Is logical. More “restricted market” more high cost. In Swiss there is a “farm car” which still produce the good old classical Mini in “green style” with a totally electrical engine (but without the android spyware inside like the modern “green” cars). The cost? Over 90000€ 
Sometimes rich people are lucky they can bought an house with swimpool for swimming in winter, bought nice car even is not a Ferrari and bought good and really secure pc. We poor people no nice car, no swimming in winter, and “safe” pc with open source os but with spyware inside.
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I have some nice sites with “open” hardware or at least more secure than supermarket hardware with ime and psp inside.
https://starlabs.systems #some models with with coreboot
https://minifree.org #laptops with coreboot, cheap price
https://novacustom.com #laptops, dasharo
https://nitrokey.com #some models using coreboot, bitcoin accepted!
https://puri.sm #nice hardware line with coreboot
https://store.vikings.net #some laptops with coreboot
https://system76.com #some laptops with coreboot
https://tehnoetic.com #laptops, desktop, server with coreboot, Intel & AMD (opteron)
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I add it to my list. Nice project, I only dislike the 90% of open-hw projects are only on laptops. A good revolution start when Desktop/Workstations start to come. ATM we have only Raptor (really expensive) and some very old asus boards
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Dasharo is also great, they sell MSI Z790 prebuilt PC with coreboot, if someone is interested in something recent you can give them a try.
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Just burning Gnu Trisquel-Ecne on T-X60 plus GnuBoot!
It make me feeling the Freedom!
Taurus on Savanah!
Pictures from Sailfish and Xperia Lena.
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I spent all day today trying to figure out how to finally get a solid and Libre GL and Vulkan for POWER9, all i found was hope and miracles on front.
So Mesa v25.1+ it key to start gaming for but sadly most Gnu system lack on newer mesa even Gnu Trisquel Ecne or Gnu PureOS Crimson ATM. 
looks like i need to get time to own backporting to speed up.
I feel that i am alone on this, as for some reason many OpenSource and FreeSoftware people already fallen into BLOBs Honeyspot.
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Consumers do not have a cost-efficient choice on the matter as long as they depend on third-party hardware manufacturers.
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For those looking for a desktop: Support for the Lenovo M920x has recently landed in coreboot (probably similar to what Libreboot has done for the Dell 3050 Micro and the Thinkpad 480s). While it’s just a minipc with no easy dGPU option, you can build up one with a i9-9900T and 64GB of DDR4 RAM and a fast M.2 PCIe SSD which should be more than twice as fast as the KGPE-D16 with top-end CPUs - not to mentioned the power consumption, which should be 5x to 10x lower.
However, from what I understand all post-haswell systems require Intel’s FSP blobs in addition to the (neutered) ME which might be a dealbreaker for some people.
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Thank you for the interesting information.
But you need to take into account the fact that Libreboot and its developer Leah Rowe, despite their great contribution to this direction, cause GREAT DAMAGE to the concept of LIBRE SOFTWARE, calling their products LIBRE, now only GnuBoot can be called that!
Watch this video again A fully free BIOS with GNU Boot - media.ccc.de
It is important to know and understand this!
Even Purism products are considered NOT libre (The computers sold by these companies require the use of a proprietary BIOS) Non-RYF Computers with GNU/Linux preinstalled - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
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Thank you for the useful information.
But Power9 is sooooooo expensive!
I don’t see any point in this direction, since LIBRE products (routers, USB adapters, keyboards, desktops, laptops) should be very cheap, so that any schoolchild, for example, from Latin America, can buy it.
The fact that the FSF is not doing anything in this direction now is a BIG MISTAKE AND STUPIDITY!
A schoolchild, student or ordinary person today in 2025 with our super technologies should already have a free computer.
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Sure, you might blame Libreboot for not changing their name after changing their policy regarding the inclusion of non-free software. However, I don’t see the added value of gnuboot so far. I own several “libre-friendly” boards, however, using them is hardly possible:
- the core2duo generation lacks a usable IOMMU, making running VMs on it imho much more insecure than doing so e.g. on sandy bridge hardware with a neutered ME. Also, I wonder how many unfixed security-relevant bugs might exist in its microcode that leads to other crashes as well.
- the KGPE-D16 was dropped in coreboot years ago and despite several efforts, nobody managed to get it back in. For me, the DDR3 training works very well there after some adjustments, however, power consumption is a nightmare. This has even gotten far worse with dasharo’s changes in their fork of the 4.11 tree. See this issue : High idle power consumption on KGPE-D16 with coreboot compared to stock firmware · Issue #322 · Dasharo/dasharo-issues · GitHub
In the talk, the answer of the gnuboot maintainer regarding security issues without microcode updates also seems not reflected to me. I mean, with a 63xx Opteron CPU you have a HUGE security hole on your KGPE-D16 system. And while you can fix other issues in software, I am not aware how this can be fixed in software without microcode updates. So the “pragmatic” solution then is to not to load microcode updates that fix the issue because they could contain backdoors?
If I look at their issue tracker, I fear that the gnuboot project is spending a lot of effort in re-documenting old bugs we already knew years ago without fixing them. Some of the bugs only occur when running old microcode (e.g. KVM crashes on X200). This does not add much value. What would help much more is actually fixing the bugs upstream and improving documentation on how to run a “libre coreboot” on libre-friendly hardware. A good start could be to add the missing “freedom status” entries for many of the machines already described in the coreboot docs.
