so this is a computer
and not a weird low spec one or something that was designed and built
from the ground up to bring linux to the
folks who can't be bothered to compile their own kernel hunt down all the right
repos or even build their own pc
it challenges so many of my own assumptions about the linux community
like for starters wouldn't anyone with the time and
inclination to tinker around with linux also have the time and inclination to
install it for themselves in the first place
so it seems like the goal here is to make linux more accessible to normies
so let's go through this together and i
want to see your comments down below about what they got right
and what they got wrong moss has updated their packs once again
and in version four they've got a ton of changes making it a combination between
their grande and their black pack buy it today at the link in the video
description
starting with the system 76 web store the goal was clearly to simplify the
shopping experience they offer both amd and intel platforms with a huge amount
of customization but they boil their thelio system offerings down to three
models a good better best if you will with the system upgrades presented in a
way that is simple but might actually bother many
hardware enthusiasts for example the
matte pro 27-inch ips display has no
model number listed whatsoever and this
30 terabyte hard drive is just six five terabyte hard drives with no
indication as to how they're going to be configured prior to shipping now we're
going to talk about our hardware config in a little bit but first as a non-linux
user i want to poke around pop os a
little bit when you first boot it is super easy to encrypt your data just
enter a password and reboot that is pretty neat then when you come back
you're given the opportunity to set up your online accounts for integration
into the os including access to your google drive cloud storage right in the
file manager now we've actually seen pop os before in our gaming on linux update
video and one of its major departures from its
parent ubuntu is popshop a ridiculously easy to use
app store so it's actually ported over from elementary os but with one key
value add system 76 curates their own
packages so if you ever need something basic like steam for gaming or the
latest nvidia drivers it's just a click away actually for your graphics drivers
it's easier than updating them on windows
the only real criticisms that we had were the lack of ui scaling by default
on our 27 inch 4k display and the way
that our secondary storage drive one that shipped in our system was kind of
hidden away we think this should be front and center like the cloud storage
is so hopefully they fix that soon as for if you need to fix anything you can
access the popos recovery environment that lives on the boot drive by holding
down space or escape during boot this is a full copy of the installation media
meaning that you get a live environment to access and back up your files refresh
your installation or even just nuke it and start over from scratch and this is
all without needing a thumb drive now one fun idea is that you could actually
use this recovery environment as a sort of
super incognito mode that's separate from your main install if you were so
inclined now on to the hardware our thelio is specked out with a ryzen 7
2700x and a bunch of other good stuff so
we threw both gaming and productivity workloads at it where it not only
performed pretty well overall but in some cases outperformed windows and this
is on literally exactly the same hardware now obviously our gaming
results fell a little behind in some places but what's noteworthy here is
that we're even running these games if you're not up on the latest in linux
gaming news i don't blame you but valve proton enables a huge number of windows
only games even ones that aren't on steam to run on linux now it is super
cool onto productivity now right now for some workloads like
video editing linux isn't a great time because the industry standard tools
aren't available on the platform but for other things like color work and davinci
resolve our system performed really well
and in some cases absolutely crushed our
windows performance numbers like check out these blender results if you if i
didn't see it happen i wouldn't believe that they're on the same processor
okay then so so far we've got good performance a
relatively simple linux software implementation
green light to buy then well hold on a second now we intended for
this to be a review of the system but so
far everything we've shown you can be installed on commodity hardware that you
assemble for yourself so let's take a closer look at the box once you get it
out of the shockingly nerdy packaging the most striking features of the thelio
are its wood grain finish and its tantalizing silver power button and
accompanying white led ring there's no sign of any front io to disrupt the
clean design language they've gone with which means it's beautiful but also
means unfortunately that we're stuck with what we've got on the rear and
back here is interesting so more of that clean at any cost approach the i o is
cut directly out of the chassis that means no simple motherboard upgrade
although again it does make for an uninterrupted premium look that really
screams apple even though when we pop the hood with these thumb screws we can
see that this is clearly a standard pc motherboard on the inside what we can
also see in here is they've done a pretty bang-up job with the cable management helped significantly by the
generous real estate provided under the main fascia which doesn't attempt to
seal the computer so much as it
conceals that means that there is a bit of concern from our end about dust
accumulation through the side panels and the potential for noise to sneak out
from under the chassis using the air gap as an echo chamber unfortunately sure
enough it does get a little loud when the fans are running full tilt and it's
not just whooshing air noise something that we generally don't complain about
rather it's a kind of droning wine that's a little bit harder to tune out
honestly i think a noctua or a be quiet fan swap would help tremendously here
because it seems to be that the arctic freezer 12 cpu cooler is making most of
the racket and that might also help with thermals
our ryzen 7 2700x stayed cool enough to prevent throttling but at 85 degrees
under full synthetic load i would prefer something a little beefier as for our
evga graphics card well that was right where we wanted it in spite of the
diminutive size of our chassis despite its acoustic shortcomings though
the interior of the thelio does carry the same level of polish and attention
to detail as the exterior so the cpu cooler shroud is both stylish and
practical pulling double duty as a guide for the cpu cooler's exhaust and as a
bracket for mounting a chassis fan and similarly the gpu's retention bracket
acts as a brace to protect board flex check this out too up top we've got this
row of screws weird right well they're here for a reason this hot
swap drive bay allows you to just push out this clip slide however many screws
you need down the rail and then screw them into the drive line up plug in and
it couldn't be simpler and you don't even need to worry about losing the box
of case screws that was included with your system the only issue here is that you better
forget about mounting a full size three and a half inch drive two and a half
inch ssds and hard drives only
also we haven't gotten to the coolest thing about this yet the case and all of
its accompanying bits and pieces open source just like the operating system so
there's literally a github page with the
cad files for everything that you see here and for its bigger brothers the
thelio major and thelio massive
now that's not to say that every component in the system is open source
the motherboard cpu ram video card storage devices and power supply are all
proprietary in design with the ip owned by the individual companies that made
them but system 76 says that they're
developing their own firmwares wherever they can in order to make the hardware
as open as possible something that they've already done with their laptops
which are otherwise just standard clevo designs this openness comes at a cost
though arthelio starts at eleven hundred dollars which sounds reasonable but
that's a really basic config the spec we ended up with costs quite a bit more and
with the standard warranty we came to just shy of twenty four hundred dollars
when we compared that to specking out the exact same system components for
ourselves minus the case our total came to one thousand dollars less
woof so then case aside what are you getting
for that thousand dollar difference well
while the operating system itself may be free system 76 does have paid staff that
actively develop their os and that's to say nothing of the user support
commitments that come along with that perhaps most crucially though the thelio
chassis manufacturer and final assembly are both done in colorado by a team
that's about our size so no mass production
system 76 says they want to improve this situation in the future but for now it
means that the costs add up really quickly
so to sum it up you're paying for the case u.s manufacture operating system
development and support from a small team of enthusiasts
now whether the design and concept of a well-integrated linux desktop is enough
to make you pay the extra that's a choice i'll leave to you
but overall we think it's really cool and a huge step in the right direction
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