When the original HP Z2 Mini landed in 2016, it was quite a big deal because it was quite a bit smaller than any of the competition. Over the following years, it was gradually updated but looked much the same. The latest HP Z2 Mini G9 workstation, however, marks a radical redesign.

Out has gone the hexagonal box, and in its place, we have a new all-metal rectangular assembly with rounded corners and a distinctive front grille, which, apart from looking rather funky, allows air to be drawn in through one end and then expelled from the other to the great benefit of thermal performance. And, because the new design is more thermally efficient, it can house more powerful components while offering more space for ports and easier access to the internals for post-purchase enhancements. 

HP Z2 Mini G9 Workstation: Design

The crucial feature of the HP Z2 Mini G9 Workstation is still its size; it measures just 211 x 218 x 69mm and weighs around 2.5Kg depending on the exact configuration. You can set it horizontally on two long rubber feet or vertically on your desk. It's broad enough to stay in place on its side vertically, even without the plastic stand, which annoyingly is an optional extra. If you want it truly out of sight, you can screw it to a VESA mount and then mount that on the back of any compatible monitor.

If you need to rack lots of Z2 Mini G9s together, HP offers a bespoke rail racking kit to house G9s and their associated PSUs in rows of 6. There's a rather nice design touch in that you can rotate the Z badge on the grille so it's the right way around when laid flat or stood on its side. Such attention to detail should be applauded even if it adds no functional benefit.

The HP Z2 Mini G9 is well-equipped with ports for such a small device. On the side, you'll find two 20Gbps USB-C and one 10Gbps USB-A port, along with a 3.5mm audio jack. At the back, our machine came with three more 10Gbps USB-A ports, a 1GbE LAN port, two DisplayPort 1.4  (for the Intel integrated graphics), and four Mini DisplayPort video feeds. All the USB ports on the side support power delivery, but the two Type-C ports do not support DP Alt Mode video output.

The four Mini Display Ports that occupied the PCIe 4 x 8 bay at the rear are optional, so you can pick something else if you'd prefer and add more I/O ports in the second bay below. HP offers a wide array of network, data, and video port options, including VGA, Thunderbolt 4, and 2.5 GbE LAN. If needed, you can configure the Z2 Mini G9 to support up to eight monitors.

Our review machine came without the expected integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 wireless modem, precluding wireless connectivity. However, assuming you buy one with a Wi-Fi card, the size and connectivity make the G9 a shoo-in for any home office or just plain office where space is at a premium.

Usefully, you don't need any tools to open the G9; you simply press the release button and slide off the top. The compact size of the chassis can make access a bit tricky. For instance, to get to the 2280 SSD mounts or the M.2 2230 slot for the wireless card, you'll need to remove the GPU, and to get to the two SODIMM memory slots, you need to unscrew and remove the main fan. 

None of this is complicated; you just need to remember in which order you took things out to put them back in. As a piece of packaging, the Z2 Mini G9 is highly impressive, more so when you remember it can take CPUs of up to 125W and industry-standard (half-height, half-length cards powered by the PCI Express 5.0 slot) graphics cards.

Both SODIMM sockets were already occupied in our test machine, but there was a spare M.2 slot for a second SSD. The system maximum is quoted as 4TB of storage and 64GB of RAM. There's no power supply inside, hardly a shock given the Z2 Mini G9's external dimensions, so you must find a home for the relatively large (200 x 100 x 25mm) 280W external power adapter.

With an eye on security and preventing the unqualified from poking around inside the Z2 Mini G9, you can use the Kensington lock slot at the rear to lock the lid in place. Software options include Windows 11 Home and Pro (with a downgrade path to Windows 10 Pro) and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

HP Z2 Mini G9 Workstation: Specs and Performance

HP offers a broad array of CPUs from the Alder and Raptor Lake series of Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs. Our box contained a Core i7-12700 processor, a 12-core 4.9GHz component, and two 8GB DDR5 RAM sticks. 

The same applies to GPUs, ranging from an Nvidia T400 with 4GB of video RAM to the A2000 with 12GB. The Nvidia T1000 we were sent uses Turing rather than the latest Lovelace GPU architecture and is designed as a low-profile component for use in CAD work, 3D modeling, and video editing. It runs a TGP of 50W and comes with either 4GB or 8GB of video RAM; our test machine packed the higher amount.

Performance was brisk rather than searing; the ITPro 4K multi-media benchmark returned 236 points, a solid middle-of-the-road score indicating sufficient performance to handle most tasks in a reasonable time frame. The same can be said of the PCMark 10 and CineBench R23 multicore scores of 6055 and 15,936 and the GeekBench 6 scores of 2,371 (single-core) and 10,841 (multi-core).

For comparison, the Asus PN51 mini-PC we tested recently, built around an AMD Ryzen 7 5700U CPU, scored 240 points in our 4K test.  Of course, the Asus can't be specified with a discrete GPU.

The SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D-modelling benchmark ran at 40.2fps. That compares to the average of 65fps that you could expect from an RTX4050 GPU with a TGP of between 100 and 140W. The 50W TGP of the T1000 is a limiting factor.

Those numbers indicate enough underlying performance to chew through demanding tasks, but not with anything like the speed of a system built around a Raptopr Lake i9 CPU and an RTX4070 or 4080 GPU or more relevant to the Z2 Mini G9, the Nvidia RTX A2000. Of course, GPUs like that carry a significant price implication.   

The 512GB Micron SSD in our review unit recorded sequential read and write speeds of 3,013MB/s and 1,584MB/s respectively which was a solid result but nothing remotely out of the ordinary and perfectly in line with the rest of the system.

The cooling system proved very efficient under testing. After a prolonged stress test, the highest external temperature I recorded was 37℃ around the side ports, while fan noise never exceeded 52.8dB(A). During several prolonged individual stress tests, I didn't record any thermal throttling on the CPU or GPU, which, given the confined space inside the Z2 Mini G9, is rather impressive.

There is a single 2W speaker buried inside the Z2, but it's a very quiet and tinny affair that's bordering on useless for anything other than hearing system notifications and such. You wouldn't want to depend on it for communication or media consumption. 

The same could be said of the bundled wired keyboard and mouse, which were both very low-rent affairs (especially the keyboard which is a shallow plastic thing without a backlight) and only of use to keep you going until you source something better. I suspect most buyers would prefer the unit stand to come in the box rather than the keyboard and mouse.

HP Z2 Mini G9 Workstation: Is it worth it? 

A Z2 G9 with almost the same specs as our test machine but with a Raptor Lake i7 13700 CPU will set you back £1,559 or £1,299 ex-VAT. That's a fair price for a reasonably potent but very compact workstation.  At the bottom of the price scale, £1,019 (£850 ex-VAT) will get you a Core i5-13400 model but without a discrete GPU. 

At the top end, £2,039 (£1,700 ex-VAT) will get you a box with a Core i9-13900K processor, 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia RTX A2000 GPU with 12GB of vRAM. If you are prepared to forgo the i9 chip and slum it with an i7-13700K processor an otherwise identical box will cost you £1,799 (£1,499 ex VAT). 

That last seems to be the pick of the bunch as an ideal combination of performance and affordability. Either way, the width of the Z2 Mini G9 range is impressive in terms of both specs and prices, so there should be a model for every eventuality, need, and wallet.

HP Z2 Mini G9 Workstation: Specifications

IT admins have reported issues with Dell workstations allocating excessive hard drive space, filling over 95% of disks and up to 100% in some cases. 

The bloating files related to system remediation and required manual fixes for fleets of machines.

One admin raised the issue in an online discussion that generated similar stories from others across the industry.

Those involved in the discussion agreed the issue stemmed from Windows System Protection and Restore having been incorrectly allocated 100% of disk space. 

Multiple users shared similar hard drive problems, and pre-installed Dell software emerged as the common factor among the pros.

“This past week I've suddenly had 5 laptops flagged for hard drive usage exceeding 95%,” one admin said.

“Turns out it was the same issue for every one. Something was up with the Windows System Protection and Restore settings. The disk space usage was set to 100% which in turn filled up the entire drive.”

"We have been unable to replicate the concerns posted online," Dell told ITPro.

"If customers or IT admins experience this scenario, please contact your local Dell technical support centre. To date, we have not received any customer inquiries on this topic."

To fix the problem, users can access the system control panel via the Windows Run command, delete all restore points, and reduce System Protection disk space allocation to a lower percentage. 

The top respondent within the discussion suggested the problem could lie with Dell’s SupportAssist Remediation software, and noted that deleting the restore points and uninstalling the application fixed the issue for them.

