System 76 custom-built Linux desktops....

[Mike Walsh]

Evening, all.

For those of you who enjoy the occasional indulgence in the proverbial 'what-if?' scenario, read on.....and weep.

Now; we've all heard of System 76, haven't we? Reckoned universally to be the Cadillac/Rolls-Royce of the Linux world, they've recently turned their hand to designing their own custom-built machine from scratch:-

The Thelio. In three 'trim levels' - Thelio; Thelio Major, and Thelio Massive (for those to whom money is no object).

Just for the hell of it, I decided to 'configure' a no-holds barred Thelio 'Massive', loaded with every conceivable top-end option......

MakeUseOf state that it's quite possible to spend more on one of these than it is a brand-new luxury car:-

"Most of the hardware that System76 sells aren’t custom-designed. The company is one of many in the Linux world that takes Clevo machines and repackages them with open-source software. But the System76 Thelio is the company’s first effort at custom-designed hardware, and to most reviewers’ eyes, it’s a beauty.

The Thelio line comes in three models: Thelio, Thelio Major, and Thelio Massive. The smallest model is more than enough for most of us, while the largest option is ready for big tasks like machine learning. With 28-core CPU options and up to 768GB of RAM, you can order a Thelios PC that costs more than a new car.

System76 sources the wood and aluminum for the case from the US. The design is OSHWA certified open-source hardware licensed under GPL v3 and CC-BY-SA. You can even find the design files on GitHub."

Ready for this? With top-end, twin 28-core Xeons, 768 GB of RAM, 4 x 11GB NVidia 2080tis (with 'blowers'), 80-some odd TB of high-end, NVME SSDs, etc., etc., the cart price comes to a truly eye-watering





And at that, you don't even qualify for finance...(???)

WTF??!!?! Who in their right mind would shell out that kinda cash on a PC, hmm? Mind ya; I can't help wondering how well Puppy would run on a beast like that....





Mike.

[J_D_]

At least the software is free....

[musher0]

Hi Mike_Walsh,

The price does not show in your post above, so I can't weep with you...
Also, would you have a web site for this "Rolls Royce" of PCs?

TIA.

[rockedge]

Hello musher0,

https://system76.com/

[J_D_]

Hi Mike_Walsh,

The price does not show in your post above, so I can't weep with you...
Also, would you have a web site for this "Rolls Royce" of PCs?

TIA.

$55138, shows for me. What a bargain!!

[s243a]

The following looks pretty good (and reasonably priced) to me:

Ryzen or Core CPUs
Up to 32GB of Memory
Radeon or GeForce GPUs
Up to 24TB of Storage
Space-Saving Design
$899 $799 SAVE UP TO $1010

https://system76.com/desktops/thelio-r1/configure

Granted at the moment I don't have the money for a machine in this price range.

[cthisbear]

" I'll have what he has"

Chris.

[musher0]

Thanks guys.
Nah, $55138 is definitely beyond budget.
But I should be winning big at the next Lotto!!! (NOT)
BFN.

[bigpup]

This is as basic as I could put together.

Base Price $799.00
1× Walnut - Classical style in a rich brown finish
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (64-bit)
1× 4.0 GHz AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen 5 3200G (3.6 up to 4.0 GHz - 4 Cores - 4 Threads)
1× 8 GB Single Channel DDR4 @ 3200 MHz
1× 120 GB SSD Seq. Read: 545MB/s, Write: 545MB/s
1× 1 TB Solid State Hybrid Drive $89.00
1× 500 Watt Power Supply
Integrated Graphics
WiFi up to 1.73 Gbps + Bluetooth
1 Year Limited Parts & Labor Warranty
Product total: $888.00

About $388 to high in price.
You can get about any name brand computer, with similar hardware, and Windows 10 for around $450 to $500.

I guess the name is worth $388

[dancytron]

This is as basic as I could put together.

Base Price $799.00
1× Walnut - Classical style in a rich brown finish
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (64-bit)
1× 4.0 GHz AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen 5 3200G (3.6 up to 4.0 GHz - 4 Cores - 4 Threads)
1× 8 GB Single Channel DDR4 @ 3200 MHz
1× 120 GB SSD Seq. Read: 545MB/s, Write: 545MB/s
1× 1 TB Solid State Hybrid Drive $89.00
1× 500 Watt Power Supply
Integrated Graphics
WiFi up to 1.73 Gbps + Bluetooth
1 Year Limited Parts & Labor Warranty
Product total: $888.00

About $388 to high in price.
You can get about any name brand computer, with similar hardware, and Windows 10 for around $450 to $500.

I guess the name is worth $388

I think like with a lot of things, you are buying the support.

They are kind of in a niche market providing something you can't get elsewhere, so they can get away with overcharging for it.

If you don't need that (which none of the regulars on this board would), you'd just put together a barebones from one of the discount places and pay about 1/2 as much or even more likely get a lease return for $100 or so.

[bigpup]

I guess the real or fake wood is the big price point.

The maybe motherboard is the only hardware that does not come from some other manufacture.
A bet the motherboard is also made by someone else.
All they do is put the computer together!

