Title: NovaCustom NV41 laptop review | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 03 January 2024 | |
Tags: openbsd linux qubesos hardware | |
Description: In this blog post, I'm reviewing a NovaCustom NV41 laptop | |
with many operating systems | |
# Disclaimer | |
Hello! Today, I present you a quite special blog post, resulting from | |
a partnership with the PC Manufacturer NovaCustom. I offered them to | |
write an honest review for their product and also share my feedback as | |
a user, in exchange for a NV41 laptop. This is an exceptional | |
situation, I insist that it's not a sponsorship, I actually needed a | |
laptop for my freelance work, and it turns they agreed. In our | |
agreements, I added that I would return the laptop in the case I | |
wouldn't like it, I don't want to generate electronic wastes and | |
company's money for nothing. | |
I have no plans to turn my blog into an advertisement platform and do | |
this on a regular basis. Stars aligned well here, NovaCustom is making | |
the only modern laptop Qubes OS certified, and the CEO is a very open | |
source friendly person. | |
# Introduction | |
The real introduction now :-) | |
In this blog post, I'll share my experience using a NV41 laptop from | |
NovaCustom, I tried many operating systems on it for a while, run some | |
benchmarks, and ultimately used Qubes OS on it for a month and half for | |
my freelance work. | |
NovaCustom official website | |
NV41 Laptop store webpage | |
# The machine itself | |
The laptop on a stand, running Ubuntu 23.10 | |
This is a 14-inch laptop, the best form factor in my opinion for being | |
comfortable when used for a long time while being easy to carry. | |
It looks great with its metal look with blueish reflection and the | |
engraved logo "NV" on the cover (logo can be customized). | |
The frame feels solid and high-end, I'm not afraid to carry it or | |
manipulate it. Compared to my ThinkPad T470, that's a change, I always | |
fear to press its plastic frame too much when carrying with a single | |
hand. | |
The power button is on the right side, this is quite unusual, but it | |
looks great, there are LED around the power plug near the power button | |
that tells the state of the system (running, off, sleeping) and if the | |
battery is running low or charging. | |
It's running the open-source Firmware Dasharo coreboot, and optionally | |
the security oriented firmware Heads can be installed. | |
Dasharo coreboot official website | |
Heads open source firmware official website | |
## Packaging and unboxing | |
The machine came in a box containing a box containing the actual box | |
with the laptop inside, it was greatly packaged. | |
Laptop still wrapped in the protections, all the boxes are in the background | |
The laptop screen had a removable sleeve that can be reused, I | |
appreciated this as it's smart because it's possible to put it back in | |
case you don't use the laptop for a long time or want to sell it later. | |
The box contained the laptop, the power supply and the power plug, the | |
full length of the power supply is 2 meters which is great, I hate | |
laptops chargers that only have 1 meter of cable. | |
The laptop, power supply, power plug and other (manual, screen cleaner…) | |
## Hardware | |
The specifications of the hardware I received are the following: | |
* CPU: i7-1260P (4 Performance cores with hyper-threading, 8 Efficient | |
cores) | |
* Memory: 2x32 GB of 3200 MHz | |
* Storage: NVME Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB | |
* Wireless: blob-free Atheros QCNFA222 Wi-Fi a/b/g/n + bluetooth 4.0 | |
* Screen: 14" 1080p (1920x1080), 98% sRGB 60 Hz, anti-glare treatment | |
* Weight: 1.4 kg | |
The default wireless card is an Intel AX-200/201 compatible with Wi-Fi | |
6 and Bluetooth 5.2, but I received the blob-free card which was | |
convenient for most operating systems as it doesn't need a firmware | |
(works out of the box on Guix for instance). | |
There are options to remove the webcam or add a slider to it, a screen | |
privacy filter or secure screws+tape for the packaging to be sure the | |
laptop hasn't been intercepted during transit. | |
You can also choose the keyboard layout from a large list, or even have | |
your own layout. | |