Dell’s official user guide for SupportAssist Remediation, also known as SupportAssist OS Recovery, states that it “provides a recovery environment that consists of tools to diagnose and troubleshoot issues that may occur before your computer boots to the operating system”.

SupportAssist is Dell’s automated system support software, housing a number of smaller programs for specific purposes such as data remediation and firmware updates.

Another user clarified that although they had experienced the same disk problems with Dell workstations, it was not a ubiquitous issue.

“It's worth noting we have probably had this happen on about 10-15 machines out of the 120-ish deployed,” they said.

Others said that if Dell SupportAssist Remediation is uninstalled, another piece of pre-installed software called Dell Command Update would automatically reinstall it a short time later.

As the SupportAssist Remediation is included in critical updates, those who wish to remove it permanently are required to change Dell Command Update’s settings to exclude the category ‘Application Software’.

In a 2021 thread, users in the Dell subreddit characterized Dell SupportAssist as “bloatware”, and claimed it is prone to introducing errors to devices.

In the past, the software has been criticized by multiple network administrators for automatically setting the netlogon service to “manual”, which can break group policies on domain-joined machines.

This article was updated to include a statement from Dell.

PCs are the bedrock of modern business computing, so it’s important that they meet certain standards of performance and quality. To that end, as well as judging elements such as build quality, additional features and aesthetic appeal, we run all the devices we review through a series of benchmark tests designed to empirically measure their suitability.

In the case of PCs, this primarily focuses on CPU, GPU and storage speeds, but with laptops, we’ll also measure the battery life and the quality of the display. When testing high-end professional workstations aimed at more demanding roles, we’ll also run more in-depth benchmarks to measure their effectiveness at tests like video editing, rendering and 3D modelling.

Laptops and PCs

Performance

We run a selection of benchmarks on all the PCs and laptops we review. To test performance, we use our own in-house benchmarks to measure photo-editing, video-encoding and multitasking speeds, which we combine into an overall score. We’ll always quote this result in the review, but we may also mention individual test results if they reveal anything particularly noteworthy.

We run these tests on Windows and macOS, but we also use the cross-platform Geekbench 5 test for comparisons between operating systems, which gives separate scores for single and multi-core operations. We may also incorporate other benchmarks where appropriate, including PCMark 10 and workstation tests such as Cinebench R23 or SPECViewPerf 2020.

We use the results of these tests to empirically compare the performance of different machines, but we’ll also assess the real-world experience of using a device, and whether the benchmarks accurately reflect that. From this, we can recommend whether or not different laptops or PCs are suitable for different workloads and job roles, such as day-to-day office tasks or more demanding content creation jobs.

Display

Some of our assessments about a laptop’s display will be subjective observations about how it looks to the naked eye, but we also test each screen using a colorimeter to measure the maximum brightness and colour reproduction. We primarily test against the sRGB colour gamut - which is the main colour space that digital displays are usually calibrated to reflect - but we also measure Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 if screens are specifically tuned to match this colour profile.

We also measure Delta E, which gives a guide as to how accurately the panel displays a colour. Anything under one is excellent and likely to be difficult for the human eye to distinguish; between one and two is still strong; above this suggests a panel that you shouldn’t trust for colour-accurate photo editing.

Battery

To measure a laptop’s battery life, we fully charge the battery, set the screen to a specific brightness level of 170cd/m2 (in order to ensure consistently comparable results across devices) and put it into flight mode. We then play a looped video, and measure how long it takes for the laptop to reach critical battery level and go into hibernation mode.

This gives us a benchmark that we can use to compare relative performance between different devices, but which may not be representative of real-world use. To that end, we also assess how long the battery lasts when used as an everyday device, subjecting it to a variety of workloads throughout the day.

Storage

We measure the performance of solid-state storage drives with the AS SSD benchmark test, which simulates four different file transfer operations to give an overview of speeds across various aspects of PC performance. We also guage day-to-day capabilities throughout our testing.

Workstations

On top of our regular benchmark suite, workstation reviews involve tests specifically aimed at a range of higher-end tasks. To test 3D modelling in all the main content types, we use SPECviewperf 2020, which runs OpenGL viewsets (as well as one Direct3D viewset) based on popular 3D content creation, engineering and medical applications. These include Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, PTC’s Creo, Siemens NX, plus Dassault Systèmes CATIA and SolidWorks.

To assess 3D rendering, we also run Maxon Cinebench R20, which contains a highly multithreaded test that benefits from multiple processor cores, and we test GPU-accelerated 3D rendering with the OpenCL-powered Luxmark 3.1 benchmark.

We’ll also use other testing tools from time to time, including IndigoBench 4 and a real-world test frame created in Blender for the Cosmos Laundromat animated movie, codenamed Project Gooseberry.

Just when it looked like AMD was out, it’s pulled the workstation market right back in. The end of the AMD Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper’s dominance - thanks in part to the 12th generation Intel Core i9 - has been halted by the arrival of the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 series. Armari’s Magnetar M64TP-RW2000G3 shows how much potential this workstation-class Zen 3 processor has.

The exact CPU in question is the Threadripper Pro 5975WX. It might seem a little odd that this is a 32-core processor in a system costing nearly £9,000 when last year we were seeing 64-core processors in systems under £8,000, but the Threadripper Pro always was more expensive than the vanilla Threadripper, and inflation in chip prices hasn’t helped. As we’ll see, 32 cores are plenty, and the 5975X will run these cores at a base 3.6GHz up to 4.5GHz in Boost mode. AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive can run as many cores as fast as your cooling and motherboard will allow. And talking of cooling, this proved to be an extremely quiet system thanks to the custom cooler.

One area where AMD has allowed Intel to keep the lead is in memory support. The Threadripper Pro only supports DDR4, but it also enables eight channels, theoretically doubling the bandwidth over quad-channel. Armari supplies eight 16GB 3,600MHz modules for a total of 128GB. There are no DIMM slots left free, but 128GB should be enough for most workloads during the lifetime of the machine.

Armari has matched this potent processor and memory combination with a fittingly high-end GPU. The PNY Nvidia Quadro RTX A5000 goes a notch above the A4500 seen in many rival systems like the Scan 3XS GWP-ME A124C by offering 8,192 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6 frame buffer running on a 384-bit bus. This enables 768GB/sec of bandwidth – the same as the even higher-end A5500 and A6000.

The storage provision is unique in that, while there are two drives, the configuration isn’t one for the OS and apps, with the other for data. Instead, Armari supplies a matched pair of 2TB Western Digital SN850 PCI-E Gen 4 SSDs in a RAID0 setup via a PCI-E adapter card, to improve throughput. This essentially doubled read and write speeds over a single drive, hitting 14,015MB/sec reading in CrystalDiskMark 8 and 9,989MB/sec writing. That’s phenomenally fast, as if Gen 4 NVMe SSDs weren’t quick enough already.

Benchmark results show just how potent the 5000 series Threadripper Pro is compared to anything Intel currently has to offer above 16 cores. An overall score in IT Pro’s benchmarks of 753 is the highest we’ve ever seen, led by an incredible 948 in multitasking and 716 in video encoding. The score of 242 in image editing also shows that single-core performance isn’t quite as high as the 12th generation Intel Core i9 can muster, and this is also clear from the single-core result in Maxon Cinebench R23 of 1,493.

Multithreading is where 3D rendering is really at, though, and the Cinebench R23 score here of 50,699 blows everything we’ve tested before out the water. It’s 27% faster than the dual 24-core Xeons in the PCSpecialist Onyx Goliath can deliver, and they have 50% more cores. Just to hammer this home, the Armari took 206 seconds to render the Blender frame while the Xeon-based PCSpecialist took 290 seconds. That’s 40% longer.

So this system has amazing everyday workload and 3D rendering abilities. It’s also masterful with 3D modelling, looking at the SPECviewperf 2020 results. The Nvidia Quadro RTX A5000 delivered 172 and 489 in 3dsmax-07 and maya-06, showing immense abilities with animations, while 139 in catia-04, 167 in creo-03, 492 in snx-04 and 327 in solidworks-05 illustrate great ability with CAD, engineering and product design.

Overall, this is a workstation without any weaknesses. Whichever creative task you throw it, it will deliver faster results than any other system we’ve seen, making it a worthy award winner. AMD is back - if it even went away in the first place.

Armari Magnetar M64TP-RW2000G3 specifications

In recent years, Intel surrendered its long-held dominance in the workstation processor space to AMD. But now the regular Threadripper has been discontinued in favour of the feature-rich but more expensive Threadripper Pro, Intel is clawing its way back. The 12th generation of Intel Core processors, codenamed Alder Lake, has undeniably strong qualities – particularly for workstations and high-end desktops. And Scan’s 3XS GWP-ME A124C shows just how much Alder Lake has to offer content-creation professionals.

