The recently released Thelio Astra from American computer manufacturer System76 is being touted as "the fastest Arm desktop computer in the world" or at least that's what developer and influencer Jeff Geerling declared after putting the system through its paces.In Geerling's testing using the Cinebench 2024 benchmark, the top-tier variant of the Thelio Astra, powered by the 128-core Ampere Altra Max M128-30, achieved an eye-watering 5,003 points in multi-threaded mode. This score edges out the certified world record of 4,723 points set by AMD's EPYC 7713 chip with a similar number of cores.Given these figures, it's no surprise that the Astra also excelled in Blender rendering workloads. Geerling specifically highlighted the system's impressive 1.7 TFLOPS of double-precision compute power.When it comes to the overall package, this is far from your average pre-built desktop. The entry-level $3,299 model already packs a serious punch with 64 cores, 64GB of RAM, and an RTX A400 GPU. However, the top configuration Geerling tested priced just shy of $7,000 pulls out all the stops with 128 cores, 512GB of octa-channel RAM, 40TB of storage capacity, and an RTX 6000 Ada GPU.All this hardware is housed in a sleek, quiet tower, which again is a surprise considering the near server-grade specs. Patriots will also be pleased to know that it's an American-made system, coming straight out of System76's Denver facility.Geerling did highlight some downsides with the system though. Beyond its ultra-premium pricing, single-threaded performance is underwhelming and barely inches past AMD's 2017 Threadripper 1950X in the same Cinebench test. That's sad considering the prodigious multi-core muscle. // Related StoriesThere are also platform limitations to consider. The system is restricted to PCIe 4.0 and DDR4 RAM, which may feel outdated to some. Geerling was also less than thrilled with the lack of front I/O ports and noted some rattling from the PCIe brackets. And if you're thinking about gaming on this machine while running Windows, think again Nvidia has yet to release Arm-compatible drivers.But then again, the Thelio Astra isn't designed to be a gaming rig or a general-purpose desktop PC replacement. System76 is squarely targeting developers, with a particular emphasis on the automotive software industry, where it shines as a platform for "rapid dev prototyping.""System76 and Ampere ride together to make Thelio Astra the driving force behind AV development," the company notes on its website. If you're in that niche and have cash to burn, this could be the latest must-have Arm toy for you.