Kudos to NovaCustom for guaranteeing the sell of replacement parts for | |
at least 7 years after you buy them a laptop! They also provide a PDF | |
will full details about the internals. | |
### Hybrid CPU | |
This is my very first Hybrid CPU, it has 4 Performance cores capable of | |
hyperthreading, and 8 Efficient cores that should draw less power at | |
the expense of being slower. | |
I made a benchmark, only on Qubes OS, to compare the different cores to | |
a Ryzen 5 5600X and my T470 i5-7300U. | |
Phoronix benchmark link | |
Qubes OS forum: Hybrid CPU benchmarking performance when pinning to specific co… | |
If your operating system doesn't know (Linux does) how to make use of | |
E/P cores (like OpenBSD or FreeBSD), it will use them like if they were | |
similar, so no worry here. However, the performance and battery saving | |
aren't optimized because the system won't balance the load at the right | |
place. | |
TL;DR: the P cores compete with my desktop Ryzen 5 5600X! And the E | |
cores are faster than the i5-7300U! Linux and Xen (in Qubes OS) does a | |
great job at balancing the workload at the right place, so you don't | |
have to worry about pinning a specific task to a P or E core pool. | |
### Coil whine noise | |
I think this deserves an entry because it's a plague on many modern | |
computers. If you don't know about it, it's an electric noise that | |
happens under certain conditions. On my T470, it's when charging the | |
battery. | |
I've been able to get some coil whine noise, only if I forced the CPU | |
frequency to the maximum in the operating system, instead of letting | |
the computer scaling the frequency. This resulted in no performance | |
improvement and some coil whine noise. | |
In my daily "normal" use with Linux or Qubes OS, I never heard a coil | |
whine. But on OpenBSD for which the frequency management is still not | |
good with these modern CPUs (intel p-state support isn't great) there | |
is a constant noise. However, using obsdfreqd reduced the noise to | |
almost nothing, but still appeared a bit on CPU load. | |
There is a specific topic where coil whine on this laptop was | |
discussed, a fix was provided by NovaCustom using heat pads (sent for | |
free for their customers) placed at a specific place. I don't think | |
this should be required except if your operating system has a poor | |
support for frequency scaling. | |
Qubes OS forum: NV41 coil whine topic | |
### Screen | |
The screen coloring is excellent, which is expected as it covers 98% of | |
sRGB palette, it's really bright, and I rarely turn the brightness more | |
than 50%. I didn't try to use it outdoor, but the brightness at full | |
level should allow reading the screen. | |
However, it has a noticeable ghosting which make it annoying for | |
playing video games (that's not really the purpose of this model | |
though), or if you are really sensitive to it. I'm used to a 144 Hz | |
display on my desktop and I became really sensitive to refresh rate. | |
However, I have to admit the ghosting isn't really annoying for | |
productivity work, development or browsing the web. Watching a video | |
is fine too. | |
One slightly annoying limitation is that it's not possible to open the | |
screen more than a 140° angle, this sounds reasonable, but I got used | |
to my T470 screen able to open at ~180°. This is not a real issue, | |
but if you have a weird setup in which you store your laptop vertically | |
against your desktop AND with the screen opened, you won't be able to | |
use the screen. | |
### Sound system | |
I've been surprised by the speakers, the audio quality is good up to | |
~80% of the max volume, but then the quality drops when you set it too | |
high. | |
I have no way to measure it, but the speakers appear to be quite loud | |
compared to my other laptops when set to 100%, I don't recommend doing | |
it though due to quality drop, but it can be handy sometimes. | |
The headphones port works fine, there are no noises, and it's able to | |
drive my DT 770 Pro 80 ohm. | |
I’ve been able to figure an equalizer setting improving the audio to | |
be pretty good (that's subjective). I’m absolutely not an audio | |
expert, but it sounded a lot better for pop, rock, metal or piano. | |
* 31 Hz: 0 db | |
* 63 Hz: 0 db | |
* 125 Hz: 0 db | |
* 250 Hz: 0 db | |