The central element of the A124C is its Core i9-12900K processor, which is one rung below the top 12900KS model. The novelty with Alder Lake is that it has two types of cores: high-performance P cores and power-efficient E cores. Only P cores support Hyper-Threading, so while the 12900K has 16 cores, it presents 24 threads. Clock frequencies are also different, with the 12900K’s P cores set at a nominal 3.2GHz with 5.1GHz boost, while the E cores start at 2.4GHz with a 3.9GHz max. The P cores also offer a 5.2GHz “turbo” capability.

This array of frequencies and features makes perfect sense for content creation. Software packages in this space either favour fewer cores with high frequencies, or they like lots of cores. Broadly speaking, 3D modelling, video editing and photo editing would be the former, and 3D rendering the latter. The i9-12900K offers the best of both these worlds.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A124C review: Specifications

Although Alder Lake chips supports DDR5 memory, the Asus TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WiFi D4 motherboard supplied by Scan only allows DDR4. Scan populates it with 128GB of 3,200MHz modules, which may lose out on bandwidth to DDR5 but will last the lifetime of the system in terms of capacity. These are supplied as four modules, with four sockets lying empty, but as the motherboard maximum is 128GB you can’t upgrade any further. According to Scan, DDR5 is currently almost twice the price of DDR4, so it’s a sensible choice to go with the latter, as the performance loss isn’t huge.

One area where Scan has opted for the latest and greatest is graphics acceleration. This is the first system we’ve seen with the Nvidia Quadro RTX A4500. This includes faster core GPU and memory clocks than the Quadro RX A4000, but also more GDDR6 memory – 20GB instead of 16GB. The memory interface is 320-bit rather than 256-bit, so bandwidth overall is significantly increased from 448GB/sec to 640GB/sec. Meanwhile, Nvidia bumps up the number of CUDA cores from 6,144 to 7,168. As the model number implies, the RTX A4500 sits between the A4000 and A5000 in compute power and memory allocation. However, it’s a lot more expensive than the A4000, and would make up more than a third of the price of this system on its own.

The 12th generation Intel Core processors have leapfrogged AMD’s current generation not only by supporting DDR5 memory (even if our sample didn’t supply this) but also PCI Express 5.0, although you only directly benefit from this via the 16x PCI Express 5.0 slot used by the graphics card. However, support elsewhere for PCI-E Gen4 means that the NVMe storage can still operate at high speeds.

There are four M.2 slots on the Asus motherboard, and Scan has populated one with a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro Gen4 drive. Sustained read and write speeds of 6,667MB/sec and 4,944MB/sec respectively ensure that booting and app loading are quick. A capacity of 2TB is ample for a general content-creation system, but you should add a secondary AV drive for video editing. In this case, there are four SATA/600 ports on the motherboard, and the chassis provides a couple of 2.5in drive bays behind the motherboard for SATA SSDs.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A124C review: Chassis design

The 3XS chassis is based around a Fractal Design Meshify 2. This has options for 3.5in bays but Scan hasn’t fitted these as standard. Instead, it leaves the chassis open to improve airflow. Should you want to prioritise storage, fear not: you can fit up to 14 drives via optional brackets, on top of up to four dedicated 2.5in mounts.

Unsurprisingly, liquid cooling is used to keep noise levels low, in the shape of a Corsair H100i Pro XT unit with a 240mm dual fan radiator. Power comes from a 750W Corsair RMX 80 Plus Gold supply, which is adequate for the components installed: we measured a peak of 515W when we pushed it in Blender, and it idles at a very reasonable 56W.

The top edge of the chassis includes discrete analogue audio minijacks for headphones and a microphone, USB-C and a couple of USB-A ports. These will be easily accessible if the case is on the floor by the desk side. Due to the sheer size of the chassis the rear will be tricky to access, but there are two more USB-C ports (one USB 3.2 Gen 2, so 10Gbits/sec, and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 at 5Gbits/sec) and six USB-A ports (two Gen 2, four Gen 1). You will also find connectors for Wi-Fi 6 aerials, 2.5Gb Ethernet, and six audio ports including S/PDIF.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A124C review: Performance

If you look back at the professional workstations we’ve reviewed over the last few years, you’ll find almost all of them are united by one factor: AMD inside. That tells its own story. Finally, with Alder Lake, Intel has a chip that can compete at the “mid-range” point of £2,500 to £5,000.

In fact, the Scan’s overall score of 602 in the IT Pro benchmarks were just barely behind the Chillblast Fusion Threadripper Pro RTX 3975WXs Workstation’s score of 676, despite that system costing more than twice the price. The Scan’s results included 260 in image editing, 578 in video encoding and 731 in multitasking, more or less on par with Scan’s own Ryzen Threadripper 3970X-powered 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T. You can expect the slightly faster Intel Core i9-12900KS to pull ahead.

The Cinebench R20 score of 10,192 is also promising, albeit not quite ahead of the Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 and its AMD Ryzen 9 5950X processor, which managed 10,972. Considering the 5950X is also a 16-core CPU, but with multithreading across all cores, Intel is doing well here.

Nvidia’s Quadro RTX A4500 graphics reign supreme, too. In SPECviewperf 2020, the 3XS managed 161 in the 3ds Max viewset and 468 in Maya, showing great 3D animation abilities. For engineering and CAD, 125 in Catia, 182 in Creo, 473 in Siemens NX and 302 in SolidWorks imply strong functionality with every platform.

The A4500 also packs potency for compute tasks. The LuxMark 3.1 result of 13,745 is well ahead of the 10,000-odd that’s typical of a Quadro RTX A4000 system, and not far off an A5000, which usually return a little under 16,000.

What we haven’t yet seen is a direct rival to AMD’s Threadripper chips. For example, the outstanding Workstation Specialists WS-1640A-G4 costs less than £5,000 before VAT– but in return you get the horsepower of a 3900X with its 64 cores and 128 threads, which still give it a comfortable lead in performance across almost all of our benchmarks, including more than 100 points in our in-house performance tests and a 250% increase on the 3XS’ Cinebench R20 score.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A124C review: Verdict

If there’s one thing that’s clear from the Scan 3XS GWP-ME A124C, it’s this: Intel is back. The 12th gen Intel Core processor isn’t trouncing AMD just yet, but it’s beating it in some areas and holding its own elsewhere.

In the absence of AMD’s next generation of Ryzen chips, Intel has grabbed back its workstation crown at this price range. Nvidia retains its dominance, with the Quadro RTX A4500 providing another option between A4000 and A5000. And Scan has done an exemplary job of showcasing these components in the 3XS GWP-ME A124C, which we heartily recommend as a content-creation workhorse.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A124C specifications

Intel’s latest “Alder Lake” CPUs have given the company a new lease of life with their exceptional power. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 shows that they don’t even need to be housed in a huge desktop replacement notebook either. Weighing in at 2kg, this laptop is still distinctly portable - but with a 14-core processor inside, it can deliver performance to better many desktops, and it has potent graphics acceleration to match.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Design

2022 has seen affair few ASUS laptops get a refresh, this model has to so it won’t get mistaken with the design from last year – that had the previous-generation Intel processor. This confusion could be forgiven from looking at the notebook, however, because the chassis itself hasn’t changed noticeably since 2021.

This is a more inoffensive device offering than the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17. It has a matt black finish, with fewer LED lights beyond the keyboard. It also looks more restrained when the screen is lifted. However, it is a good-looking laptop, it sports a diagonal surfaced section on the top to display the ASUS ROG motif, but with a much less flashy marking in the corner.

The M16 has a 16in frame, this feels like a small decline from a 17in desktop replacement laptop, but the size and weight are significant compared with the Alienware x17 R2, for example. The Zephyrus M16 is around 2kg in weight, and while the near-2cm thickness is still quite unwieldy, this is a laptop you could easily take around with you.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Display

We’ve seen laptops in this range with 4K-level screens, such as the Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, but the Zephyrus M16 plumps for a 16in screen that has a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The screen comes with IPS technology and offers a 3ms pixels response and 165Hz refresh, which is great for gamers but may not be a selling point for those wanting to use this in a business.

The colour gamut of this display is outstanding, providing 100% of sRGB and 98% of DCI-P3. The official rating is for 100% of DCI-P3 but getting just 2% away is still praiseworthy. Colour accuracy is also very good, although not as good as others we’ve examined.

