Cover HolidayM.indd

82 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| HOLIDAY 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

T

he Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 is the fi rst

production rig we’ve tested that boasts

Intel’s new Core i7 microarchitecture—

and it really cooks. Velocity cranked the

3.2GHz clock speed on Intel’s quad-core Hyper-

Threaded Core i7-965 Extreme Edition to 3.6GHz

with nary a hiccup, and cooled the dang thing

with air. The machine also features 6GB of

DDR3/1600 and dual 512MB Radeon HD 4870s.

The Z90 has a typical backup drive: a 1TB

7200rpm Hitachi Deskstar and a less typical

C: drive: an 80GB X-25M Intel SSD mounted

on a VelociRaptor IcePak heatsink. The drive

enclosure in the front of the case isn’t screwless,

but the whole bay can be removed by loosening

two thumbscrews.

Velocity’s customized Lian Li aluminum

chassis is long and low rather than tall (like most

cases produced today), which leaves plenty

of room between components and produces a

clean, uncluttered look. And the wiring is equally

fastidious, while still being accessible for com-

ponent swaps. The Z90 is also one of the lightest

rigs to enter the Lab: In an age of backbreakers,

we thought Velocity had shipped us an empty

chassis until we opened it up!

The Raptor Z90 blew through our bench-

marks. It completed our Premiere Pro CS3 test in just 526 seconds. That’s nearly 30 seconds faster

than November’s Digital Storm rig and nearly a

minute faster than last month’s AVADirect sys-

tem, both of which packed 4GHz-plus QX9770s.

The Z90 was similarly speedy in every test we

threw at it—our zero-point took nearly twice as

long to complete our MainConcept test.

In fact, the Z90 failed to set records in just

two benchmarks: Crysis and Photoshop, where

it was bested by the AVADirect and Digital Storm

rigs. The former, however, was running two 4870

X2s, while the Digital Storm ran three GTX 260s,

so the Z90’s comparatively modest (though still

respectable) Crysis performance is no surprise.

The AVADirect and Digital Storm rigs were also

clocked higher than the Velocity (4GHz and

4.2GHz, respectively), which explains their

marginally better performance in Photoshop, a

single-threaded app.

We have just one quibble with this rig. The

snap-in front-panel bezels are hard to keep in

place, and, in fact, were rattling around inside

the case when we opened it for the fi rst time.

Fortunately, they’re so light, they didn’t cause

any damage. We should also mention that the

fi rst unit Velocity Micro sent us suff ered from

instability issues likely due to shipping damage,

but the second unit, the one tested here, was rock

solid. Shoot, this $5,300 rig made mincemeat of

much more expensive systems

we’ve tested. – N A T H A N E D W A R D S

ZERO POINT

1,260 sec

150 sec

1,415 sec

1,872 sec

26 fps

92 fps

Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 RAM, an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard, two EVGA GeForce 8800GTX cards in SLI mode, a Western Digital 150GB Raptor and a 500GB Caviar hard drive, an LG GGC-H20L optical drive, a Sound Blaster

X-Fi, a PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad power supply, and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

Premiere Pro CS3

Photoshop CS3

ProShow

MainConcept

Crysis

Unreal Tournament 3

0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

BENCHMARKS

526 secsec(+140.00%)(+140.00%)

86 secsec

514 514 sec(+175%)(+175%)

969 969 969 sec

37 fps

165 165 fps

PROCESSOR Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition

(3.2GHz @ 3.6GHz)

MOBO Intel DX58SO (Intel X58 chipset)

RAM 6GB Corsair DDR3/1600 @1,500

VIDEOCARD Two 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4870s in

CrossFire

SOUNDCARD Realtek ALC889 Onboard

STORAGE 80GB Intel X-25M SSD, 1TB Hitachi

Deskstar 7K1000 (7200rpm)

OPTICAL Lite-On Blu-ray DH-4B1S

CASE/PSU Velocity Micro Signature LXe-W/

Velocity Micro 850W

SPECIFICATIONS

+ -

VERDICT

$5,300, http://www.velocitymicro.com

9

Blazingly fast, aes-

thetically pleasing,

and well made.

Front-panel bezels

could be more firmly

secured.

Z-95 HEADHUNTER

VELOCITY MICRO RAPTOR Z90

B-WING

Don’t let the bare-bones look fool you: The Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 is one of the fastest machines

we’ve ever tested.

Velocity Micro Raptor Z90

We love the smell of fresh architecture in the morning