* 500 Hz: -4 db | |
* 1 kHz: -5 db | |
* 2 kHz: -8 db | |
* 4 kHz: -3 db | |
* 8 kHz: -3 db | |
* 16 kHz: +2 db | |
The idea is to lower the trebles instead of pushing the bass which | |
quickly saturate. Depending on what you listen to and your tastes, you | |
could try +1 or +2 db for the four first settings, but it may produce | |
saturated sounds. | |
### Cooling | |
I think the cooling system is one of the best part of the laptop, it's | |
always running at 10% of its speed and is inaudible. | |
Laptop view from below | |
Under a huge load, the fan can be heard, but it's still less loud than | |
my idling silent desktop... | |
There is a special key combination (Fn+1) that triggers the turbo fan | |
mode, forcing them to run at 100%, it is recommended if the laptop is | |
used to run at full CPU 24/7 or for a very long period of time, | |
however, this is as loud as a 1U rack server! For a more comprehensive | |
comparison, let's say it is as annoying as a microwave device. | |
I was surprised that the laptop never burned my knees, although under | |
heavy load for 30 minutes it felt a bit too hot to keep it on my bare | |
skin without fabric between, that's a genuine lap-top laptop, | |
compatible with short skirts :D. | |
### Keyboard | |
The keyboard isn't bad, but not good either. Typing on it is pleasant, | |
but it's no match against my mechanical keyboards. The touch is harder | |
than on my Lenovo T470 laptop, I think it feels like most modern laptop | |
keyboards. | |
Check the layout for the keys like "home", "end", "page up/down", on | |
mine they are tiny keys near the arrows, this may not be to your taste. | |
The type is quite silent, and there are 5 levels of back-light, I don't | |
really like this feature, so I turned it off, but it's there if you | |
like it. | |
There are NO indicators for the status of caps lock or num lock | |
(neither for scroll lock, but do people really use it?), this can be | |
annoying for some users. | |
### Touchpad | |
The touchpad may be a no-go for many, there are no extra physical | |
buttons but you can physically click on the bottom area to make/hold a | |
click. It also features no trackpoint (the little joystick in the | |
middle of the keyboard). | |
However, it has a large surface and can make use of multitouch clicks. | |
While I was annoyed at first because I was used to ThinkPad's extra | |
physical buttons, over time I got used to multitouch click (click is | |
different depending on the number of fingers used), or the "split-area" | |
click, where a click in a bottom left does a left click, in the middle | |
it does a middle click, and in the bottom right it does a right click. | |
It reacts well to movements and clicks and does the job, it's not the | |
greatest touchpad I ever used, but it's good enough. | |
Unfortunately, it's not possible for NovaCustom to propose a variant | |
touchpad featuring extra physical buttons. | |
### Suspend and Resume | |
The suspend/resume feature works as expected on Linux and Qubes OS. | |
Closing the lid correctly triggers the suspend function, opening it | |
resumes the system. | |
### Webcam | |
Nothing special to say about it, it's like most laptop webcams, it has | |
a narrow angle and the image quality is good enough to show your face | |
during VoIP meetings. | |
### Battery life (short version) | |
I tested the battery using different operating systems (OpenBSD, Qubes | |
OS, Fedora, Ubuntu) and different methods, there are more details later | |
in the text, but long story short, you can expect the following: | |
* battery life when idling: 6h00 | |
* battery life with normal usage: 3h00-5h00 for viewing videos, | |
browsing the web, playing emulated games, code development and some | |
compilation | |
* battery life in continuous heavy use: 2h00 (I accidentally played a | |
long video with no hardware-acceleration, it was using 500% CPU) | |
### I/O ports | |
On the I/O, the laptop is well-equipped. I appreciated seeing an | |
Ethernet port on a modern laptop. | |
On the left side: | |
* 1x Thunderbolt 4 / USB-c (supports external screen and charging) | |
* 1x USB | |
* anti-thief system | |
* Ethernet port | |
* Multi-card reader (a SD card plugged in doesn't go completely inside, | |
so it's not practical for a persistent extra storage) | |
