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Comment by UltraViolence | Hacker News Reader

Dell have been vendor-locking their AMD CPUs the same way for a while now

https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-...

Previously it was limited to EPYC chips (the huge server parts) but it's spread down the stack to Threadripper Pro (high end workstation) chips as well now

While avoiding Chinese-made computer components approaches impossibility the deeper you go, one vendor I'd trust not to fool around with AMD's PSB is System76. Not only are they non-shady, but they also try to open the firmware of the motherboards they use. While their AMD systems aren't quite there yet, the laptops they sell are.

https://github.com/system76/firmware-open

https://github.com/system76/ec

Do I have news for you about the device you typed this on…

Please share the news.

Out of curiosity, which vendors do you find acceptable?

Western manufacturers, even if they manufacture their stuff in China.

I don't want stuff made or designed by Chinese companies. They suck at it and most of their stuff is unfinished and barely works.

You misunderstood. This is about resale of base components. Go to ebay and look up 2-3 generations old Intel chips - super cheap from China. With this you wont find cheap AMD parts since they will be locked to Lenovo motherboards.

FWIW, they're not locked to Lenovo boards you just need to have a board that can be configured to not care about the PSB.

This is not correct. The locks does happen on the CPU level. If the board cannot provide a BIOS with a valid signature from the key that was burned into the CPU, the CPU will refuse to boot (PSB prevents it from booting)

Ah, you're right, I was reading the suggestions section of TFA as a the system works like this not that it would be nice if it worked liked this. My bad!

China is the new Japan now. Only 10x that.

Are there any that are not manufactured in China?

Maybe Fujitsu?

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techn...

Of course, I assume lots of components for those are made in China.

Samsung might make in South Korea? Asus in Taiwan?

Some models sold in Japan by Fujitsu/NEC/Lenovo/Vaio/Panasonic/HP are assembled in Japan. Lenovo acquired NEC and Fujitsu so they share factory. HP is interesting case. Some NEC/Vaio/Panasonic's laptop motherboard is also made in Japan.

VAIOs are assembled in Japan at least.

https://us.vaio.com/pages/vaio-made-in-japan

Oh the irony of fate...

Apple/Foxconn?

User name checks out

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