For the node, the x200 is struggling in my experience since the whole spam of non-monetary transactions thing started. The CPU and the 8GB of RAM seem to get a beating when syncing as it reaches 2023 blocks. The progress speed goes down by a lot. A laptop with 16GB and dbcache using at least half of the RAM improved things, such as the x220 or x230 which allow Coreboot.

I've found on initial sync it's more efficient to use -connect to one trusted node, rather than going with -addnode. If you want, switch which single node you're connected to every so often. I recently sync'd an node running on an apu1. It took longer than the x200, but it did make it to the tip.

At this rate, and now with BitcoinCore v30, it may just get worse. I wonder if at some point the old Thinkpads will become non-viable to be used as nodes.

We have a plan for smartening up our reference implementation to enable it to score its peers and curate a list that helps distinguish friend vs foe.

What is your opinion on alternatives such as System76 or Novacustoms

I've not looked at sys76 in a while and hadn't heard of Novacustoms, will have a look into them.

What I meant by normal x200 is a x200 with the stock firmware (not Coreboot).

For the node, the x200 is struggling in my experience since the whole spam of non-monetary transactions thing started. The CPU and the 8GB of RAM seem to get a beating when syncing as it reaches 2023 blocks. The progress speed goes down by a lot. A laptop with 16GB and dbcache using at least half of the RAM improved things, such as the x220 or x230 which allow Coreboot.

At this rate, and now with BitcoinCore v30, it may just get worse. I wonder if at some point the old Thinkpads will become non-viable to be used as nodes.

What is your opinion on alternatives such as System76 or Novacustoms which allow for up to 96GB RAM with a more modern CPU? They allow for Coreboot and you can disable ME as well. You also get microcode updates which supposedly fix problems that remain unfixed on older CPUs.

Thanks.

It's an interesting question.

On the one hand, from a personal perspective, the offline machine may seem more important since it's handling your sensitive signing information and the blockchain information can be obtained and cross referenced from a number of different sources.

On the other hand, if the offline is truly airgapped, it seems rather unrealistic to attack by a bios based exploit, whereas an online machine might benefit more.

From a network perspective, it's vital that at least some nodes are running Coreboot.

I will try to obtain another but for now it's a normal x200

We only sell the normal x200, not the x200s.

I hope this reply is helpful, even if it doesn't give you a definitive answer. In any case, make sure you have a strong source of entropy/randomness for your key generation and transaction signing operations.

Thanks.