Left side of the laptop | |
On the right side: | |
* 1x USB-c (supports external screen) | |
* 1x headphone | |
* Charge port | |
* Power button and two discrete states LEDs | |
* 1x HDMI | |
* 1x USB | |
Right side of the laptop | |
The rear of the laptop is fully used for the cooling system, and there | |
are nothing on the front (Hopefully! I hate connecting headphones on | |
the front side). | |
Back of the laptop | |
Front of the laptop | |
## Dasharo coreboot firmware | |
The laptop ships by Dasharo coreboot firmware (that's the correct name | |
for nowadays devices when we speak of the BIOS), it's an open-source | |
firmware that allows to manage your own secure boot keys, disable some | |
Intel features like "ME" | |
I guess their website will be a better place to understand what it's | |
doing compared to a proprietary firmware. | |
Dasharo official website | |
## NovaCustom | |
NovaCustom is building laptops based on Clevo (a manufacturer doing | |
high-end laptop frames, but they rarely sell directly) while ensuring | |
compatibility with Linux systems, especially Qubes OS for this specific | |
model as it's certified (it guarantees the laptop and all its features | |
will work correctly). | |
They contribute to dasharo development for their own laptops. | |
They ship their product worldwide, and as I heard from some users, the | |
custom support is quite reactive. | |
NovaCustom official website | |
# Operating system support | |
Now I shared about the hardware part, let's see how it behaves with | |
many operating systems! | |
## Linux distributions | |
I guess most users will use a Linux system on this laptop, so let's | |
start by testing some popular distributions: | |
### Fedora | |
Fedora project official website | |
Screenshot of Fedora 39 running GNOME | |
Fedora Linux support (tested with Fedora 39) was excellent, GNOME | |
worked fine. The Wi-Fi network worked immediately even during the | |
installer, Bluetooth was working as well with my few devices. Changing | |
the screen brightness from the GNOME panel was working. However, after | |
a Dasharo update, the keyboard slider in GNOME stopped working, it's a | |
known bug that also affects System76 laptops if I've read correctly, | |
this may be an issue with the Linux driver itself. | |
The touchpad was working on multitouch out of the box, suspending and | |
resuming the laptop never produced any issue. | |
Enabling Secure Boot worked out of the box with Fedora, which is quite | |
enjoyable. | |
### Ubuntu | |
Ubuntu company official website | |
Ubuntu 23.10 support was excellent as well, it's absolutely identical | |
to the Fedora report above. | |
Note: if you use VLC from the Snap store, it won't have hardware | |
decoded acceleration and will use a lot of CPU (and draw battery, and | |
waste watts for nothing), I guess it's an Ubuntu issue here. VLC from | |
Flatpak worked fine, as always. | |
### Alpine Linux | |
Alpine Linux project official website | |
Alpine Linux support (tested with Alpine 3.18.4) was excellent, I | |
installed GNOME and everything worked out of the box. The Atheros card | |
worked without firmware (this is expected for a blob free device), CPU | |
scheduling was correctly handled for Efficient/Performance cores as the | |
provided kernel is quite recent. | |
The touchpad default behavior was to click left/right/middle depending | |
on the number of fingers used to click, suspend and resume worked fine, | |
playing video games was also easy thanks to flatpak and Steam. | |
It's possible to enable Secure Boot by generating your own keys. | |
Alpine Linux wiki: UEFI Secure Boot | |
### Guix | |
Guix project official website | |
Screenshot of Guix running GNOME | |
Guix support is mixed. I've been able to install it with no issue, | |
thanks to the blob-free atheros network interface, it worked without | |
having to use guix-nonfree repository (that contains firmware). | |
However, I was surprised to notice that the graphical acceleration | |
wasn't working, it seems that Intel Xe GPU aren't blob free. This only | |
mean you can't plan video games or that any kind of GPU related | |
encoding/decoding won't work, but this didn't prevent GNOME to work | |
fine. | |
Suspend and resume was OK, and the touchpad worked out-of-the-box in | |
multi-tap mode. | |
Secure Boot didn't work, and I have no idea how a Secure Boot setup | |
with your own keys would look like on Guix, but it's certainly | |
achievable with enough Grub-foo. | |
### Trisquel | |
Trisquel GNU/Linux official project website | |
Trisquel is a 100% libre GNU/Linux distribution, this mean it doesn't | |
provide proprietary software or drivers, and no device firmware. | |
I've been able to install Trisquel and use it, the Wi-Fi was working | |
out of the box because of the blob-free Atheros card. | |
The main components of the system: CPU / Memory / Storage were | |
correctly detected, the default kernel isn't too old, and it was able | |
to make use of the Efficient/Performance core of the CPU. | |
When not using the laptop, I was able to suspend it to reduce the | |
battery usage, and then resume instantly the session when I needed, | |
this worked flawlessly. | |
The touchpad was working great using the "3 zones" mode in which you | |
tap on the touchpad in the left/center/right bottom of it to make a | |
left/middle/right click, this is actually as convenient as using 1, 2 | |
or 3 fingers depending on the click you want to make, this is something | |
that could be configured though. | |
Sound was working out of the box, the audio jack is also working fine | |
when plugging in headphones. | |
There is one issue with the webcam, when trying to use it, X crashes | |
instantly. This may be an issue in Trisquel software stack because it | |
works fine on other OS. | |
A major issue right now is the lack of graphical hardware acceleration, | |
I'm not sure if it's due to the i7-1260P integrated GPU needing a | |
proprietary firmware or if the linux-libre kernel didn't catch up with | |
this GPU yet. | |
## Qubes OS | |
Qubes OS project official website | |
Qubes OS 4.2 desktop screenshot | |
Qubes OS support (tested with 4.1, 4.2-RC2 to RC5 and 4.2) is | |
excellent, this is exactly what I expected for a Qubes OS certified | |
laptop (the only modern and powerful certified laptop as of January | |
2024!). | |
Qubes OS documentation: Hardware certification requirements | |
Qubes OS is my main OS as I use it for writing this blog, for work | |
(freelancer with different clients) and general use except gaming, so I | |
needed a reliable system that would be fast, with a pretty good battery | |
life. | |
So far, I never experienced issues except one related to the Atheros | |
Wi-Fi card (this is not the stock Wi-Fi device): 1 time out of 10 when | |
I suspend and resume, the card is missing, and I need to restart the | |
qube sys-net to have it again. I didn't try with the latest Dasharo | |
update though, it may be solved. | |
Watching 1080p videos x265 10 bits encoded is smooth and only draw ~40% | |
of a CPU, without any kind of GPU accelerated decoding. | |
The battery life when using the system to write emails, browse the | |
Internet and look at some videos was of 3 hours, if I only do stuff in | |
LibreOffice offline it lasts 5h30. | |
I'm able to have smooth videoconferences with the integrated webcam and | |
a USB headset, this kind of task may be the most CPU consuming popular | |
job that Qubes OS need, and it worked well. | |
The 64 GB are very appreciated, I "only" have 32 GB on my desktop | |
computer, but sometimes it lacks memory... 64 GB allows to not ever | |
think about memory anymore. | |
The touchpad is working fine, by default on the split-area behavior | |
(left/middle/right click depending on the touchpad area you click on). | |
There is a single USB controller that drives the webcam and card reader | |
+ the USB ports, including a USB-c docked that would be connected on | |
either the thunderbolt or USB-c ports. The thunderbolt device is on a | |
separate controller, but if you attach it to a qube (that is not | |
sys-usb), you lose all USB connectivity from a dock connected to it | |
(there is still the other plain USB-c port). The qube sys-usb isn't | |
even required to run if you don't use any USB devices (this saves many | |
headaches and annoying times). | |
Connecting a usb-c dock on the thunderbolt port allows to have USB | |
passthrough with sys-usb, an additional ethernet port and external | |
screen working with sound, it's also capable of charging the computer. | |
Whereas the simple usb-c port can only carry USB devices or the | |
