Hello,

I’m trying to decide whether I should upgrade to a Z790-P with Dasahro firmware. The motherboard with the custom firmware can only be freed 50%. I’m only thinking about getting this board so that I can run larger LLMs locally. My OS environment is 100% FOSS, I put anything non-free into a virtual machine and use it in there.

I’m planning on adding Libreboot support for the Intel DX38BT 82X38 and the Gigabyte GA-P43T-ES3G. Both boards can be freed entirely, IME isn’t present on either of these boards. The Intel board is capable of utilizing up to 8GB DDR3 ECC memory, so I can use it as my server board. The Gigabyte board can use up to 16GB DDR3 and can use CPUs like the QX9650 or even the QX9770, I plan to use it as my main desktop. I do light gaming, I already have a 7900 XTX, so I’m just going to plop it into this board once I get support added.

I already use LibreCMC and an OpenWRT network switch. I’m nearly complete, but man, I don’t think I can give up using LLMs. I’m afraid of being left behind in my field. I just started working in IT and I am a bit worried if I were to restrict myself from using it. I definitely don’t want to stick with using ChatGPT, hence the reason why I’m thinking about running one locally at home and putting it on a VPS so I can access it while away from home. Even then, I understand I would have to trust the VPS provider not to do anything bad.

I don’t have a crazy threat model or anything, I’m just a nerd that likes to have control over my tech. What are your thoughts? Should I give up my FOSS environment or no?