System76 accidentally built the fastest Windows Arm PC
this is the fastest arm desktop computer in the world it's the arm workstation Microsoft wishes they had instead of just eight or 12 cores like the Snapdragon X Elite this thing has a whopping 128 instead of a measly 32 gigs of RAM this thing has half a terabyte plus it has full-size full bandwidth PCI Express slots upgradable nvme storage andv video graphics and built-in dual 255 gig ethernet forget Windows though this thing even beats out the most most expensive Mac Pro you can buy but the main audience for this thing isn't Windows devs or Mac users in that case it's actually Automotive devs at least that's what system 76 told me in their press release I mean it does have a red racing stripe and love them or hate them software defined vehicles are all the rage and most run on arm chips for the automotive developer Niche a machine like this makes sense but before we get too far like a thread Ripper workstation or a Mac Pro this thing's not cheap it starts at $2.99 and this particular unit is topped off checking in at almost $7,000 which is the same price as the base Mac Pro mind you but system 76 sent it to me for review I didn't pay for it so take everything I say with that in mind now I've featured other Amper workstations before like the adlink dev build I showed it gaming with steam and running Windows you could even build your own workstation with a motherboard and CPU kit from new EG like the arm nass I have in my rack but compared to the adlink build this one has has eight memory channels instead of just six that means you get even more performance out of the massive CPU and compared to a custom build this has all the system 76 bells and whistles from their custom case design to full support and the plug-and-play Linux install and unlike any existing arm Mac or Windows on arm PC this machine supports high-end workstation graphics cards like nvidia's RTX 6000 Ada or even the newest high-end 50 Series cards I'm going to test upgrading Graphics later sponsored by Micro Center but another cool thing is system 76 actually builds all these systems here in the US in Colorado and it's good to see they allow fun on the production line these clips were sent over to me from system 76 and I asked if they had any shots of building the Astra it's just cool to see system 76 start supporting arm and this machine is similar to the one Linus uses to build the arm 64 Linux kernel that is the Linux Linus not the YouTube one but let's dig right in and I should note this world record cine bench score it's running live this machine is quiet enough you can only barely hear it while it's beating 128 core thread Ripper workstation in Windows on arm this isn't system 76' first rodeo though and the quiet design borrows from the other thio workstations like the mirror their Intel version the enclosur is like the Mac Pro the entire outer case slides up over the top inside there are multiple cooling zones there's a duct for the CPU and a separate zone for the motherboard power supply and graphics card it also has a little custom breakout with extra fan plugs for more cooling looking closely I spotted a little Raspberry Pi in there I I asked the engineers about it and they said this updated powerboard design came out of the work they did on their launch keyboards which they also sent one along with this machine this board does fan control but it's also connected to the sliding connector up on the top case so it controls power too there's a tiny power button and led you can still use without the top cover installed which is a nice touch for maintenance this case design is engineered for high air flow and easy access but it's still ATX compliant it's not an over-engineered mess like Alienware but it looks nice and still provides enough air flow to the critical Parts the top level features are one terb nvme SSD 512 gigs of ECC ddr4 Ram an Nvidia a400 workstation graphics card an ampere ultramax M1 12830 CPU and a dual 25 gig SFP plus Nick integrated into the motherboard it also has another gigabit Nick and ipmi built-in so you can manage it remotely just like a server everything can be upgr of course and you can price out your own build on their site like I said my config is about 7,000 bucks but you can spend over 20 grand if you max out everything on my arm nass build I used nocuous Tower cooler but on here they went with the Arctic freezer another great and nearly silent option it's nice to see Amper getting options like these because up until about a year ago you just couldn't build an armor station quiet like this rounding out the inside it has an ASRock rack motherboard and 1,000 WT power supply cable management is tidy and as an added bonus they tied down extra modular power supply cables next to the base intake fan so upgrades should be pretty easy there's even an ATX 12 vo connection if you want to throw in a 40 or 50 Series Nvidia card the case looks great and the whole thing is serviceable but I do have a couple gripes one feature that was constantly frustrating was the loose slot covers on the back when I was lifting the system out of the box I heard some metallic clanking which is never a great thing to hear on a brand new computer and when I went to upgrade the GPU the slot covers would pop out and were annoying to get back in every time tooless slot covers are great but they really need a way to retain them so they don't drop out if you touch anything while you're putting in a new card it's a shame because I love the little design details like the rocket ship in the slot covers and the