integrated ethernet port of my dock, it should be able to support a | |
screen but I guess it's not working on Qubes OS. I didn't try adding | |
more than one screen on either ports, I guess it should work on the | |
thunderbolt port. | |
## BSD systems | |
I tried OpenBSD and FreeBSD with the laptop. I always have bad luck | |
with NetBSD, so I preferred to not try it, and DragonFly BSD support | |
should be pretty close to FreeBSD for which it didn't work well. | |
### OpenBSD | |
OpenBSD project official website | |
Screenshot of the OpenBSD 7.4 desktop using GNOME | |
I tried OpenBSD 7.4 and -current, everything went really well except | |
the Atheros WiFi card that isn't supported, but this was to be | |
expected. If you want the NV41 with OpenBSD, you need to take the | |
Intel AX-200/201 which is supported by the iwx driver. | |
OpenBSD manual page: iwx(4) | |
Suspend and resume works fine, the touchpad is using the "3 zones" | |
behavior by default where you need to tap left/center/right bottom to | |
make a left/middle/right click. The webcam and sound card were working | |
fine too. | |
The GPU is fully supported, you can use it for 3D rendering: I've been | |
able to play a PSP game using PPSSPP emulator. OpenBSD doesn't support | |
hardware accelerated video encoding/decoding at all, so I didn't test | |
it. | |
WipeOut Pulse emulated in the PSP emulator PPSSPP | |
### FreeBSD | |
FreeBSD project official website | |
I installed FreeBSD 14.0 RC4 with ZFS on root and full disk encryption, | |
the process went fine, I had Wi-Fi at the installer step (thanks to the | |
blob free Atheros card). | |
However, once I booted into the system, I didn't succeed to get X to | |
run, the GPU isn't supported yet and using VESA display didn't work for | |
me. Suspend and resume didn't work either. | |
I gave another try with GhostBSD 23.10.1 in hope I did something wrong | |
on FreeBSD 14 RC4 like a misconfiguration as I never had any good | |
experience with FreeBSD on desktop with regard to the setup. But | |
GhostBSD failed to start X and was continuously displaying its logo on | |
screen, only booting in safe mode allowed me to figure what was wrong. | |
I was really surprised that the hardware is still "too new" for FreeBSD | |
while OpenBSD support is almost excellent. | |
## Other | |
Some less known operating systems were tested as well. | |
### Haiku | |
Haiku project official website | |
Photography of the laptop running Haiku (live USB) | |
I booted Haiku revision 57370 live USB, I was actually surprised to | |
have the desktop displayed, and the network interfaces recognized. | |
Unfortunately, the Atheros card was recognized, but I haven't been able | |
to connect to a scanned network. | |
The display was using the correct resolution, but it was using software | |
rendering. | |
The webcam and the touchpad didn't work, I had to connect my USB | |
trackball. | |
I didn't go as far as installing it. | |
### OpenIndiana | |
I tried the freshly released OpenIndiana Hipster 2023.10 liveUSB. | |
After letting the bootloader display and start the boot process, the | |
init process seemed stuck and was printing errors about CPU every | |
minute. I haven't been able to get past this step. | |
# Measurements | |
I had fun measuring a lot of things like power usage at the outlet, | |
battery duration with many workloads and gaming FPS (Frames per Second, | |
30 is okayish depending on people, 40 is acceptable, 60 is perfect as | |
it's the refresh rate of the screen). | |
## Power | |
I measured the power usage in watts using a watt-o-meter in different | |
situations: | |
* power supply connected, but not to the laptop: 0 watt (some power | |
supplies draw a few watts doing nothing... hello Nintendo Switch with | |
its 2.1 watts!) | |
* charging, sleeping: 30 watts | |
* charging, idling: 37 watts | |
* charging and heavy use: 79 watts | |
* connected to AC (not charging), sleeping: 1 watt | |
* connected to AC (not charging), idling, screen at full brightness: 17 | |
watts | |
* connected to AC (not charging), downloading a file over Wi-Fi, screen | |
at full brightness: 22 watts | |
This is actually good in my opinion, to have a comparison point, a | |
standard 24-inch screen usually draw around 40 watts alone. | |