The average Delta-E colour variance of 1.11 is good, however, the maximum of 2.79 is a bit more of a deviation. The maximum screen brightness of 475cd/m2 means this is a very vibrant panel that should be noticeable even in a very well-lit setting. We had no trouble seeing it in direct sunlight. This screen will be brilliant for media viewing, other entertainment uses such as games, and the wide gamut will mean it will be handy for professional work as well.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Keyboard and trackpad

The 16in chassis isn’t wide enough for the keyboard to be accompanied by a numerical keypad, but the chiclet keys are full-sized and have a solid travel, making touch-typing comfortable. ASUS tends to place the # key above the Enter key on its notebooks. This will need acclimatisation if you’re used to a layout with a taller Enter key but otherwise, this is a comfortable, ergonomic keyboard.

The trackpad is massive, and although it is centrally placed, so is the keyboard, so it’s well situated to avoid contact while typing. The ridge around trackpad is very shallow, but it’s very close to the front edge of the notebook and the keyboard at the back, so you don’t need to look down to be sure you’re pressing in the right place. The trackpad is also responsive and accurate.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Hardware and performance

Central to ASUS’s 2022 laptop refresh is the adoption of the 12th Gen Intel Core processor. The Zephyrus M16, like the ROG Strix Scar17, uses the near-top processor model from this generation, the Core i9-12900H. This incorporates a whopping 14 cores, although they are not all the same. Instead, the CPU has 6 P performance cores and 8 E efficient ones. The P cores have a nominal 2.5GHz frequency with 5GHz turbo mode, whereas the E cores operate at 1.8GHz up to 3.8GHz. The 12900H in our sample was backed by 16GB of DDR5-4800 memory, although there is also an 8GB option (which is not recommended with this many cores). You can upgrade the Zephyrus M16 up to 48GB (but only 40GB if you started with 8GB).

The graphics acceleration is also extremely high-end on this laptop, in the shape of an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU. This combines a potent 5,888 CUDA cores with 8GB of GDDR6 memory. You can purchase a version of the Zephyrus M16 with 3060 or 3080 Ti graphics, with the latter offering a massive 10,240 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. These are all high-end gaming options, but sadly there is no professional graphics choice.

All variants of the Zephyrus M16 come with a sizeable 2TB NVMe PCI Express 4.0 SSD as main storage. This is a very fast example of the genre, too; the SSD delivered sustained reading of 7,085MB/sec and sustained writing of 5,258MB/sec with CrystalDiskMark 8. This is extremely rapid throughput and the 2TB capacity will be ample for the lifetime of the notebook.

With the same processor as the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17, performance is similarly superb with everyday applications. In our IT Pro media benchmarks, the overall score was an excellent 388, although the Scar 17 delivered an even more impressive figure. The Zephyrus M16’s result was made up of 236 in image editing, 370 in video editing, and 451 in multi-tasking, showing excellent capabilities across the board.

This performance was emphasized by similarly superb results with Maxon Cinebench. The Zephyrus M16 delivered 6,836 in R20 and 17,626 with R23 mutli core and 1,929 single core. These are the levels of CPU performance we saw in 16-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X desktops of just a few years ago like the Armari Magnetar S16T-RW1000G2 - although current Ryzen 9 5950X models such as the Scan 3XS RTX Studio Pro G132R are further ahead now.

The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is not a professionally focused graphics accelerator, but it’s so powerful it will still do very well with most 3D content creation applications. To show this, we ran SPECviewperf 2020 v1.0. The Zephyrus M16 managed 56.2 in 3dsmax-07 and 112.27 in maya-06, which are decent but behind what we were expecting for this GPU. Similarly, the scores of 53.34 in catia-06, 64.65 in creo-03 and 59.52 in solidworks-05 indicate usability but aren’t up with what we expected. The result of 18.75 in snx-04, however, shows the expected inability of consumer-grade graphics to run Siemens NX smoothly.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Battery life

A laptop this powerful shouldn't have the same battery life as a slim and light model designed for travellers, but the Zephyrus M16 performed better than we anticipated in our movie playback battery test, lasting 10 hours and 20 minutes. That's not nearly as long as, say, the Dell XPS 17, which lasts more than 11 hours. This is a credible result, however, the Zephyrus M16 is more potent than the XPS 17. It is far more adaptable than a larger desktop replacement because it may endure an entire workday or an entire transatlantic journey.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Ports and features

The Zephyrus M16 offers the latest Wi-Fi 6 capability, and there’s plenty of wired connectivity available too. On the left next to the power connection is an HDMI 2.0b video output, plus Gigabit LAN. Further along is a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A port, which will be great for attaching a flash memory drive. Then there’s a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C port, delivering 20GB/sec bandwidth with DisplayPort support and power output. Next door is a Thunderbolt 4 port with twice the bandwidth and more power output, able to support two 4K displays at once and PCI Express devices. Finally, there is a combo analog audio minijack.

The right-hand edge also offers a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A port, in a great place to connect a mouse (if you’re right-handed). Next door is a slot for a microSD card, which will be handy if you use a media capture device that employs this format, such as an action camera. Overall, it’s a comprehensive port selection, and it’s great to see legacy Type A and HDMI alongside futureproofed Type C and Thunderbolt 4, plus a built-in card reader.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 review: Verdict

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 offers extraordinary desktop-level computing power in a device with a day's worth of battery life. It's just the right size for you to tote along as well. The screen is vibrant and has a wide colour range. A wide variety of connecting options are available, from the venerable USB Type A to the cutting-edge Thunderbolt 4. This is a fantastic multi-purpose notebook that can master many different skills in addition to being a proficient jack of all trades.

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 specifications

The Alienware x17 R2 might be a gaming laptop, but the vast performance levels and impressive build quality of these notebooks means they shouldn’t be overlooked as potential work devices. This machine, for instance, deploys a beefy Intel 12th Gen processor alongside one of Nvidia’s most powerful laptop graphics cores, and it’s got an immersive 17.3in screen to go with it.

Gaming laptops aren’t cheap, though, and the Alienware is no exception. This model costs £2,624 exc VAT, and the entry-level variant still costs £1,791 exc VAT. When conventional big-screen notebooks are cheaper, can the x17 possibly justify the outlay?

Alienware x17 R2 review: Design

Part of that budget inevitably goes towards eye-catching aesthetic design and, true to form, Alienware’s largest laptop looks bolder than most business machines. The exterior mixes black and white aluminium, and it’s covered with honeycomb air vents. You can deactivate the x17’s bevy of RGB LEDs, but this laptop will always attract attention.

The 21mm-thick body is certainly more eye-catching than the sleek Dell XPS 17 and the dark Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, and its 3kg heft means that it’s significantly heavier too. Build quality is impeccable, but this machine will definitely weigh you down.

Alienware x17 R2 review: Keyboard and trackpad

The robust chassis does provide space for an excellent keyboard, however. The keys have 1.5mm of travel, and they’re fast, crisp and snappy – the movement is satisfying and not far removed from the best mobile mechanical keyboards. For all-day typing, the x17 fits the bill.

The x17’s keyboard has extra media keys but, like the XPS 17, this machine omits the numberpad. The Asus ProArt machine has shallower keys, but it does have a numberpad and a customizable dial that adds functionality to Adobe’s creative tools and Windows.

The trackpad is another area where the x17’s gaming focus shows through; most gamining machines are typically used in combination with USB mice alongside their laptops, so the x17 has a smaller trackpad than most work notebooks. Its responsive surface and pair of buttons are fine for everyday workloads, but both rivals have bigger pads and the Asus has three buttons.

Alienware x17 R2 review: Display

Above the keyboard you’ll find an IPS display with a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. That’s fine for everyday workloads and most creative tasks, although you’ll need a higher resolution if you’re planning to spread windows around or see fine detail.

Quality levels are good, though. The contrast ratio of 1,153:1 delivers solid depth and detail, and the peak brightness level of 386cd/m2 is high enough to handle most indoor and outdoor situations. The Delta E of 1.78 means colours are accurate, and the Alienware’s panel rendered 98.1% of the sRGB colour gamut.

It’s a great mainstream screen and it can tackle photo-editing and other content-creation tasks that require sRGB gamut coverage, but it struggles beyond those scenarios. It didn’t render more than 80% of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 colour gamuts, so it doesn’t have the ability to handle colour-sensitive design work in Adobe Creative Suite tools and it can’t properly produce or run HDR content. And while it’s got a stonking 360Hz refresh rate, that’s of little use beyond playing the latest games.

The Alienware’s competitors are better in this regard. The Asus has a 3,840 x 2,400 resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio, and it covered the entire DCI-P3 and sRGB colour gamuts with more accuracy and a better brightness level. The XPS 17 we reviewed uses the same 4K-busting resolution and it also has better gamut coverage and a huge 444cd/m2 brightness level.