planets embedded in the fan girl design once you get the slot cover retention bracket tighten back down there's no danger of them sliding out or anything but it was frustrating enough that I had to mention it another annoyance is the lack of any front panel IO even my Mac Studio has some front panel USBC ports it' be handy to have at least one port up front there's not even that much USB on the back come to think of it I had to plug in a USB hub for testing just to have enough ports for the little dongles I had to plug in finally one feature I actually like about the Mac Pro is the handles a workstation as big and heavy as this is a little awkward to pick up I mean it's not portable so it's not a huge deal but if you do need to move it it can be a little awkward since the front edge is flush to the ground hopefully over time some of those things get ironed out because the little things Mar the otherwise perfect experience of unboxing a $3,000 plus Linux workstation on the software side one of the main reasons people buy these things is for Linux support there aren't many desktop builds that are built Linux first but this is one of them the trouble is even though arm's been around in the low-end space for years high-end desktops are kind of new territory the only other pre-built I know of is the adlink dev workstation that I've tested before but being so new that means poos and system 76' new cosmic environment will have to wait they don't run on arm yet but they said they're working on it in lie of that they're shipping Ubuntu 2404 which is the same dist I've been using on my other arm desktops it's certainly adequate and you still get full hardware and GPU support with it and this is totally not what it's for but you can get steam installed through box 86 and game on the system with full GPU acceleration something arm struggled with in the past in fact Amper and Nvidia already have a ton of cards working out of the box AMD cards can be a little finicky but they should work out of the box too and I even tested both at the same time and that worked too outside gaming what about Windows well this thing certainly takes the crown away from Qualcomm in terms of being a more professional developer workstation ignoring the price tag this design is better because it's actually a real PC you can throw in full PC Hardware upgrade the RAM upgrade the CPU install anything you want into the multiple by6 PCI Express slots you can even throw windows and game on it right well technically you could like I did here but right now Microsoft isn't supporting these Pro use cases on arm like graphics card support and they've struggled to get third parties interested in porting their drivers I think they should though but but that's besides the point gaming and windows aren't the main priority on this machine it's purpose-built for automotive development on Linux at least that's what this press release says cars are on arm and Automotive devs have to emulate those systems if you do it in the cloud the costs add up over time and if you do it on x86 workstations the emulation is a lot slower than running on arm natively but I'm not an Automotive Dev that's just what this thing's built for what I care about most is how the system performs for the things I want to do with it web development content creation recompiling the Linux kernel that sort of thing long story short it gaps every other arm PC by a huge margin clocking in at 1.7 teraflops on the top 500 Benchmark this thing's faster than every other system I've tested except the 192 core Amper 1 server I have to mention really quick here when I Benchmark a system like this I'm running dozens of different tests someone recently accused me of relying mostly on geekbench I mean I sometimes focus on a few tests instead of the full Suite I run when I'm highlighting a certain use case and that could include geekbench but every SBC every computer I test on this channel it gets the full Gauntlet and a test like hpl the one I use for this top 500 Benchmark is useful for more than just getting a result and a number besides being a consistent way to compare floating Point performance across multiple architectures and generations the test takes a really long time uses up all the system memory and hammers the CPU the whole time it's running and that was helpful in this case because my early test unit didn't have some bios tweaks that made sure the fan curves were running properly and it would overheat and shut itself down luckily that was fixed with an update system 76 sent me but the main reason I mentioned that is because I have all the results I ran linked below running dozens of tests over the course of days or in this case months always reveals a surprise or two but that out of the way I also ran my Linux compile Benchmark because I mean I have a shirt for it over on reder jef.com it's not under a minute like the Amper 1 got blasting all 192 cores but 94 seconds is still pretty good it's no wonder lonus uses one of these things to build arm 64 Linux I also installed theama all the results are listed on GitHub but bottom line with this much RAM and 128 cores if you want to run a massive model you can it's just going to get slower as the models get larger the 13 billion parameter llama 2 model ran at about eight tokens per second and that's pure CPU no GPU acceleration at all in terms of productivity I installed Caden live for 4K video editing and blender for 3D modeling Caden Liv worked surprisingly well I cut together a few clips and besides my lack of familiarity with the application playback and editing were smooth