I heard for the very first time this laptop company’s name recently and it captured my attention. I sent a few questions to them about their 14’ offering and they responded back. For those looking for a new laptop this company seems to be in the right track in the security and privacy area. My questions may or may not be yours. I asked them if they were ok with me sharing the content before posting here. I’m not affiliated to them, just to be clear.
- Is the keyboard a Clevo one that doesn’t have > 1.5mm key travel? Can we maybe use some other keyboard part that has better ergonomics with a larger key travel distance?
Yes, I’m sorry to say that there are no other keyboard options available.
- Does the laptop weight more than 1.5kg even in the variant without the dGPU?
Yes, this is correct.
- Does it has FIPS 140-3 certification?
I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t have such certification.
- Will we able to replace the CPU in the future ordering new spare parts? For example, the current models are with the Meteor Lake, will we be able to order an Arrow Lake part for replacement?
The CPU is soldered on the motherboard and cannot be replaced, I’m sorry.
- Are we able to use one of the M.2 slots for a Oculink port?
A community member did that: OCuLink port on the case possible? - NovaCustom Community
I’m sorry to say that we cannot give any support for this, though.
- I heard that the initial plan was to have PCIe 5 but it got dropped and we are now with PCIe 4 on the latest model. Any plans to offer a PCIe 5 in those M.2?
- This will stay on PCIe4, unfortunately.
- Are we not able to order an Intel Core Ultra 9 185h? If not any plans in the next interaction to have the Core Ultra 9 285h?
No, I’m sorry. We have had too much overheating troubles with Core i9 / Ultra 9 processors.
- Are we limited to 60hz refresh rate in the laptop display?
No. The V54 Series features a 120 Hz internal display.
- With the introduction to support Heads Coreboot will we have some guides to help decide which variant we should adopt?
Sure! Heads firmware is interesting for Qubes OS only, since it’s the only supported operating system (at least, for our laptops).
To check the benefits of Heads instead of the default coreboot+EDK-II version, please have a look at my blog post about it:
We expect a Heads variant for the V54 Series around March 2025. Current device owners will be able to upgrade.
We are working on videos about Heads. I hope to publish these around January.
- Are we able to use secure boot within dGPUs and eGPUs in your hardware enrolling akmods keys using mok in Linux?
Yes: Dasharo coreboot+Heads firmware version - NovaCustom
However, we do not have experience with this. We only enable UEFI Secure Boot for officially supported OSes.