Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I have an update on my father’s (Leo_8472) new computer. Let’s get started!
It’s Going Back
I have throughly tested my father’s new Thelio Mira from System76: it needs to go back. There is no doubt: the shipping company dropped it, and it sustained damage. While Sonic Frontiers seemingly eventually stabilized after re-seating the graphics card (GPU), the RTX remasters of Portal and its unofficial mod, Portal Prelude, crash the system in around half an hour.
The human System76 agent we’ve been working with (I’ll call him Luke for this post) mentioned advanced replacement where we retain the original computer while waiting for the new one. Once we sign to receive delivery, we have two weeks to return the old or it goes on a provided credit card. This arrangement gave us time to swap the hard drive –an M.2 chip– as we’d spent some good time setting everything up. And since it’s a Linux machine as opposed to Windows, the operating system won’t give us any licensing flack over a different motherboard!
M.2 Exchange
The replacement system arrived with its packaging scratched, but not crushed. M.2 drives typically mount directly to the motherboard, and Leo’s system is no exception. Luckily, the its innards are arranged for access without removing the CPU heatsink and having to redo the thermal paste – though we do have to remove the GPU to get to them. There, we find four M.2 slots in a 1+3 arrangement with the 1 slot having a a fancier heatsink supposedly intended to host a primary OS drive.
The Thelio Mira has some convenience ports on the top. When the first system was dropped, these got tweaked – giving us a bad first impression; the warranty replacement lined up, leaving me with a sense of satisfaction every time we closed up the case. Where the original had a lone, damaged bracket to stabilize the GPU during shipment, the new system arrived with two square brackets secured a little tighter than before. As we had explained our plan to swap the drives to Luke, I expected no M.2 chip. Sure enough, the single chip bank was empty. Curiosity struck however, and we found one of equivalent size when we removed the larger bank’s heatsink. We swapped the chips and re-assembled the new computer.
Testing and Return
When booted, the new system gave nothing until we bypassed the video card. We unplugged everything for the I-forget-how-many-th time, opened it back up, and reseated the card. In the process, a push wing broke off the PCI slot’s retainer clip – leaving us with no easy removal of the GPU once it clicked into place. During long-term testing involving a [mostly?] blind game of Portal Prelude, we noticed that the system was significantly quieter while under load.
We kept Luke informed about the development, and he appeared confused at our request to buy the good clip off the dropped-computer motherboard. To our simultaneous request to purchase and retain the additional M.2 chip, he referred us to an online store instead of offering a price to buy the one in hand. We went ahead and extracted the good clip. Leo used a wooden chopstick to interface with the damaged clip when extracting the good GPU. As “beautiful” as the unused M.2 drive was, we installed it in the dropped computer when reassembling the machines, printed off a shipping label, and packaged the dropped computer in its original, dropped box. As a good customer, I planned to include the unused power cord, but we couldn’t find it. I extracted the original System76 cord from use at Leo’s workstation and replaced it from our sock. It should be in the mail by this afternoon.
Takeaway
System76 takes customer support seriously. Luke (not his provided first or last name) worked to turn our poor initial impressions around where a support chatbot would have worked toward cementing us against future computers from them. I in turn could play an active role in diagnostics – presumably skipping some early portions of his script. Perhaps catering towards Linux attracts more tech savvy customers, meaning fewer cases where a bot would be helpful.
Regarding the computer case: it’s a little more tedious to open than I like when working on computers, but we got faster each time. The custom cut rocket graphics are fun, but the most I saw of them were the PCI expansion bay covers I usually found tricky to re-install. I don’t like dealing with the case, but it was miles better than shipping it back and forth and having to wipe its data.
Final Question
Leo and I have been maintaining separate accounts, and I believe this has given me a better intuition about normal users vs. using sudo. Have you ever meaningfully shared a Linux machine?