The power consumption of the laptop itself is within the range of other | |
laptop. I was happy to see it use no power when the AC is connected | |
but not to the computer, and on idling it's only 1 watt, I have another | |
laptop idling at 7 watts! | |
## Battery life | |
I measured the battery life using different methods and sometimes | |
multiple times to verify if it was reliable. | |
### Linux | |
One method was to play a 2160p x265 10 bits encoded video using VLC, | |
1h39 long, with full brightness and no network. | |
* With hardware accelerated decoding support: 33% of the battery was | |
used, so the battery life would theoretically be almost 6 hours (299 | |
minutes) while playing a video at full brightness | |
* Without hardware acceleration: 90% of the battery was used (VLC was | |
using 480% of the CPU, but I didn't notice it as the fans were too | |
silent!), this would mean a battery life of 1h49 (110 minutes) using | |
the computer under heavy load | |
The other method was to play the video game "Risk of Rain Returns" with | |
a USB PS5 controller, and at full brightness, for a given duration | |
(measured at 20 25 minutes). | |
* Risk of Rain Returns: 15% of battery used in 20 minutes, this mean I | |
should have been able to play 2h13 (133 minutes) before having to | |
charge. | |
### OpenBSD | |
I played a PSP game for 25 minutes using PPSSPP in full screen at full | |
brightness. | |
* WipeOut Pulse: 14% of battery was used in 25 minutes, this mean I | |
could have played for almost 3 hours straight (178 minutes) | |
## Gaming performance | |
I did play a bit on the laptop on Linux using Steam on Flatpak. I | |
tested it on Fedora 39, Ubuntu 23.10 and Alpine Linux 3.18.3, results | |
were identical. | |
A big surprise while playing was that the fans remained almost silent, | |
they were spinning faster than usual of course, but that didn't require | |
me to increase the moderate volume I used in my gaming session. | |
* Baldur's Gate 3: Playable at stable 30 FPS with all settings to low | |
and FSR2.2 enabled in ultra performance mode | |
Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) | |
* Counter Strike 2: Stable 60 FPS in 1600x900 with all settings set to | |
minimum | |
Counter Strike 2 | |
* Spin Rhythm XD: Stable at 60 FPS | |
* Rain world: Stable at 60 FPS | |
* HELLDIVERS: Stable at 60 FPS with native resolution and graphical | |
settings set to maximum | |
* Beam NG;Drive: Playable with a mix of low/normal settings at 30 FPS | |
* Resident Evil: Solid 45 FPS with the few settings set to maximum, | |
better lock the game at 30 FPS though | |
* Risk of Rain Returns: Stable 60 FPS | |
Risk of Rain returns | |
* Risk of Rain 2: Stable 60 FPS using 1600x900 with almost all settings | |
to lowest | |
Risk of Rain 2 | |
* Endless Dungeon: with the lowest settings and resolution lowered to | |
1600x900, it was able to maintain stable 30 FPS, it was kinda playable | |
I didn't try using an external GPU on the thunderbolt port, but you can | |
expect way better performance as the games were never CPU bound. | |
# Conclusion | |
I'm glad I dared asking NovaCustom about this partnership about the | |
NV41, this is exactly the laptop I needed. It's reliable, no weird | |
features, it's almost full open source (at least for the software | |
stack?), very powerful, and I can buy replacement parts for at least 7 | |
years if I break something. It's also SILENT, I despise laptop having | |
a high pitch fan noise. | |
I still have to play with Dasharo coreboot, I'm really new to this | |
open-source firmware world, so I have to learn before trying weird and | |
dangerous things (I would like to try Heads for its anti-evil maid | |
features, it should be possible to install it on Dasharo systems | |
"soon"). | |
Writing this blog post was extremely hard, I had to stay mindful that | |
this must be an HONEST and NEUTRAL review: writing about a product you | |
are happy with leads to some excitement moments and one may forget to | |
share some little annoyance because it's "not _that_ bad", but I did my | |
best to stay neutral when writing. And this is the agreement I had with | |
NovaCustom. | |
Honesty is an important value to me. You, dear readers, certainly | |
trust me to some point, I don't want to lose your trust. |