After the disappointment of my X1 Nano and learning that all future Intel “Evo”-branded laptops would lack S3 suspend, I started thinking about re

My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop

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2021-07-21 07:00:05

After the disappointment of my X1 Nano and learning that all future Intel “Evo”-branded laptops would lack S3 suspend, I started thinking about returning to my M1 MacBook full-time or building an OpenBSD desktop. I chose the latter, building my first desktop machine in many years.

I briefly considered an arm64 CPU and motherboard, but the hardware support of OpenBSD/arm64 is not yet reliable enough for my daily use and the lead-time for ordering a HoneyComb LX2 was many weeks out.

I decided to go with an amd64 system since the OpenBSD/amd64 platform is very mature and I know it quite well. Beyond that, my only requirements for my new desktop were:

Ever since reading Fabien Sanglard’s writeup about building a system with a Streacom DB4 case, I knew I wanted that case in particular since it looks beautiful and could passively cool a 65W processor.

After the case, the next component I chose was the monitor. In retrospect, this would make everything else more complicated, but I am pretty picky about the screens in the laptops that I buy, so I wanted to make sure my desktop display was of high quality.