I think if you forced me to I could probably crank out one of my videos on this instead of my Mac blender ran well too and I was surprised by how fast CPU rendering was clocking in in a minute 40 for classroom and 38 seconds for BMW I checked if GPU acceleration worked but apparently there are some issues sinking up Cuda and blender versions on Ubuntu so I'm still working on that but all that to say this machine is a quiet Monster look at this it's rendering classroom you can't even hear it unless you're down here by it nice job on The Thermals there for workstation use it's the fastest arm computer money can buy at least assuming you don't want this thing on your desk compared to a modern Intel or AMD workst though some things are lacking it's still running P Express Gen 4 and ddr4 single core performance isn't great either especially compared to Zen 5 cores but this is faster in most multi-core benchmarks than even the fastest Intel xon workstation CPUs like the W9 35 95x fronix has a full comparison with a thread rer workstation so I'll link to that too but if you're looking at arm development or you care more about efficiency and quiet than raw performance this will do fine just based on expansion this beats the hands off a Mac Pro or anything that exists with Snapdragon X Elite plus this has an addin graphics card I remember back in the days when I could give my Mac new life with an upgraded GPU is is that possible on this well yes and Micro Center helped this came with this puny a400 a pretty low-end workstation card it's mostly meant for giving someone four display outputs but not for like gaming or high-end CAD work Micro Center stocks a huge number of graphics cards from low-end consumer all the way up to high-end workstation and besides that they have Enterprise networking gear server gear even Network switches and racks I've said many times How Lucky I Am To Live 10 minutes away from a Micro Center they've opened a few new stores lately and another one is coming to Santa Clara in the Bay Area soon anyway one of the friendly Associates helped me grab two workstation cards first an Nvidia A4000 this card is still just a single slot but it bumps the vram from 4 gigs to 16 and has like four to eight times better specs all the way around it's a little expensive though and in that same price class is the AMD Radeon Pro W 7700 but like the A4000 this is a workstation card it's not meant for gaming but for professional work it has more reliable memory runs a little quieter on Lower power draw and fits in more systems anyway I brought both cards back to the studio and tested them out first I upgraded to the A4000 those slot covers were a little Annoying here but the swap was quick enough and I didn't even have to remove the side GPU intake fan since the card was single slot and could fit right over the top after I booted it up I compared gravity Mark results here's it running on the a400 I got with the system that card got a score a little over 7,000 on the A4000 it has the memory and extra speed to boost that score up to 32,000 over four times faster and since you can run larger language models with more vram I loaded up a few models and tested them on both cards on the a400 the biggest model I could run was a pretty small 3 billion parameter model it ran fine but maxed out the 4 gigs of vram on the A4000 it could answer just as fast but running way more complex models with 13 billion parameters 4K video decode works fine too the A4000 had no problems playing back 4K video on YouTube using the GPU to offload that work the CPU can do that too but it's nice to have the GPU acceleration working something else I found that's a little more Polished in the Nvidia driver it uses active state power management even on Armor stations to save power when it's not in use it'll actually downgrade the link speed to like pcie gen 1 by one then when you use it it ramps it back up to gen 4x6 pretty cool but that upgrade was easy I just went from one Nvidia card to another I wanted to see if I could swap from one brand to another so I installed the AMD card next since it's two slots wide I had to remove the GPU intake fan bracket but with that out of the way I popped in the w77 and I plugged in power to its pcie power plug I booted up the machine and right away the AMD card worked too though I did notice sometimes there were weird text artifacts like in the browser tabs and location bar it didn't occur everywhere just in a few places but that is a little driver Quirk that I think there's a patch that can fix it I opened up OBS just to confirm I could use Hardware video encoding and I could see the card listed there I captured some 1080p footage and the CPU barely noticed then I tried reinstalling AMA to use it with the AMD card but I realized doesn't support Vulcan at all and AMD doesn't support Rockham on arm at all so I switched tracks and installed llama.san and using that I ran a 13
