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Positive, you can construct a extra highly effective Linux workstation, however even then, you would be hard-pressed to make a greater machine than System76’s new 2026 Thelio Mira Customized desktop PC. That is as a result of the pc is each very highly effective and quiet as a whisper.
The 2026 Mira refresh is constructed round AMD’s Ryzen 9000 “Granite Ridge” platform on an X870 motherboard. This setup offers you PCIe 5.0 for GPUs and SSDs, offering as much as 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) per lane, which provides as much as 64 gigabytes per second (GB/s) and 128 GB/s of bidirectional throughput. Mix that energy with Gen5 Non-Risky Reminiscence Categorical (NVMe) sequential throughput of as much as 15 GB/s, and we’re speaking severely quick I/O.
That is a superb factor, as a result of the Mira Customized CPU choices vary from a 6-core Ryzen 5 9600X on the low finish as much as a 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X or 9950X3D, with increase clocks marketed as much as 5.7 GHz on the highest SKUs. In my case, I had a 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X that ticked alongside at 4.3 GHz. Once I put the pedal to the metallic, it zipped alongside at 5.7 GHz.
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For graphics, I may have used the Ryzen’s built-in graphics, however my PC additionally got here with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 with 12 GB of VRAM. That functionality is ok for at the moment’s 1080p/1440p video games, but it surely’s not sufficient VRAM for top-of-the-line 4K aggressive gaming.
It’s also possible to plug shows into each graphics outputs and use System76’s default Linux working system, Pop!_OS, which gives on-the-fly GPU switching by way of a graphical interface. As well as, you possibly can assign particular apps to run on the discrete GPU. So, for instance, you need to use the Ryzen to run graphics whereas dedicating the GeForce to AI workloads.
AI goodness
Talking of AI, the Nvidia card is a strong entry-level to mid-range native inference engine. The cardboard is superb for 7-8B fashions equivalent to Llama 3.x/3.1 8B, Qwen2.5-7B/8B, or Mistral Small 3 7B. I might name it “okay however tight” for 12-16B LLMs like Qwen3/Qwen2.5 14B, Llama 3.x/3.1 15B, or Gemma 3 round 12-14B. That mentioned, the Ryzen 9 9950X is a wonderful CPU-side workhorse for AI tooling, fine-tuning, and blended inventive workloads.
One other AI plus is its liquid-cooled design and upgraded energy supply. This PC is explicitly designed to maintain excessive clocks below long-running workloads, which is strictly what you need for multi-hour fine-tuning or batch AI technology. System76 claims as much as a 19% efficiency uplift and a 13-degree drop in temperature in comparison with the earlier air-cooled design.
The liquid cooling additionally makes the PC as quiet as a whisper. I actually could not inform if the machine was on at instances, even because it went ripping by way of some large jobs.
Serving to with all this efficiency, Pop!_OS Linux comes with first-rate Nvidia CUDA drivers within the field. You possibly can set up the Nvidia CUDA Toolkit by way of the Pop!_Shop or with a single command with out worrying about dependency conflicts:
$ sudo apt set up system76-cuda-latest
Briefly, the Thelio Mira is a “ready-to-work” AI workstation.
Reminiscence, storage, and enlargement
System76 helps as much as 192 GB of dual-channel DDR5 by way of 4 DIMM slots, with 4 × 48 GB configurations working at 3,600 MHz and lower-capacity modules as much as 5,600 MHz. My check system got here with 64 GB of RAM.
The underlying X870 board technically helps as much as 256 GB and better reminiscence clocks with overclocking. Nevertheless, System76’s validated configurations cease at 192 GB, which is greater than sufficient for many workstation duties.
Storage is the place the Mira Customized actually shines for energy customers: you get three M.2 NVMe slots (PCIe Gen5, Gen4, and Gen3) plus not less than two 2.5-inch SATA bays, permitting you to combine blisteringly quick OS and scratch drives with bigger, cheaper SSDs. With my machine, I bought 2 terabytes (TB) of SSD storage.
One caveat is that utilizing sure secondary M.2 slots can flip off the secondary PCIe enlargement slot. That method implies that if you happen to plan so as to add high-bandwidth PCIe playing cards past the GPU, you may wish to plan your structure fastidiously.
