System76 Thelio Major Proves To Be A Major Player For Linux Workstations

For this article are some cooling numbers on this Thelio Major as configured with the Threadripper 3990X + 128GB RAM + Samsung 970 EVO Plus + dual Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics cards while running a wide variety of CPU/GPU/system benchmarks.

Over the course of 12 hours and 56 minutes, a set of 158 different benchmarks were run on the Thelio Major while having the Phoronix Test Suite monitor the exposed system sensors.

Over the span of nearly 13 hours of benchmarking, the average Threadripper 3990X core temperature under load was 54 degrees -- not bad at all for this 64c/128t part with a 280 Watt TDP. The peak temperature was 85 degrees but a majority of the time the elevated CPU load temperatures were below 76 degrees. The temperature at idle at start was just 33 degrees. Overall quite impressed by the cooling with the Thelio Major and these temperatures are roughly in line with what I see out of a Threadripper 3970X with water cooling crammed into a 4U chassis.

Only during the most demanding tests did the CPU fan speed even have to ramp up to full speed.

It was also around the same tests that the GPU fan speed was ramping up for OpenCL/compute workloads.

The main Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card had an average temperature of 43 degrees given that most of the tests were not GPU focused. The idle temperature of the Navi graphics card was 36 degrees and a peak of 71 degrees during the demanding GPU tests.

The Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe solid-state drive temperature was also in good standing with nothing to worry about. All the individual per-benchmark thermal readings can be found via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file.

So for those concerned about the cooling potential of the Thelio Major, System76 has designed the case to perform as good as it looks and even with the Threadripper 3990X has posed no issues over the two months so far of near continuous benchmarking.

This has been our first time trying out a System76 Thelio class system and it has proven to be a superb product and in the case of the Thelio Major class a very competent contender for those looking at a high-end Linux workstation.

Those interested in the three lines of System76 Thelio desktops can learn more about them at System76.com. Stay tuned for more 3990X Linux benchmarks soon.