred. I’m going to VESA mount it to a tripod for easy living room use.
Subject to further changes.