billion parameter model and even encountered some nice hallucinations llms are cool and all but it's going to be a long time before I trust them for anything more than like a rubber duck debugging session anyway before we get to gaming I wanted to see if I could run both cards at the same time and well I had just enough power inside for these two cards but it booted up and both cards were detected okay but I had some strange issues with the Nvidia display outputs when I had both installed so I swapped back to the A4000 and moved on to installing Windows wait windows on a system 76 machine isn't that anathema well yeah but if it can be done I want to try it so I grabbed my windows 11 arm USB stick plugged it in booted off it and installed Windows wait what's that no need for a custom image no need to do registry hacks and bypass TPM no this rig has asrock's TPM module plugged in and with that you literally download Windows 11 install it and you're done and there's a lot of dust on there let's get some of that off whoever designed this little spinner is uh pat yourself on the back oh here comes windows and once it was done I had immediately fired up cinebench cinebench 2024 supports arm now and I'd been hoping they'd update to support 128 cores at some point my last test on the adlink system netted a score of 2400 but that was topping out at 64 cores well since that time Maxon must have fixed whatever bug was holding this back because it got a casual 5,03 and yes that's almost three times faster than Apple's fastest Mac Pro which is the same price as my Max outout Astra in fact this is the first time at least according to hard robot that any 128 core machine officially benched over 5,000 we're going to gloss right over the latest AMD chips that cost more than the price of this whole machine but it is nice to see the multi-core multiplier being so high the ultra Max isn't the fastest in all metrics and rarely in any single metric anymore but it is consistent and core toore performance is great as long as you load up all eight memory channels but one system this thing still obliterates is the Snapdragon X Elite like it's not even a contest to see how much farther we can take Windows I installed Photoshop which is also arm native and what do you know it runs just as smooth on here as it does on my Mac Studio I wouldn't have any hesitation moving over if I just ran Photoshop and needed to make more clickbait thumbnails and I realized at this point it was still plugged in through the A4000 and not the VGA op put and my monitor was still showing output so was the graphics card driver actually working in Windows all of a sudden alas no I installed Minecraft and if it's not obvious to you that's not running on the GPU and I know I know can it run crisis yes in fact but again it's not pretty even monster CPUs just can't render out 3D like a GPU can I also tried launching blender and over and over I was hitting this brick wall since Nvidia doesn't have a driver for Windows on arm I can't use openg and since I can't use openg I can't can't run blender or D Vinci resolve or even old things like Quake 3 Arena and a lot of Windows software just has no clue what to do with this system like Hardware info is just like yeah that's too much for me if only we had Hardware drivers for Windows on arm like literally this is the fastest armor station for Windows on the entire planet but if my dreams can't be fulfilled on Windows can Linux come to the rescue yes you see crisis at like one FPS just won't do here's crisis remastered on Linux smooth as butter and doomy Turnal with Ray tracing it's only giving me 20 FPS but might I remind you this is the A4000 a few years old workstation GPU it's not even built for gaming and this machine is running all these games through not one but two emulation layers first box 86 to translate x86 into arm and then proton to translate Linux into windows it's kind of embarrassing how poorly these games run on Windows but it would be so much better if Microsoft could get Nvidia to release GPU drivers for Windows on arm think about the irony here system 76 is a Linux company they wanted to build the best Linux arm workstation and they did but they accidentally built the best Windows armor station too now to be clear this is not a gaming rig gaming is about the furthest thing from what system 76 and ampere intended that said after all my work getting 4K games to run smoothly on a Raspberry Pi my conclusion was the Pi's RAM and CPU were holding it back well this thing has one of of the most powerful arm CPUs on the planet at least for games that take advantage of it and it has half a terabyte of ram so games the pi struggled to launch might run amazing on here to test that out system 76 actually sent a 4080 super to test and I'll be doing that soon I'll also be testing GPU acceleration with rendering and blender in Linux and some other tests I couldn't finish in time for this video but in general this thing rocks now I'm not going to put on rose-colored glasses this being the first armor station from system 76 they're still ironing out some bugs I ran into and running benchmarks is one thing but I have spent over 3 months testing this machine I used it for almost everything I do day-to-day I tested Linux and windows until my brain went numb and sure Micro Center covered the cost of the gpus and system 76 and ampere sent over this Hardware but this stuff doesn't pay my bills so going into a new year on this channel thank you to everyone who supports it on patreon GitHub and YouTube memberships I wouldn't be able to spend three months on these bigger systems like this and document everything in as much detail without your support but I have to give my final conclusion lest this video go on forever this isn't going to be a gaming PC or a daily driver for most people watching this it's meant for automotive development work and it can do some other crazy stuff besides that but like I said there are speed bumps and until Microsoft and Nvidia climb on board windows on arm on this thing is just untapped potential but one thing's for sure if this is just the first effort in a team up between system 76 and ampere I can't wait to see what's next next until next time I'm Jeff Garling
2025-01-08 19:32
