System76 Leopard Extreme Review

System76 is a company that specializes in selling prebuilt Linux machines. They've been in business since approximately 2005 and didn't really start kicking off until 2009/2010. They've created a great line-up of various desktops, notebooks, and servers all supporting the Ubuntu distribution. It took me about two years of consideration before actually buying a box. My reluctant decision was mainly due to the price - especially for a Linux machine. GNU/Linux being free, it was hard to justify the price for a System76 machine considering that I could have bought a brand new HP machine, for example, and simply installed my own flavor of GNU/Linux. In the end, however, I decided that 2014 would be the year I purchased a model of my own.

I eventually settled on the Leopard Extreme, LE, which according to System76's website is "built for the absolute fastest performance, the Leopard Extreme offers the nVidia GeForce TITAN Z with 12GB of memory and 5,760 CUDA Cores. Equipped with 5th Generation Intel Core i7 processors, you have the highest performance and most advanced technology for your professional or gaming endeavors." The specifications of my particular purchase included:

• Ubuntu 14.10 64 bit
• 3.3 GHz i7-5820K (15MB Cache – 6 Cores – 12 Threads)
• 16 GB Quad Channel DDR4 at 2400MHz (4× 4GB)
• 2 GB GTX 760 Superclocked with 1152 CUDA Cores
• No RAID Controller
• 128 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
• No Additional Storage
• No Optical Drive
• WiFi up to 867 Mbps + Bluetooth
• No Display
• No Speakers
• No Keyboard and Mouse
• 1 Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty
• 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (purchased separately)
• Asus 24x DVD/CD-RW (purchased separately)
• Microsoft Windows 7 Pro (purchased separately)
• Logitech MK270 combo (purchased separately)
• Full Motion Monitor Desk Mount (purchased separately)
• Microsoft Windows 7 Pro (purchased separately)
• 22" ViewSonic VA2212M-LED Monitor (purchased separately)
• 22" ViewSonic VA2212M-LED Monitor (purchased separately)
• Corsair Vengeance 1500 V2 USB 7.1 Headset (purchased separately)

The end price was just a little over $2,000 for just the LE tower. Not as bad as it could've been as I was seriously considering purchasing a higher end GPU and 64GB of DDR4. Thank God that I stopped myself from making an epic mistake as the Geforce GTX 760 is more than enough for most modern games and I couldn't find many applications/games that take advantage of full 64GB of DDR4. Moreover, I decided to build a modest rig with flexibility for future upgrades.

The Arrival

Purchasing with a CC via their website was a bit of a pain but after everything was settled my order went to "Assembly." System76 decided to hold my order for an extra couple of days so I could take advantage of a holiday special they were offering which was good because I received an almost $50 rebate. Eventually my order was shipped via UPS. I, honestly, expected the shipment to last about 1.5 weeks since the order was bulky and it so happened to be around an American holiday. To my surprise, the order arrived 3 days later!

I was delighted to see the big System76 logo outside of the box. The box was secured well with packing tape and a summary of my order was tapped to the top:

Opening the box had me gitty like opening presents on Christmas. I had been waiting for a System76 machine for a couple years by this point!

The tower itself was held well inside with tough foam protectors. A thank you note and a few Ubuntu stickers were included. I decided to leave those things in place for the life of this system.

Apologies for the reflection towards the end of this video:

Opening and upgrading

This is where I had the most problems with my Leopard Extreme. I had not built a rig since I was a teenager but I knew the relative ease of such a task. The LE case seems to be aluminum made by a Taiwanese company. I suspect that all System76 cases are manufactured by the same company. The quality was good and the whole rig was surprising light even considering all the goodies and large Power Supply. Exposing the system internals wasn't an issue as the outer bulkheads can be popped off uses human strength. Inside, however, was a different story.

I bought a bunch of extra stuff from Amazon while they were having their fabulous Black Friday sale. I ended up saving a good $200-300 on purchases. So needless to say, I had a bunch of extra components that 1) I needed securing screws 2) space/locations from the stuff. Luckily the tower is large enough to have many different build schemes. Unfortunately, accessing the components was difficult. Think of it like changing the fuel filter of a Porsche in terms of having to remove rear bumper, air filter, throttle body, headers, exhaust, etc JUST to get to one item (God, I can't believe I worked on cars for so long). Moreover, I was told by the customer service rep that I would have the mounting screws that I needed. I even identified which components I was installing in particular: SSD, DVDR/CDR.

NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE #1

Not a very big deal but I didn't have the mounting screws I needed even after System76 told me they would be included. The screws were only for 3.5" devices and NOT for 2.5". I purposely did not purchase any mounting screws due to the fact that System76 told me I would have what I needed. They ended up apologizing to me.

My remedy for the setup was to rearrange some components and steal some screws from other devices. In particular I had to remove and rearrange the awkward mounting platform that my stock SSD was attached to. It's the WHITE devices >> above the Power Supply >> to the RIGHT from my GPU in the following pictures:

Eventually I got everything mounted, powered, and attached to SATA interfaces. Thankfully, I purchased new SATA cables as I had to replace some of the awkward 90degree cables that were included (I'm assuming they from the case manufacture as opposed to my motherboard manufacture: ASUS). It was truly a pain as I didn't know what I was getting into when I initially opened up the case. On top of that, my initial overconfidence was quickly crushed when I realized what I was working with. If I had right mounting screws, and 6"+ SATA cables then it would have been easier. I eventually had to mount my Crucial 240 GB SSD upside-down because what I was working with... or more importantly what I wasn't working with.

NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE #2

Although I eventually got everything installed and running, I noticed some blemishes on the exterior of the tower. There were a few small scratches either caused during System76's Assembly phase or during manufacturing. Either way, the defects weren't noticeable and weren't really a big deal considering that I was 98% satisfied with my LE rig at this point.

System Specifications/Impressions

I'm extremely satisfied with System76's component selection and how the rig runs OSes and VMs like a champ. High quality parts were used from ASUS, Crucial, NVIDIA, Intel, etc. The Intel wifi + bluetooth device is extremely fast and came with two dipole antennas in order to efficiently pick up the router's wifi RF waves with increased efficiency. The 'Superclocked' NVIDIA card runs games without hiccups or graphics lag. Only minor setback I had was changing a few UEFI settings and wiping the boot sector in order to get Win7 installed. Moreover, I had to download all the motherboard's drivers from ASUS including email their customer support for an 'unknown device' that wasn't included in their websites driver page: ASUS probe ii sensor

Do I recommend a System76 box? Of course I do. They're not cheap and, yes, you can find/build cheaper systems. So why did I go with System76? Because of the high quality parts and warranty but those were mainly side perks. The biggest reason was because of Linux. System76 built me a Linux machine that was good to go for gaming right off the bat as well as including, IMHO, the most compatible and commercial OS. My 16GBs of DDR4 is doing a fine job of keeping everything steady. The fact of the matter is, I have a very good, stable system to build upon when the time comes for upgrades.