It’s possible to upgrade the Alienware’s display to a 4K model for an extra £541 exc VAT, but that’s a significant price for a screen that adds more pixels but no extra gamut ability.

Alienware x17 R2 review: Hardware and performance

As you’d expect from a high-end gaming machine, the specs here are certainly impressive. This x17 pairs an Intel Core i7-12700H processor with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics core, and that powerful hardware sits alongside 32GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB SSD. The processor has six Hyper-Threaded P-cores, which rattle through tough workloads, alongside eight E-cores designed for easier tasks. The graphics core has 16GB of dedicated memory and 7,424 stream processors.

Unsurprisingly, the x17 blitzed our benchmarks. Its overall result of 437 is twice as good as the XPS 17 and even further ahead of the Asus. Its video-editing and multi-tasking scores of 437 and 508 are impressive too, and in Cinebench R20 the Alienware scored 6,157, while neither rival could get beyond 4,800 points. Those machine have similar processors, but their slimmer, quieter designs restrict performance, and the only way you’ll get more content-creation power is by moving to a desktop.

In Geekbench’s single- and multi-core tests the x17 scored 1,686 and 12,040, with the former score a little behind Apple’s M1 chip but the latter result nearly 2,000 points ahead. You won’t notice the slight single-threaded discrepancy in everyday use, but the big gulf in the multi-core test gives the Alienware a noticeable lead. The SSD helps, too: its excellent read and write speeds of 6,318MB/sec and 4,155MB/sec mean booting, loading and launching is always fast.

SPECviewperf 2020 tests illustrate the Alienware’s content-creation abilities. Its 3dsmax-07 result of 138.71 is almost twice as good as the Asus and further beyond the XPS, and its 410.61 score in Maya-06 maintains the gap. The x17 scored 265.54 in SolidWorks, which is nearly 100 points beyond the Asus. That’s no surprise when the x17 has an RTX 3080 Ti and its rivals top out with the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060, but it does mean you’ll have loads of power for 3D modelling, product design and animation.

The Alienware retained its lead in the Catia-06 and SNX-04 tests with scores of 75.82 and 22.8, but they’re less impressive and it’s entirely normal for consumer GPUs to struggle with these engineering tools.

There are some trade-offs to get this level of grunt, though. You’ll certainly hear fan noise from the x17 if you push the components in tough work environments, and this is not the notebook to buy if you want a quiet environment – the Asus and Dell are far better.

That said, the fan noise is never overwhelming, and the x17’s size means it’s quieter than most smaller gaming notebooks. And while the exterior does get warm during intensive workloads, only the area above the keyboard becomes uncomfortably hot – and you won’t be touching that part of the laptop.

Alienware x17 R2 review: Battery life

Gaming laptops usually struggle in battery tests, too, and that’s true of the x17. In our 170cd/m2 video benchmark the x17 lasted for 4hrs 17mins, which isn’t even half the lifespan of the XPS 17 and a couple of hours behind the Asus.

If you really push the hardware, especially the graphics core, you’ll only get an hour of longevity from this laptop. And if you occupy the middle ground with an everyday work test, expect just over two hours of use. None of this is a surprise, but it does mean that the x17 is not suitable if you want a long-lasting laptop.

Alienware x17 R2 review: Ports and features

You’ll find the x17’s ports at the laptop’s rear. The Alienware has a Thunderbolt 4 socket, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port with power delivery, and two full-size USB 3.2 Gen 1 connectors. Display outputs come from HDMI 2.1 and mini-DisplayPort, and the x17 also includes a microSD card slot.

That’s good connectivity, but a ring of RGB LEDs around the rear make the sockets nearly impossible to see from many angles – we’d recommend turning those off. And while rear-facing ports keep cables and dongles tidy, they’re not as accessible as side-mounted sockets.

Above the display there’s a 720p webcam that supports Windows Hello, and on the inside there’s dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Gigabit Ethernet. The x17 has no Kensington lock slot, but does boast a TPM 2.0 module, and the laptop’s base can even be removed for access to pairs of SO-DIMM and NVMe SSD slots.

That’s enough connectivity for gamers, but the x17 also misses other features. That webcam doesn’t have a privacy shutter, there’s no fingerprint reader, and the speakers have loads of volume and bass but a tinny top-end. A full-size SD card slot would be more useful for creatives.

Dell’s XPS machine competes with four Thunderbolt 4 sockets and an SD card reader, but it only has one full-size USB port. The Asus is better than both: it mirrors the x17’s USB selection and adds an SD card slot, its webcam has a privacy shutter, and it has a fingerprint reader and Kensington lock slot.

Alienware x17 R2 review: Verdict

Some of those missing features are no surprise when you consider that the x17 isn’t a work notebook, but its sheer performance levels mean it’s still worthwhile if you need productivity power. And, alongside the muscular internals, it’s got plenty of ports, a great keyboard and a rock-solid exterior.

There are inevitable downsides, though. The x17 is significantly heavier than both rivals, and they have better battery life and screens. The Asus offers its innovative Dial and better connectivity for £1,666 exc VAT, while the XPS 17 costs £2,332 exc VAT for a specification that approximately matches the x17.

That said, the Alienware x17 R2 is worth the extra outlay if you want extreme performance inside a sturdy, port-packed laptop – just remember that you may get more looks than usual in the office.

Alienware x17 R2 Specifications

In computing, portability used to mean significant limitations, but every year the abilities of laptops go a step further. ASUS’s ROG Strix Scar 17 showcases how powerful portables have become, with a 14-core processor, immensely potent graphics acceleration and monitor options up to a WQHD screen resolution with an incredible 240Hz refresh rate.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 review: Design

In case it wasn’t clear from the name, the Scar 17 is a high-end gaming laptop, and its design caters for that market. For example, there’s a semi-translucent material around the keyboard that shows some of the underlying circuitry beneath. The ROG logo is quite stylish though, and ASUS has etched small versions of this in a diagonal line across the lid, which provides a subtle additional visual interest to the design. There is some writing etched on the lid too, but it’s only visible under UV lighting.

The diagonal logo motif is continued across the keyboard once you lift the lid. There’s also a mysterious recess on the right-hand side with an LED inside, although this doesn’t light up by default. This is for a special magnetic key that slots into place and enables a group of settings. The lighting on the lid and inside has various settings, such as rainbow or breathing. These are all gamer-focused features, but they aren’t trying to hide a lack of real power.

Although this is a heavy notebook – nearly 3kg – it’s worth bearing in mind that the components included are about as powerful as you can get in portable form. Desktop replacements in this class used to weigh over 5kg, so the Scar 17 is light in comparison, and portable if you have a bag big enough. The Scar 17 is also nearly 3cm thick, but again high-end notebooks used to be even thicker.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 review: Display

The Scar 17 doesn’t have a 4K screen, but it does have a stunning 17in display. There is a 1,920 x 1,080 Full HD option, but our sample came with the 2,560 x 1,440 resolution alternative. The Full HD screen will go up to an incredible 360Hz refresh, and the higher-resolution screen can manage a still impressive 240Hz. All support Active-Sync so the refresh can match the framerate exactly, with a 3ms pixel response, which is good for an IPS panel.

Our sample’s screen delivered 100% of sRGB and 96% of DCI-P3 – less than the 100% rating, but still excellent. The maximum Delta-E variation in colour accuracy of 1.88 is good with an average of 1.12 – very promising, and close to the best desktop screens. However, the maximum brightness is only 282cd/m2, which is good but not as bright as some laptop screens we have tested. Although this is a gaming-oriented laptop, the colour gamut and accuracy will make it a good choice for professional work as well.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 review: Keyboard and trackpad

Since this is a 17in chassis, there is plenty of space for a keyboard with full-sized keys and a numerical pad on the right. The chiclet-style keys are comfortable enough for extended touch typing - although one little niggle is that the hashtag key is one row up from the usual British placement, like some American keyboard layouts. This is a bit strange when otherwise the layout and key lettering are British. Until you get used to this, you may hit # instead of Enter a few times.

