Redesigned Thelio Major Elevates System76's All-AMD, Open-Source Linux Workstation: More Performance, Much Improved Thermals

Written by Michael Larabel in Computers on 11 May 2026 at 12:40 PM EDT. Page 3 of 6. 18 Comments.

👁 Llama.cpp benchmark with settings of Backend: CPU BLAS, Model: Llama-3.1-Tulu-3-8B-Q8_0, Test: Text Generation 128. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

For those considering the System76 Thelio Major for AI/ML work, between the AMD Ryzen Threadripper Zen 5 and Radeon AI PRO or NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell graphics there is a lot of compute power being packed into this custom-designed chassis. There was again nice generational uplift from this new Thelio Major workstation compared to prior generation 64-core workstations while enjoying better thermals and power efficiency.

👁 Llama.cpp benchmark with settings of Backend: CPU BLAS, Model: Llama-3.1-Tulu-3-8B-Q8_0, Test: Prompt Processing 2048. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

👁 Llama.cpp benchmark with settings of Backend: CPU BLAS, Model: DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B-Q8_0, Test: Prompt Processing 2048. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

👁 oneDNN benchmark with settings of Harness: Convolution Batch Shapes, Data Type: INT8, Engine: CPU. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

👁 oneDNN benchmark with settings of Harness: Matmul Batch Shapes, Data Type: INT8, Engine: CPU. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

The full AVX-512 performance of Zen 5 can really help improve various CPU-based AI inferencing workloads compared to earlier Threadripper processors.

👁 PyTorch benchmark with settings of Device: CPU, Batch Size: 256, Model: ResNet-50. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

In some cases the CPU temperature difference from the air-cooled Threadripper 7980X to water-cooled Threadripper 9980X was extremely telling.

👁 OpenVINO benchmark with settings of Model: Face Detection FP16-INT8, Device: CPU, Benchmark Mode: Throughput. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

👁 OpenVINO benchmark with settings of Model: Age Gender Recognition Retail 0013 FP16-INT8, Device: CPU, Benchmark Mode: Throughput. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

👁 OpenVINO benchmark with settings of Model: Weld Porosity Detection FP16-INT8, Device: CPU, Benchmark Mode: Throughput. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

👁 OpenVINO benchmark with settings of Model: Handwritten English Recognition FP16-INT8, Device: CPU, Benchmark Mode: Throughput. Thelio Major - Threadripper 9980X was the fastest.

The new System76 Thelio Major was performing extremely well across various AI/ML workloads tested atop Pop!_OS 24.04 Linux.

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URL: https://www.phoronix.com/review/system76-thelio-major-9980x/3

⇱ Redesigned Thelio Major Elevates System76's All-AMD, Open-Source Linux Workstation: More Performance, Much Improved Thermals Review - Phoronix

Redesigned Thelio Major Elevates System76's All-AMD, Open-Source Linux Workstation: More Performance, Much Improved Thermals