lsmod check for presence of mei

mei_hdcp - handles High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, used for securely transmitting digital content.
mei_me - manages the basic operations of the Intel Management Engine, like power management and system monitoring.
mei - the big daddy of them all, the Intel Management Engine Interface. It's like the glue that holds the other modules together and allows them to communicate with each other.

it would be super helpful to have a list of non-Intel ME computers that support Intel CPUs, but as far as I'm aware, such a list doesn't exist.

Also I hear that there are Windows-only Intel ME updating tools. That seems to be a deal breaker for me. So my next computer will be free of Intel ME.

Anyway, if you're looking for a modern computer without Intel ME, you might want to consider computers that use AMD processors. AMD's equivalent of Intel ME, called "Platform Security Processor" (PSP), is less widely used and more easily disabled. In fact, AMD even allows some manufacturers to offer "PSP-free" versions of their computers.

Intel ME does indeed have its own dedicated memory, separate from the main memory of the computer. It's a small amount of non-volatile memory (meaning it retains data even when the computer is powered off), typically only a few megabytes in size. The ME uses this memory to store its own firmware and data, and it doesn't interact with the main memory of the computer in any way.

Here are a few examples of computers that don't have either Intel ME or AMD's PSP (Platform Security Processor):
Purism Librem laptops (they actually go to great lengths to remove the ME and PSP)
System76 laptops (they offer a "Coreboot" option that removes the ME and PSP)
ThinkPenguin laptops (they use open source firmware that doesn't have ME or PSP)
Raptor Computing Systems' Blackbird workstation (built with a POWER9 CPU, which doesn't have ME or PSP)

All modern computers have Intel ME or AMD PSP baked in. There are no known
exceptions.