System76 Launched a Monster 12-Core AMD Ryzen Linux Laptop

Linux users have been beating down the doors of Colorado-based System76, clamoring for the Pop OS developer and Thelio manufacturer to finally release a laptop with AMD Ryzen CPUs.

Your feedback was apparently heard: today the System76 Serval WS laptop gets unleashed, and it’s packing unrestricted desktop performance with up to 12-core 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors.

The newest Serval WS looks like a beast, offering desktop-caliber performance in a mobile chassis. It will ship with your choice of 3rd-generation Ryzen 3600, Ryzen 3700 or the 12-core, 24 thread Ryzen 3900.

The Ryzen 3000 series is AMD’s latest desktop chip and it has consistently offered a great value proposition across all SKUs. With the Serval WS baseline model starting at $1,299, I’m guessing this is going to be a popular choice on the System76 webshop.

“For the Serval WS, we wanted to offer our customers desktop level CPU performance in a laptop option,” System76 tells me. “For that reason we went with 3rd Gen Ryzen which is the latest and greatest desktop CPU available from AMD, and not 4th Gen Ryzen, which is mobile specific.”

The Serval WS also includes optional dedicated graphics from Nvidia in the form of a GTX 1660 Ti or the RTX 2070, the latter of which delivers much higher performance, CUDA cores, Tensor cores and ray tracing. That’s the card in my own System76 Oryx Pro and it has yet to face a graphics task it can’t crush.

I just wish my Oryx Pro had Ryzen! Hopefully the next generation of that laptop will pack AMD’s excellent Ryzen 4000 mobile series.

On the drive front, the Serval WS can support up to 4TB of NVMe SSD storage.

If the last-generation Serval WS (which is currently unavailable) is any indication, this new desktop replacement should pack up to 64GB of RAM, include multicolor keyboard backlighting, a 1080p webcam, and a full compliment of ports and connectivity and ship in 15” 1080p or 17” 4K options.

To give you an idea how much a “dream configuration” might cost, I just did some window shopping of the Serval WS from the System76 webshop with the following specs: