System76 unveils Thelio, a custom Linux workstation

System76, the company making and selling Linux laptops, has unveiled the Thelio, a fully custom designed and built desktop machine. Everything about the machine is custom - from the case to the special IO board that monitors temperatures all across the case and optimizes airflow accordingly. This IO board and the case design are fully open source, so anyone can improve upon the designs or tinker with them.

The Thelios comes in three sizes, and can be specced with anything from basic Ryzen or Core CPUs all the way to Threadripper and dual Xeon processors, accompanied by the usual assortment of Radeon or GeForce video cards. You can add multiple video cards, including the brand new RTX cards. The biggest machine goes up to 768 GB of ECC memory, and if you add all the most expensive bells and whistles, the Thelio Massive will go beyond the i80,000 price point. Luckily, the smallest model starts at a more reasonable i1099.

I like this. This goes way beyond just slapping a few standard components in an off-the-shelf box - this is actually designing a beautiful and airflow-optimized computer running Linux, and that's exactly what we need more of. I'm keeping an eye on this machine, because even though I have no intention of replacing my current workstation, I have to say I am very much tempted by what System76 has done here.