ASUS has sensibly moved the trackpad substantially to the left, so that it is placed almost directly beneath the spacebar. This may seem like a nit-picking point, but it’s very welcome if you’re a fast touch-typist because it minimises the risk of accidentally shifting the cursor as you type. On a more negative note, the trackpad is very shallowly recessed, with just a thin ridge around the edge. It’s quite easy to find you are pressing outside the pad accidentally if you don’t look, and even if you do look in a dark environment.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 review: Hardware and performance

The ROG Strix Scar 17 has had quite a few hardware options in the past, including from AMD, but the 2022 model we reviewed uses the 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900H processor across all variants. This “Alder Lake-H” CPU has a massive 14 cores, which come in two types – 6 are P (or performance) and 8 are E (for efficient) units. The P cores have a nominal 2.5GHz frequency with 5GHz turbo mode, whereas the E cores operate at 1.8GHz up to 3.8GHz. The 12900H in our sample was backed by 16GB of DDR5 memory in our sample, although you can specify the Scar 17 with 32GB, and the maximum is 64GB.

There are four graphics options, with all decidedly high-end. Our sample came with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, but 3060, 3080 and 3080 Ti graphics are also available. The 3070 Ti sports 8GB of GDDR6 memory and a whopping 5,888 CUDA cores, whereas the 3080 has 16GB and an even more phenomenal 10,240 CUDA cores. This is a gaming focused laptop, however, with no Quadro professional graphics-equipped version available.

There’s only one storage option listed for the Scar 17, too, but it’s reassuringly capable – a 2TB PCI Express 4.0 NVMe SSD. This delivered 7,046 MB/sec sustained reading and 5,241MB/sec sustained writing with CrystalDiskMark 8, which is faster than most desktop systems. There are some indications that a 4TB drive can also be specified, but 2TB will be enough for most users.

With such a high-performance hardware specification on board, we were expecting top scores from the Scar 17 in our benchmarks. We weren’t disappointed. The overall score in the IT Pro media benchmarks was an incredible 416, which is more than two-thirds what a current 16-core desktop workstation would achieve. The individual scores of 236 in image editing, 408 in video editing, and 482 in multi-tasking are all way ahead of the Dell XPS 17 or ASUS ProArt StudioBook Pro OLED, both of which are equipped with eight-core processors.

Hammering this home are the Maxon Cinebench scores, with 6,663 in R20, 16,114 in R23 multi core, and 1,938 in R23 single core. These results are on par with the original 16-core Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, and about 65% of the latest 16-core AMD CPUs. This is an amazing result for a laptop, and the Scar 17 can perform heavy multi-threaded tasks like a desktop workstation.

Although the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics accelerator is aimed more at gaming, it’s extremely powerful and should be good for most professional 3D work as well. Running SPECviewperf 2020 v1.0, the Scar 17 achieved 102.74 in 3dsmax-07 and 385.8 in maya-06, showing this notebook will be excellent for 3D animation workloads. The scores of 68.55 in catia-06, 105.31 in creo-03 and 241.47 in solidworks-05 show some excellent abilities for CAD and engineering, too. However, the usual drawback of consumer-grade graphics is evident, with only 22.4 in snx-04. If you run Siemens NX, a notebook with Quadro graphics would make more sense.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 review: Battery life

One area where desktop replacement notebooks always fall behind is in battery life. When the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio can deliver nearly 17 hours of our video playback test, and the decidedly powerful Dell XPS 17 lasts well over 11 hours, the Scar 17’s 3hrs 36mins seems a bit paltry.

That said, desktop replacements of the past would barely last two hours. You could at least bank on being able to use this notebook for a couple of hours of intense work (or play…) away from the mains power plug. But there’s no way it will endure a lengthy international flight or working day. It’s clearly a laptop designed mostly to be used plugged in that you can operate on the move when you need to.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 review: Ports and features

The 17in chassis format of the Scar 17 leaves plenty of room for connectivity, and reassuringly ASUS hasn’t taken the route of some other manufacturers and focused exclusively on USB-C or Thunderbolt, such as the Microsoft with the Surface Laptop Studio or Dell with the XPS 17.

Instead, on the left you get a couple of USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports, so you can plug in a mouse or flash memory drive with ease. There’s a combo audio minijack for a headset, although there was room for one of these plus a separate headphone jack, which would have been useful.

There are no ports on the right, with the remaining connections on the rear. Alongside the power port is a 2.5Gb Ethernet LAN connection, full-sized HDMI 2.1 (with support for 4K screens up to 120Hz) and two USB C ports. One is Thunderbolt 4 with DisplayPort support while the other is just USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C. In other words, the Thunderbolt 4 port supports 40GB/sec bandwidth whereas the USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C tops out at 20GB/sec, meaning the former can support two 4K displays and supports PCI Express, whereas the latter can just do one 4K display without PCIe. Thunderbolt can also output more power to external devices.

Overall, it’s a decent port allocation, although we would have liked to see clearer symbols showing which of the two USB C-shaped connections was Thunderbolt 4. We also wish there was a built-in SD card reader, which perhaps wouldn’t be so important for a gamer but professional users would benefit. Wireless connectivity is rounded out with 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 review: Verdict

The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 is an immensely powerful laptop. Its CPU delivers the same kind of processing ability as a high-end workstation from just a few years ago. The graphics are also immensely capable, albeit aimed at gaming rather than professional work. There’s ample connectivity including the latest Thunderbolt 4 and 2.5Gbits/sec networking, plus some Type A USB for backwards compatibility.

The screen is excellent, with its high refresh able to take full advantage of the powerful graphics’ fast framerates, although this will be more for gamers than professionals. The battery life isn’t great, and it is quite large and heavy, but these are expected downsides from a notebook this potent. Overall, the Scar 17 showcases just how much computing ability can now be packed into a portable device.

ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 specifications

The work space “norm” has changed for good, with the introduction of remote and hybrid working, showing that productive work can be done from anywhere. And despite hybrid workers achieving sufficiently with their laptop, staff need additional tools in order to feel like they have a proper workspace.

This comes down to IT teams supplying their staff with the right business tools and technology to do their work, however, with the different devices, dongles, cables, headsets and webcams, the disorder can be the cause of distraction and negatively impact creativity.

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Opting for a powerful notebook used to mean being lumbered with a thick, unwieldy monster, but that’s no longer a given. The Dell XPS 17 is a case in point: it packs in an Intel processor with at least six cores, a 17in screen, and discrete NVIDIA graphics, yet only weighs a bit over 2kg and measures under 2cm in thickness.

Prices for the entry-level specification start at £1,374 exc VAT, although the configuration on test demonstrates why it’s worth shelling out for the pricier models. After all, if you’re going to go big, why skimp on the capabilities?

Dell XPS 17 review: Design

If you’re familiar with Dell XPS notebooks over the last couple of decades, you’ll know that the 17in models used to be extremely chunky and definitely fell into the category of “desktop replacement”, intended to be moved from desk to desk rather than used on the train or plane. Not so the new XPS 17 Laptop. Admittedly, at 2.21kg it still isn’t a device you can carry around all day without noticing, and while it’s a relatively slim 19.05mm, its 374 x 249mm footprint may require a dedicated laptop carrier. On the other hand, you can happily shuttle this device from one meeting to another without a team of day-labourers and a forklift.

Dell sticks to the brushed metal exterior with black interior that XPS notebooks have sported for some years now. However, the tapered edges and extremely thin screen make the XPS 17 feel even more svelte than it actually is. It’s a stylish but sober design, which is about right for a creative professional who wants to give clients the correct impression.

Dell XPS 17 review: Display

There are two choices of display with the XPS 17 Laptop. Both are 17in, 16:10 in aspect, and employ Dell’s InfinityEdge technology, so have a very thin bezel. This has allowed the laptop to be as small as possible while still sporting a 17in display. Both screens are also touch-enabled and rated up to 500-nits brightness. However, the basic screen has an FHD+ resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, whereas the display on our test system has four times the pixels with a UHD+ resolution of 3,840 x 2,400.

In our tests, this screen covered 94% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and 100% of the sRGB colour space, with a maximum Delta-E of 0.9 making it excellent, if not quite as good as the Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED. Brightness is also high at 444cd/m2, and here the Dell does surpass the Asus.

In other words, this is a truly lovely panel, with excellent brightness, wide viewing angles and an anti-glare surface that keeps things visible even in brightly lit environments. This will be a great screen for creative work, such as image or video editing. The near-frameless design also means there’s virtually no bezel to distract you. It’s not quite as impressive as the panel on the ASUS ProArt, but it’s close, and also slightly bigger, despite the Dell being a little thinner and lighter.

Dell XPS 17 review: Keyboard and trackpad

Dell hasn’t used the extra width of a 17in chassis to include a keypad, so the keyboard sits in the middle with space either side, which has been populated with speakers. This also means that the trackpad sits almost directly beneath the spacebar, which is something we thoroughly approve of. If you’re a touch typist, this will minimise the chance of accidentally brushing the trackpad (which is both huge and highly precise) when typing.

The Chiclet-style keys have shallow travel but a clearly defined action, which will take a little getting used to coming from a desktop keyboard but not much. Overall, it’s a decent typing experience. The touch screen can also be used instead of the trackpad, although you’ll have to contend with finger marks on the screen.

Dell XPS 17 review: Hardware and performance

Dell sticks with Intel for the XPS 17, supplying processors from the 11th Generation. The basic option is the Core i5-11400H, but our sample came with the Core i7-11800H. This is an eight-core processor capable of running at up to 4.6GHz although the base clock speed is half that. The top frequency is on par with the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX supplied in the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED. The other processor options are Core i9 processors, either the 11900H or 11980HK, which also have eight cores but higher boost frequencies.

Memory options range from 8GB to 64GB, always supplied as two 3,200MHz modules of DDR4. Our system came with an adequate if not earth-shattering 16GB, but heavy graphics users might want to go for 32GB instead. Speaking of which, optional discrete GPUs include NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3050 with 4GB of GDDR6 or an RTX 3060 with 6GB of GDDR6. Our sample came with the latter, which sports a considerable 3,840 CUDA cores.

Storage is provided by a PCI Express 3.0 NVMe SSD, with capacity options up to a maximum of 4TB. Our unit came with a 1TB drive, which supplied 3,469MB/sec sustained reading and 2,945MB/sec sustained writing in CrystalDiskMark 8. This is behind the performance we saw from the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED’s NVMe storage, but it’s still very quick for a laptop drive and you’ll certainly feel it when booting the system or loading software.

A few years ago, having eight cores in a notebook that was still quite portable would have seemed unfeasible. But the Dell XPS 17 Laptop delivers huge amounts of performance from its acceptable lack of girth. In the IT Pro media benchmarks, it achieved an impressive overall score of 281, which is even higher than the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, with its eight-core AMD Ryzen 9 processor. Image editing was a little behind at 204, but video editing considerably ahead at 287, as was the multi-tasking score of 302, showing that this Dell notebook will be brilliant for everyday media tasks. The raw 3D rendering abilities are great too, with 4,684 in Maxon Cinebench R20, although this is slightly behind the ASUS notebook.

If you’re performing 3D work, despite the consumer-grade graphics this notebook will be capable with a range of professional applications too. Running SPECviewperf 2020 v1.0, the XPS managed a competent 58.3 with 3dsmax-07, an impressive 204.09 with maya-06, and 138.09 with solidworks-05, showing that it will cope well with 3D animation using Autodesk 3ds Max and particularly Maya, and with SolidWorks product design. The catia-06 result of 44.23 and creo-03 score of 73.97 also show that these engineering apps will run adequately smoothly too. However, Siemens NX, as always, is the Achilles Heel. The result of 13.26 illustrates yet again that consumer-grade GPUs are not a good fit for this application.

Dell XPS 17 review: Battery life

Another area where powerful notebooks have traditionally been lacking in the past is battery life. However, with our video playback battery test, it lasted a whopping 11hrs 37mins, which is over 5 hours more than the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED. Notebooks aimed at more “road warrior” usage such as the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in, Apple M1-based notebooks, and the Asus ExpertBook B94550F can go even longer than this, but you can easily get a working day completed on battery with modest tasks using the XPS 17. If you were performing activities like rendering out 3D it’s likely to be a lot less, but this doesn’t have to be a desktop replacement that you can really only carry from desk to desk and plug into the mains.

Dell XPS 17 review: Ports and features

Dell has entirely dispensed with legacy connectivity for its port allocation on the XPS 17, which means no full-size USB Type A ports, no HDMI and no ethernet. The only nod towards the past is a combo minijack for audio. Otherwise, you get four Thunderbolt 4 ports - two on each side - and a dongle in the box for HDMI and a single USB-A port.

There is also a full-sized SD Card slot on the right, however, as well as Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 for wireless connectivity. The lack of ports could be a major drawback without the supplied dongle, although you’re still left without wired networking, which could mean a separate dongle purchase for some work environments.

Dell XPS 17 review: Verdict

The Dell XPS 17 shows how far portable computing has come. Like the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, it delivers a huge amount of computing power in a form that you can conceivably carry around and use on the go. It also illustrates that Intel’s 11th Generation Core i7 processors are competitive with AMD’s Ryzen 9 on a mobile platform, particularly with everyday media applications.

The XPS has a great screen, a powerful GPU, and it’s still reasonably thin. Although the ASUS ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED pips it in a few areas, with an even more vibrant screen, the Dell XPS 17 is a great all-rounder for professional creative work on the move.

Dell XPS 17 Laptop specifications

Being creative doesn’t always happen when you’re sitting at your desk in your studio, and sometimes you need to be able to get some serious work done on the move. Mobile workstations can never quite deliver the same abilities as the tower variety, but they get closer every year, and with the ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, Asus is hoping to reduce the gap even further.

Combining a choice of high-end AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors, powerful discrete graphics, 16in screen with 4K resolution, up to 32GB of RAM and 4TB of storage, there isn’t much to separate this portable from a desktop. Prices start at £1,666.66 exc VAT, which isn’t cheap, but there’s a lot of computing here for the money.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED review: Design

Although the 16in screen format isn’t the biggest you can get in a laptop, this is still a hefty device. It weighs in at 2.4kg, which is definitely not “keep it in your backpack at all times” territory. But it’s also not as chunky and unwieldy as some of the biggest desktop replacements we’ve tried in the past, measuring just 21.4mm at its widest point, and the power brick isn’t as large and heavy as some notebooks in this class. The ProArt is still a laptop, and not just an all-in-one you can fit in a bag.

The black plastic finish is serious and business-like, but the styling is a little more funky than pure office-focused notebooks with a ridge between the keyboard and trackpad plus an extra rotating knob, which we will discuss shortly.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED review: Display

As the OLED in the name of this notebook implies, this notebook comes with a cutting-edge display. It’s 16in, but is 4K in resolution, and not just standard 4K either. The full pixel resolution is 3,840 x 2,400, meaning a 16:10 aspect ratio - and every inch is gorgeous. In our tests, this screen covered 99% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and 96% of the sRGB colour space, with a maximum Delta-E of 0.76 making it essentially flawless. Even the brightness, which we clocked at a maximum of 399cd/m2, is more than enough for working at home, in the office or on the move.

There are two versions of this display to choose from, but the only difference between them is that one has TÜV Rheinland certification, which means it has been tested as providing less harmful blue light. Either way, this is a very lush notebook display. The colours are extremely rich with immense detail and clarity. The surface is quite glossy but without strong lighting from the environment, the viewing angles are excellent, which will be very useful if demonstrating to clients, albeit not so good for keeping your work secret on a train. In short, for those that want professional-grade image quality for sensitive media work, this screen delivers in spades.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED review: Keyboard and trackpad

The 16in 16:10 aspect screen means that this notebook is a little deeper than some, placing the keyboard further back with a larger than normal space for resting your wrists. The keys are quite shallow but have a noticeable action that makes touch-typing easy enough. The width of this notebook has also allowed room for a discrete numerical keypad on the right.

The trackpad is large and, unusually, has three buttons. The action is accurate, but the trackpad is placed centrally, which looks symmetrical but means the heel of your right hand may brush it accidentally when you’re touch typing. It’s a minor annoyance, but we really would have preferred it to be an inch or two further left.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED review: Performance

There are three processor choices with the Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED, but they’re all potent. The ‘entry level’ is a six-core AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, which runs at up to 4.2GHz. Alternatively, you can specify an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, which runs at up to 4.4GHz. However, our sample came with the top choice, an eight-core AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX running at up to 4.6GHz, which is pretty insane for a portable device. Memory options range from 16 to 64GB of DDR4, with our sample having 32GB. There are three graphics choices, all of them discrete and supplied from NVIDIA, which is perhaps a bit of a surprise given the AMD processor. That does provide built-in Vega 7 graphics, which will be handy when operating on battery doing less graphics-intensive tasks.

The three GPU choices are all from the NVIDIA GeForce RTX series, ranging from a 3050Ti with 4GB GDDR6, to a 3060 with 6GB GDDR6, to the 3070 in our sample, which comes equipped with 8GB GDDR6. There are lots of storage options, starting with a single 512GB M.2 NVMe PCI Express 3.0 SSD and going up to a pair of 2TB drives with the same interface. Our sample came with a 2TB capacity - plenty for apps and media. Using CrystalDiskMark 8, this drive delivered a very healthy 5,760MB/sec sustained reading and 5,999MB/sec sustained writing.