Coming back to the KGPE-D16, I believe that that the 3mdeb people would be able to fix many issues and bring back the KGPE-D16 to coreboot main, however, it seems like there has been no success in collecting the necessary money to pay them.
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See also:
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Thank you very much for your opinion. As for 3MDEB /Dasharo, I talked to them and asked a question about the possibility of building and buying KGPE-D16, they replied that they stopped the project on this motherboard and are now actively selling Z790-P WiFi DDR5 (Dasharo + Coreboot), the price is nice for the user, but this is NOT a Libre computer!
As for the developer of GnuBoot and KGPE-D16 I will reveal to you that the developer of LIBRE LINUX KERNEL=> Jason Self => About is actively using KGPE-D16 now and has been for several years. Recently, a wiki was created on this topic KGPE-D16 | Trisquel GNU/Linux - Run free!. I have collected information about what components I need to buy and assemble, I am gradually moving towards this. But I admit that it’s more difficult than buying a ready-made PC on the Internet)
I found this photo from my friend who build KGPE-D16 two years ago.
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I’ll leave it here, perhaps it will be useful to someone, I plan to buy and build:
Buy ASUS KGPE-D16 desktop computer parts:
• Motherboard: Asus KGPE-D16 Rev 1.04 (1.03 is ok too)
• Processors: 2 × Opteron 6262 HE (high efficiency), it’s possible to use the 6282SE but they consume 1.5× more power (for a quite low however measurable gain in performance)
• Graphics card - Geforce GTX 780Ti 3G (new fully free driver with power management available) or GeForce GTX 780 Ti 6GB
• PIKE 2008 plug-in (managed by GNU Boot)
• SATA III SSD disks SAMSUNG 870 EVO SATA III SSD 1TB 2.5"
• Memory:
- Crucial CT16G3ERSLD4160B
- Origin Storage CT16G3ERSLD4160B-OS
- 2-Power 2P-CT16G3ERSLD4160B
- SK Hynix HMT42GR7AFR4A-PB
• Power supply 500W gold 80+ power supply with two EPS12V (for CPU) or Fractal Design Ion+ Platinum 760P - 760W
• Cooling:
- Fan Noctua NF-A14 - 140mm (Front - 3 pcs., Bottom - 2 pcs., Back - 1pc.).
(1pc. - is in the box, can be installed on the top) - Noctua NF-A6x25 PWM fan - 60mm (on the radiator of the North Bridge - 1pc )
- Fractal Dynamic GP-14 -140mm fan (in the PSU - 1 pc).
- Noctua NF-A9 PWM fan - 92mm (on CPU radiators - 2 pcs.)
• Thermal paste Arctic MX-4
• Battery Lithium Cell CMOS Power CR2032
• Case Fractal Design Define 7 XL
• ROM GnuBoot. Download ROM for flashing the BIOS chip here https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuboot/gnuboot-0.1-rc6/roms/gnuboot-0.1-rc6_kgpe-d16-udimm_16mb.tar.xz 2025-03-24
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X86 do not support Big Indian, which will never see the true-computing-power so even MIPs or ARM may better than X86.
But the True Big-Indian, True Power, True OS, True Libre and True Experience is on POWERPC from IBM.
So x86 do not support: True OSes and more.
Even POWERPC is the best for manage fans sync and curve.
Raptor Engineering it give you this Power and Extended! but also Raptor Engineering enabled OpenBMC for GNU RYF ASUS KGPE-D16
POWERPC is a magical computer world.
Dont let the Ubiquitous it Block you.
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Until Power10:
Hugo Landau’s article coincidentally mentions the Librem 5 in the footnotes:
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I had a similar setup running for many years so I’d like to share some experience here:
- if you plan to use this as a desktop, expect frequent and hard freezes with this kind of GPU and nouveau. It works nice as a server, but once gfx-intensive 2D stuff happens I saw lots of freezes. I tried a bunch of different nividia GPUs but they all had the same issues. A friend of mine sees them on a different system (AMD Zen1 arch) so I doubt that it’s specific to the KGPE-D16.
- I had 96GB of RAM (Samsung) with one CPU running stable without MCT errors or alike.
- You can imrpvoe boot times by setting some nvram variables so them RAM training will not occur every time (search the coreboot mailing lists, I posted there a few times on these topics back in the days).
- I would highly discourage installing CPUs in both sockets as the power consumption will be horrible and due to the heat also the fans will not run really quiet (even not the noctua ones).
- be prepared for poor sata performance, and don’t expect nvme drives via PCIe to reach their spec’d performance either.
- the Opteron 63xx series is more power-efficient and I would not expect the 62xx series to run securely without microcode updates either. I had 62xx CPUs first and switch to 63xx later.
- be prepared to pay much more for the “surroundings” (psu, case, coolers, fans, …) than for the actual computing hardware itself.
Regarding the kgpe-d16 port and 3mdeb: Well, I understand that they lost interest after several attempts to fund this work. I would be surprised if a community effort will succeed to revitalize it, but of course I would warmly welcome it.
Btw: I considered POWER9 as well but almost none of those fanboys post power consumption stats about the TALOS platform. My impression is that it’s even more horrible than the KGPE-D16.
Please don’t get me wrong - I don’t want to discourage you, but I would not expect too much from this platform. Good luck with your build!
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Thanks for your opinion and information.
This is what I say about this that we have Libre Software fans of a desktop PC and this is a big problem. If not KGPE-D16 then what?
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