System76 Shares With Us More Details On Thelio Open Hardware, Pricing Starts At $1,100 USD

While System76 is officially announcing their Thelio systems next week on 1 November with plans to then begin shipping these "open hardware" systems in December, today the Linux-friendly PC vendor shared with us some more exclusive details on the forthcoming hardware being manufactured in Denver, Colorado. Here are those exciting details -- much more than just some digital web saga.

First up they have provided us some pictures for Thelio Io and confirmation that it's OSHWA certified open hardware (#US000145) and that their other open hardware components will be certified as well after the first. With this 4-port SATA backplane they are also using it as a chassis controller for managing thermal conditions with dynamic fan-speed adjustment. Previously they teased the FreeCAD diagram of this board.

New pictures being shared with Phoronix are of Thelio-Io-SAS, which is an unannounced board they have been working on. Thelio-Io-SAS supports four hot-swap SAS ports for 2.5-inch NVMe drives in their workstation performance desktop: Thelio Massive.

Besides System76 manufacturing these parts for use in their systems, they also mentioned they are working with a possible distributor for making pre-bundled parts SKUs available for anyone wishing to manufacturer their own boards.

System76 founder Carl Richell also mentioned to us that Thelio has been in development for almost three years.

One of the details they shared with us early shows their Apple-esque attention to detail. About the power button being promoted as a feature, "The power button LED, for instance, is programmed in the EC to display at 100% brightness when depressed, which visually confirms that the button has been activated. It's set to 35% when on. It's set to 2.35% when off so that it's not too bright in a dark room but still easy to find. And it pulses between 2.35% and 25% while suspended."

Another interesting level of detail is that there is built-in screw storage for being able to fill up every drive slot in the system -- no more losing the screw bag! Thelio systems will also be pre-wired to fully leverage multiple graphics cards and other peripherals with the power cables being within easy reach while being nice and tidy.

One of the most surprising details was finally having some pricing information. These "high-end, high-performance systems" will start out at $1,100 USD. This is actually cheaper than I was anticipating with being manufactured in the USA using their new factory and investing so much into this open hardware effort... It will be very interesting to learn more next week at System76.com, Thanks to System76 for sharing these extra details with us ahead of the official launch on 1 November.