Selecting a performance PC for linux

If you plan on using Qubes OS, it’s really only the main board you need to worry about. You can check the official Qubes OS forum, there is a section where people post hardware compatibility reports, it’s a good place to find hardware that is confirmed to be working.

The AMD main boards typically have more USB controllers, which is a pretty big advantage when using Qubes OS. Having 3 or 4 on-board controllers gives you a lot of freedom, when using USB devices. Not a much have, but it really is a huge QOL improvement.

Intel’s asymmetrical chiplet design can be a little annoying when running Qubes OS. Xen can use both the P and E cores, but can’t do any form of hybrid scheduling. It’s also not possible to change the scheduler granularity to core level when using an asymmetric CPU, this is a minor issue and really only matters is you decide to run Qubes OS with hyper threading enabled.