[Mike Walsh]

Don't forget; on that top end config I specc'd, I deliberately went out of my way to choose everything as high as possible. I mean, 4 x NVidia 2080tis? Overkill, even by gaming standards. (And I seriously doubt cryptominers would purchase summat that pricey...)

And that 768 GB of RAM is ECC-corrected stuff, the only sort those Xeons will work with. You've only got to look at the website of any RAM supplier to see how pricey the stuff is.

As for the price of the processors themselves? I wouldn't even like to hazard a guess. From what I can see of it, these 28-core Xeons must be 2nd-gen 'Scalable' 9200-series silicon, and despite researching it for nearly an hour, all I can glean is that Intel make a point of not telling the public what these will cost them (you can only find that out by making a serious purchase enquiry with one of their official partners/re-sellers, apparently).....so you're quite possibly looking at a chunk of maybe $15,000 just for the CPUs. But this IS silicon you can dump machine-learning programs'n'stuff straight onto and it wouldn't bat an eyelid...

(*shrug*)

Complete, OOT fantasy stuff, I grant you. But it does show just what's available out there if your pockets are that deep, and you're sufficiently enthusiastic about this kind of thing...

Which was sorta the point of the thread...!


Mike.

[dancytron]

I guess the real or fake wood is the big price point.

The maybe motherboard is the only hardware that does not come from some other manufacture.
A bet the motherboard is also made by someone else.
All they do is put the computer together!

It is easy to understand.

Some people want to run linux.

Some of those people want the latest, greatest hardware.

Some of those people consider their time to be very valuable and are glad to pay an extra $500, $1000 or even more to not mess with compiling display drivers, figuring out how to make their wireless work, and all the other little time consuming things that come from trying to run linux on a computer designed for Windows.

Those people are System 76's target market. Not people like us who are buying used 10 year old dual cores for $150.

[Moose On The Loose]

[... snip ..]




Mike.

I had a thought about this. Imagine you want to do video rendering on the order of Pixar. 10 of these boxes on a super high speed network sharing out sections to generate, would make for a rendering super computer for under $1Million. I would, however, want to get the latest AMD processor in them. They just brought out a new one that looks interesting.

It almost makes me want to upgrade.

[p310don]

This kind of makes me think back to a tour I did at university in 1996.

As engineering students we went to the local power station where they had a "supercomputer" worth a million dollars that looked just like a fridge. It had been used to control many of the valves & switches for the steam & fires. It was about ten years old. We asked the guy doing the tour how powerful it is, he said it was about the same as a current (1996) pentium.

That super dooper System 76 jobby is probably much the same. $50+K and only going to be as good as the average desktop in ten years time.

And, who knows, that'll probably be the minimum required specs for running Windows 12...

[dancytron]

[... snip ..]




Mike.

I had a thought about this. Imagine you want to do video rendering on the order of Pixar. 10 of these boxes on a super high speed network sharing out sections to generate, would make for a rendering super computer for under $1Million. I would, however, want to get the latest AMD processor in them. They just brought out a new one that looks interesting.

It almost makes me want to upgrade.

If you are doing something like that, you aren't getting fancy boxes made extra pretty with real wood. You are getting multiple computers in racks with big fans and shared power supplies.

[bigpup]

Some of those people consider their time to be very valuable and are glad to pay an extra $500, $1000 or even more to not mess with compiling display drivers, figuring out how to make their wireless work, and all the other little time consuming things that come from trying to run linux on a computer designed for Windows.

Those people are System 76's target market. Not people like us who are buying used 10 year old dual cores for $150.

How did you ever get the idea that computers are designed for Windows???
OH! I guess because Windows comes on all computers you buy in stores
Operating systems (windows, Linux, Puppy Linux, etc...) are developed to support the hardware. Whatever the hardware is!

It is easy to have all needed software for a computer, if the operating system is already installed on the computer.

If you have ever installed Windows on a freshly built computer. You would not think Windows was that good at hardware support.
Last time I did that with Windows 10.
It took 2 hours and 45 minutes (using high speed Internet connection) for the thing to stop downloading, installing updates, and needed software, to support the hardware.
Oh! and about 4 complete reboots.
Only thing is the manufactures feed Windows the needed software. So, windows already has it on their servers.

Computer hardware manufactures do not love Linux, like they do Windows
Some do, some do not, provide Linux software for their hardware.
Linux sometimes has to back door engineer software for Linux.

[infromthepound]

It is easy to have all needed software for a computer, if the operating system is already installed on the computer.

If you have ever installed Windows on a freshly built computer. You would not think Windows was that good at hardware support.
Last time I did that with Windows 10.
It took 2 hours and 45 minutes (using high speed Internet connection) for the thing to stop downloading, installing updates, and needed software, to support the hardware.
Oh! and about 4 complete reboots.
.

,
That's Quick!
The last time I did an update for someone it took over 14 hours.
An "Update" downloads the entire system an re installs the new one.
So much for a windows update.
JB

[stevielee]

MaximumPC occasionally reviews very powerful personal computers with prices in the low $10,000s.