Three viable vendors today for a UK-based hardened-laptop reseller program:
Star Labs (UK), NovaCustom (NL), System76 (US). Recommended 3-SKU lineup:
- Tier 1 / Lite: Star Labs StarBook Horizon (Alder Lake-N, ME disabled,
~£1,140) — UK domestic, no Heads option
- Tier 2 / Pro: NovaCustom V54 (Meteor Lake, Dasharo + factory Heads,
~£1,210) — flagship; B2B reseller programme + custom engraving
- Tier 3 / Workstation: NovaCustom V56 (Meteor Lake + optional dGPU,
~£1,250+) — Qubes-certified, dual NVMe, 96 GB RAM ceiling
Key findings:
- Framework not yet shipping factory Coreboot for non-Chromebook (AMD
openSIL port still in development per Phoronix Mar 2026); revisit Q4 2026
- Purism Librem 14 ruled out — old CPU, supply unreliable
- AMD PSP cannot be cleanly disabled in shipping firmware in 2026 — Intel
with neutered ME wins for the hardened tier; revisit when Star Labs
StarFighter AMD or Framework AMD Coreboot ports stabilise (~2027)
- NovaCustom is the strongest single partner: Clevo B2B reseller
programme, factory-flashed Heads option, free UPS to UK, custom-logo
engraving available
Operational cautions documented: Meteor Lake S0ix suspend caveat with ME
disabled (default to hibernate-only), EC firmware not 100% open anywhere
(don't market as "fully libre"), Dasharo firmware ships quarterly so
re-verify before each procurement batch.
Snapshot dated 2026-04-25; all source URLs cited for human verification.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
SysAdmin
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