Although appearances shouldn’t really be
a major factor when it comes to a decent
workstation, we’ve got to admit that the beige
and poop-brown fans have really grown on us.This build was a relative cake walk to
produce. There were conundrums and
problems that needed solving, mostly to
do with that insane NH-D15 cooler being a
little too chunky in various places, but
otherwise nothing really stood out in
terms of difficulty. Ideally, we would have
loved to have gone with a case with a
touch more storage potential, but you
should be running your backups away
from your main system in this working
environment anyway. Replace that
meagre 2TB with a 6TB or higher WD
Black, and it should be plenty for any
onsite storage.
The biggest advantage of using the
X99-E-10G WS, however, comes in the
form of those dual 10GbE connections in
the back. What they do is make offsite
storage a potential reality for heavily
accessed programs and media. That
QNAP NAS we spoke of earlier, coupled
with a few HDDs, would make this system
truly killer. On top of that, if you really do
crave the internal capacity, there’s
support for a total of six 2.5-inch drives
with this system, all of which can be
plugged in via the X99-E-10G’s 10 SATA
6Gb/s connection. And, of course, you
have Intel’s U.2 connector, and that M.2
x4 for a plethora of PCIe alternatives.
On to performance. Because we’ve
already covered our extensive real-world
tests in the main feature, we’ll focus on
the usual plethora of system benchmarks
to provide some clarity for the regulars
about how our two systems perform.In short, and unsurprisingly, our Intel
system absolutely demolishes our
zero-point in almost every benchmark, the
big one being Cinebench R15. Our 6700K,
at 4.6GHz, is certainly no slouch, but can it
compete with the mastery of a 4.2GHz
Core i7-6950X? Sadly not. With the
20-threaded beast bringing in an
impressive 2,188 points in multi and 175
points in single-core performance, it
makes the 6700K look like small change.
Storage performance was equally as
impressive, with the 512GB Samsung 960
Pro booting those figures up against the
wall. Our 1080p gaming test suite also fell
prey to the 1080 Ti, with nothing scoring
below 60fps.The biggest shocker, however, was the
cooler, and its absolutely staggering
performance. Staying at a steady 72 C, with
1.29V in the V Core, the plucky tower just goes
to show that not only can you overclock easily
enough on air, but it’s just as powerful as any
AIO, and packs the extra reliability that a
pump simply cannot muster.
There’s no escaping the fact that this
system is expensive – exceedingly so – but if
you’re after the very best in performance,
whether that’s for 3D rendering, video content
creation, photomanipulation, or more, in this
humble reviewer’s opinion, X99 is still the king
of the hill.Well, until we build another system
with an even newer chip and some more toys
to play with, that is.Feature
BUILD IT: THE INTEL RIG OF DAMNATION
PRICE VS. PERFORMANCE
BENCHMARKS
The biggest fault with this case is probably the
rear panel, consisting of a hinged acrylic door – if
your cable tidying isn’t good enough, it’ll jut out
above the hinges.We could have gone with a Titan XP, or perhaps
even a Quadro, but for most jobs, the GTX 1080
Ti holds its own against the two graphics giants,
and comes in far cheaper.ZERO-POINTCinebench R15 Multi-Thread 987 2,188 (121%)
Cinebench R15 Single-Thread 196 175 (-11%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Read (MB/s) 1,895 3,450 (82%)
CrystalDisk QD32 Sequential
Write (MB/s)^949 1,951 (106%)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (fps) 76 92 (21%)
Far Cry Primal (fps) 72 121 (68%)
Attila: Total War (fps) 42 65 (55%)
The Division (fps) 73 131 (79%)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%2
3
Our desktop zero-point PC uses a Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.6GHz, an AMD R9 Fury X, and 32GB of RAM.
All games are tested at 1080p on max settings, with HD texture packages installed.If a windowed chassis like this isn’t quite your
jam, you could save yourself some cash, and
opt for a silenced Fractal Design Define R5 midi
tower instead.1
4