On the connectivity entrance, the Mira Customized consists of 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.2. This setup gives fashionable wired and wi-fi connectivity appropriate for each residence lab and workplace environments. I hooked it as much as each my 2.5 GbE native space community and my Netgear Orbi 970-powered Wi-Fi 7 community. On both community, I noticed each web and native community speeds of nicely over 2 gigabits per second (Gbps).
Audio is dealt with by a Realtek ALC1220 codec with as much as 7.1-channel output. The entrance and rear panels expose a mixture of USB4 Kind-C and a number of USB-A ports, plus front-facing USB for simpler entry in day-to-day use.
Particularly, the system comes with 13 exterior USB ports, normal audio and community ports, and video outputs, that are decided by the GPU you select. The entrance panel has 1 × USB 3.2 Gen2 Kind-C, 2 × USB 3.2 Gen1 Kind-A, and a 3.5 mm combo headset jack. Within the again, you may discover 2 × USB4 Kind-C, 1 × USB 3.2 Gen2 Kind-A, 3 × USB 3.2 Gen1 Kind-A, and 4 × USB 2.0 Kind-A. That functionality provides as much as 10 rear USB ports. If, like me, you do not imagine there’s such a factor as sufficient ports, you may be in heaven.
You may additionally discover separate 3.5 mm line-in, line-out, and mic-in jacks within the rear. The system additionally comes with an S/PDIF optical out that helps as much as 7.1-channel audio. For video, its built-in graphics exposes 1 × HDMI 2.1 output and a couple of × USB4/DisplayPort-over-USB-C ports. The Nvidia card exposes 3 × DisplayPort outputs and 1 × HDMI 2.1 output.
Feel and appear
System76’s “precision industrialism” language is not simply advertising and marketing. The tower chassis combines aluminum and metal with a milled entrance I/O bar, a tempered-glass facet panel, and tool-less magnetic panels that make it trivial to get at followers, radiators, and cabling. That method makes upgrading the system easy.
Entrance-facing ports and a backside mud filter handle two longstanding annoyances in earlier Thelio generations: awkward entrance I/O and tedious cleansing.
The general footprint is that of a compact tower. Each cubic inch is clearly allotted to airflow, cable routing, and future upgrades quite than trying fairly. That mentioned, it is one good-looking machine.
One other plus for some customers, as System76 founder and CEO Carl Richell informed me just lately, is that the corporate builds its methods at its personal Denver, Colorado, manufacturing facility. There, the corporate says, its servers, desktops, and laptops are “Designed by nerds. Engineered by specialists. Handcrafted by people.”
Richell describes Mira because the “starting of that new desktop design refresh,” a platform that lets System76 relearn thermal dynamics, structural design, and manufacturability at scale. System76 put the chassis by way of adhesive and mechanical torture checks — robots repeatedly pulling the facet and entrance panels off 1000’s of instances — to make sure the brand new modular development would stand up to years of use and discipline servicing.
The outcomes are spectacular. This technique is the best-looking workstation I’ve used because the early Nineteen Nineties, after I had the pleasure of utilizing a Silicon Graphics (SGI) IRIS Indigo and a NeXTStation Turbo Shade.
Pricing
The Customized configuration is strictly what it seems like: you decide the CPU, RAM, storage, and GPU, which determines the worth. The worth vary begins at a “critical however attainable” $1,699 and goes into the “that is my important workstation for years” $7,000-plus territory. My system specced out at about $6,500. If I have been a critical programmer, an AI developer, or an expert gamer, I might have gladly paid the cash. As a tech journalist, I am unable to justify the cash, however I want I may. That is one candy system.
System76 additionally provides Premium and Elite preconfigured Mira variants. Nonetheless, the Customized SKU is the place Linux energy customers and builders can tailor the machine for compile farms, critical growth work, residence labs, or native AI rigs with out paying for mismatched components.
You are paying a transparent premium over DIY, however your money buys integration, thermals, and help from a vendor whose whole stack, from firmware to the working system, is oriented round Linux.
ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation
For folks like me, who’ve gotten bored with slicing their fingers assembling their very own methods, System76’s new 2026 Thelio Mira Customized desktop PC is a win. Positive, I’d save a couple of hundred bucks constructing and tuning the components myself. Nonetheless, I might by no means put collectively such an exquisite Linux-first workstation that mixes cutting-edge AMD and Nvidia {hardware} with nice appears to be like and cooling aimed squarely at sustained, heavy workloads.
Briefly, that is the most effective Linux workstation I’ve ever seen. If that is what you want, that is the pc you wish to purchase.
