ENGINEERING COMPUTING|||Workstations
38 DE| Technology for Optimal Engineering Design August 2019 /// DigitalEngineering247.com
at the bottom rear. Although the base configuration includes a
500-watt power supply, our evaluation unit came with an 850-
watt EVGA SuperNova 80Plus Gold Certified model, able to
support power-hungry components. That power supply adds
$145 to the base price.
Although the base HD60 configuration includes an ASUS
H370M motherboard, the system we received was built around
an MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge AC motherboard, a $120
option that provides four dual in-line memory module (DIMM)
sockets, supporting a maximum of 64GB of non-error correcting
code (ECC) unbuffered memory. The base HD60 configuration
includes 8GB of DDR4-2666MHz RAM.
Our system came with 32GB, installed using two 16GB Cru-
cial Ballistix memory modules, which added $220 to the price.
That motherboard also provides four expansion slots: One PCIe
3.0 x16 slot, one PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, and a pair of PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.
An Intel wireless-AC 9560 adapter, which supports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac plus Bluetooth, is integrated into the MSI motherboard.
The base HD60 system also includes an Intel Core i3-9350K
CPU, a four-core 4.0GHz processor. Velocity Micro offers eight
other choices, including the eight-core Intel Core i9-9900K that
was included in our evaluation unit (adding $475). That Cof-
fee Lake CPU has a base frequency of 3.6GHz and a maximum
turbo frequency of 5.0GHz, and a 16MB smart cache. Velocity
Micro then overclocked the CPU to 5.2GHz on one core and
5.1GHz on the other seven cores.
The base system also comes with a simple Intel heatsink and a
pair of 120mm exhaust fans. But to cool the overclocked CPU in
our system, Velocity Micro added a closed-loop liquid cooling sys-
tem with a 240mm intercooler and a pair of blue-lighted 120mm
fans, adding another $155. A similar system without lighted fans is
$45 less. The intercooler was mounted to the bottom of the case,
drawing intake air through a removable dust filter.
Though all the Intel CPU choices include built-in graphics,
the base HD60 configuration includes an NVIDIA Quadro P400
graphics processing unit (GPU). Velocity Micro also offers more
than a dozen other graphics cards from NVIDIA, including both
Quadro and GeForce boards.
Our evaluation unit came with the new NVIDIA Quadro
RTX 6000 GPU. This ultra-high-end board, which added
$3,375—considerably less than its $4,000 suggested retail price—
is one of the new Turing-based GPUs introduced late last year.
The Quadro RTX 6000 provides 4,608 compute unified device
architecture (CUDA) cores, 576 Tensor cores and 72 RT cores
and 24GB of discrete GDDR6 memory. With a 384-bit interface,
the board can deliver a memory bandwidth of up to 672 GB/
second, enabling it to achieve 16.3 million single-precision float-
ing point operations per second, to trace as many as 10 billion rays
per second and perform real-time ray tracing.
The GPU provides four DisplayPort 4.1 connectors as well as
a VirtualLink connector, essentially a USB Type-C port designed
to deliver power, display and data to power a virtual reality head-
set. Since this is a dual-slot board, it blocks access to one of the
PCIe x1 slots, and since the board consumes 295 watts, it requires
a 14-pin auxiliary power connection.
The base HD60 system also comes with a 250GB solid-state
drive (SSD), but here again, Velocity Micro offers lots of choices,
including SSDs of up to 2TB, Intel Optane drives up to 960GB,
and standard hard drives up to 8TB. The system we received
included a 512GB Samsung 970 Pro PCIe NVMe M.2 primary
drive (adding $155) and a 2TB 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda
3.5-inch SATA drive ($85). The system can host two M.2 drives
plus up to four SATA drives and supports RAID 0 and RAID 1
for M.2 drives and RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 for
SATA drives.
The base system also includes a DVD+/-RW drive. Although
the system we received did not include an optical drive, a Veloc-
ity Micro representative informed us that they have switched to
a modified version of their mid-tower case, the MX4, which will
include a front-panel drive bay.Buy It or Build It Yourself?
A
ssembling a PC isn’t that difficult if you have
the parts—it just takes time. And since all
the components used by Velocity Micro
and other system integrators are readily available,
we always wonder if it makes more sense to have
someone else assemble the system or if you would
be better off doing it yourself. Here’s what we found
for the ProMagix HD60:- Mid-tower Lian Li mATX case: $125
- MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge AC
motherboard: $180 - Intel Core i9-9900K CPU: $500
- Crucial DDR4-2666MHz memory (2 x 16GB): $200
- 850W EVGA Gold Certified power supply: $150
- Cooling Kit: $160
- Samsung 512GB 970 Pro PCIe NVMe M.2
solid-state drive: $160 - Seagate 2TB 7200rpm SATA hard drive: $68
- NVIDIA Quadro RTX6000 graphics card: $4,000
- Windows 10 Professional 64-bit: $200
- Keyboard and mouse: $30
TOTAL: $5,773
Clearly, the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 GPU is the
big-ticket item, accounting for nearly 70% of the total
cost. But good luck finding one at its $4,000 sug-
gested retail price; those retailers that have them in
stock currently charge hundreds more. Since the do-
it-yourself price is just a few hundred dollars less than
what Velocity Micro is charging for this system (less
the extended warranty), having the ProMagix HD60
built for you by trained technicians and backed by an
all-inclusive warranty seems like a no-brainer.
DE_0819_Review_Velocity_Micro_Cohn.indd 38 7/11/19 11:18 AM