Maker and influencer Jeff Geerling describes the recently released Thelio Astra from System76 as "the fastest Arm desktop computer in the world." Geerling backed up his assertion by testing the system in various applications. In Cinebench 2024, it scored over 5,000 points—a world record for a 120-core chip, according to HWBot's database. System76 sells Thelio Astra starting from $3,299, but the price climbs to almost $25,000 for an ultimate-spec model.
The Thelio Astra is by no means low-end in its default specified $3,200 configuration. For that, you will still get a made-in-USA system with a 64-core CPU, 64GB RAM, an Nvidia workstation GPU, and plenty of expansion options in an appealing tower case. However, the mighty 'Geerling spec' system tested in the above video pushes the envelope with a 128-core Ampere Altra Max M128-30 CPU, 512GB of octa-channel RAM, 1TB of storage (40TB max config), a relatively low-end Nvidia RTX A400 workstation graphics card (buyers can choose a 48GB Nvidia RTX 6000 Ada max config), and a dual 25 GbE NIC. This particular configuration costs a little under $7,000.