This notebook is meant to get close to workstation performance, so we ran a subset of the benchmarks we deploy on professional content creation desktops. Our regular benchmarks delivered an impressive overall score of 234, with a particularly strong image editing result of 212, 128 in video editing, and 173 in multi-tasking. These aren’t the fastest we’ve seen in a laptop, but still highly commendable. The Maxon Cinebench R20 render test delivered a score of 4,776, which is about half what a 16-core desktop workstation would deliver (unsurprisingly) but shows that if you’re rendering out 3D work on CPU, this notebook is no slouch.

You buy a notebook like this more for the design stage than rendering out, though, so we ran SPECviewperf 2020 to see how it coped with a broad set of 3D content creation applications. We ran the V1.0 version because V2.0 introduces a new viewset version so can’t be compared to previous tests we have run. The ProArt does have extremely powerful graphics for a notebook, but the GeForce is a consumer-grade GPU and that has some drawbacks for professional 3D software.

The 3dsmax-07 score of 77.42 is good enough, and 240.1 in maya-06 is incredible. The graphics also delivered a very commendable 171.69 in solidworks-05. In other words, Autodesk 3ds Max or Maya 3D animation, and SolidWorks product design, will be great. But 17.77 in catia-06 and 18.8 in snx-04 show that these two engineering CAD apps won’t be so smooth to work with, as we always find with non-professional GPUs.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED review: Battery life

Battery life is normally the area where larger notebooks fall down, as higher processing power means higher energy consumption. Not so the ProArt: it lasted 6hs 19mins in our video playback battery test. It backed that up in day-to-day use too, giving us the best part of six hours for day-to-day tasks.

Sure, we’ve seen notebooks like the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in manage close to 14 hours of usage, and Apple M1-based notebooks can go even longer, while the Asus ExpertBook B94550F lasted over 22 hours when we reviewed it. But the ProArt is supposed to be vying with your desktop PC for power, so the fact that it can give you the best part of a day on battery means you could feasibly use it on a train or flight for serious work - and that’s impressive. Do bear in mind, however, that any hardware-intensive work like video rendering will place more of a strain on that battery life.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED review: Ports and features

One of the advantages of larger notebooks is usually that they have more space for ports, and the ProArt is well endowed in this respect. On the left is a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A port, the input for the power brick, and a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, supporting 8K and 120Hz. Next to this is a pair of USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C ports, which offer power output so could drive displays on their own.

The funkiest element of all is the rotating knob to the top left of the trackpad. This “Asus Dial” provides rapid access to screen brightness and speaker volume, but it can also be configured to access other shortcuts via the Asus ProArt Creator Hub software and is compatible with Adobe apps. For example, you can use it with recent versions of Photoshop to quickly change things like brush sizes.

On the right is a Gigabit Ethernet port, and another USB 3.2 Type A port, then a combo minijack for headphones and microphone. Finally, there is a full-sized SD card slot which supports SD Express 7.0, so with the right card can deliver throughput of 985MB/sec. These cards are NVMe-based and are basically an SSD in SD card format. Some vendors have launched products already, but they are not currently listed in any online shops.

The HD webcam on the top of the bezel has a physical privacy shutter you can move across to block it.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED review: Verdict

The Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED bucks the trend somewhat with notebooks in this class. It is still quite big and heavy, but not so huge that you won’t want to take it with you on a journey. The screen is superb, and the eight-core AMD Ryzen 9 processor is hugely powerful. You also get immensely potent NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 graphics.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is how long this notebook lasts on its battery. This means the Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED is a powerful content creation notebook you can use on the move for extended periods, making it a great choice for graphics professionals who need to take their work with them on a regular basis.

Asus ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED specifications

We’ve been waiting for Intel to fight back against AMD’s onslaught in the workstation market for some time. Now that the 12th Generation of Intel Core processors has arrived though, perhaps we’re starting to see the hint of a change in fortune. The new ‘Alder Lake’ platform enables up to 16 cores for the Core i9, 12 for the Core i7, and 10 for the Core i5, plus support for DDR5 memory and PCI Express 5.0.

The first 12th-gen system we’ve had on the bench, Wired2Fire’s Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation comes equipped with the range-topping Intel Core i9-12900K and 64GB of DDR5 memory. But is this enough to challenge workstations based on AMD’s mighty Ryzen 9 processors?

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation review: Processor and memory

Like the Ryzen 9 5950X, the Intel Core i9-12900K, has 16 cores, but the configuration is rather different. Instead of a set of identical cores, each capable of running two threads, Alder Lake processors can have two types – “P” cores which are geared for performance and “E” cores designed to be more efficient. The P cores can run faster than the E ones, and can process two threads, whereas the E ones are single thread only.

In the case of the Wired2Fire’s Core i9-12900K, there are eight P cores running at a base 3.2GHz with a 5.1GHz boost, and eight E cores running at a base 2.4GHz with a 3.9GHz boost. Intel Turbo Max 3.0 enables a couple of P cores to run at 5.2GHz, for the best possible single-threaded performance.

Support for DDR5 is new with the 12th Generation Intel processors, and Wired2Fire has taken full advantage by providing 64GB of the new memory type running at a native 2,400MHz, but data-doubled to 4,800MHz. This provides 50% more bandwidth than DDR4-3200 memory, which is the typical format for current AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors, and if that’s not enough, dual-channel memory is also supported for even greater throughput. The 64GB allocation is a plentiful baseline, but the two 32GB DIMMs supplied by Wired2Fire leaves two slots free for future upgrade should you need it.

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation review: Graphics acceleration

Wired2Fire has aimed the Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation at a specific task (the clue is in the name), so has eschewed professional-grade graphics acceleration, which isn’t so necessary if you’re not doing heavy professional 3D work. The GPU is still very potent, however, taking the form of an MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Ventus 3X.

This is a PCI Express Gen 4 graphics card – something now supported by the latest Intel 12th Generation processors – and sports a whopping 6,144 CUDA cores running at a clock speed up to 1,770MHz. The 3070 Ti also sports 8GB of GDDR6X frame buffer on a 256-bit bus, offering a considerable 608GB/sec of bandwidth. There are three DisplayPort 1.4a connections plus a single HDMI 2.1 port. While the latter supports up to 4K at 120Hz, the DisplayPorts can drive up to 8K screens. Power consumption is quite high, though, clocking in at 290W.

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation review: Storage

The Apollo’s approach to storage is more traditional, consisting of a fast SSD for the operating system and applications, with a conventional hard disk included for media files. The former is a 2TB Samsung 980 NVMe SSD running at PCI Express 4.0 speeds. Using CrystalDiskMark 8, this drive delivers 6,631.64MB/sec sustained reading alongside 5,019.24MB/sec sustained writing.

Media storage comes in the form of a 4TB Seagate BarraCuda conventional 7,200rpm SATA hard disk. This provides much more pedestrian throughput compared to the NVMe SDD, delivering 197MB/sec sustained reading and 187MB/sec reading. While it’s no surprise that performance lags behind NVMe speeds, both of these are quite low even for current generation HDDs. The chassis comes with six additional bays for fitting either 3.5in or 2.5in drives, and this can be increased to 14 with optional extra caddies, so if you want lots of storage for video, this is entirely possible. There’s a single 5.25in optical drive mount too.

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation review: Chassis design

Speaking of the storage capabilities, these are provided by the excellent Fractal Design Define 7 chassis – a large and spacious case with a side window that is a top choice amongst workstation manufacturers currently. There are four Type A USB ports – two 3.0 and two 2.0 – on the top front edge, alongside USB Type C and separate minijacks for headphones and microphone. Wired2Fire has also opted for Noctua NH-D15 Dual Tower air cooling for the processor, rather than a water system, but with two meaty 140mm fans on a large heat sink, the Noctua still enables an incredibly quiet system.

The ASUS ProArt Z690-CREATOR motherboard also provides plenty of connectivity at the rear. There are 10Gbit and 2.5Gbit Ethernet LAN ports, six USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A ports, two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports, plus five analog audio minijacks. There are antenna attachments for the onboard WiFi 6E, making this system fully ready for use in a studio with no wired LAN.

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation review: Processor performance

AMD has become dominant in the workstation market over the last couple of years, thanks to the sheer performance its processors provide for the money, but the Core i9-12900K shows that Intel has life in it yet. Running our in-house benchmark tests, the Apollo’s overall score is a colossal 658 – ahead of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X of Armari’s Magnetar V16R-RD850G3, which could only achieve 617. With 260 in image editing and 638 in video editing, this machine has performance in the key creative areas at which it is aimed, and the multitasking score of 803 will give peace of mind to anyone looking to run multiple demanding applications at once.

These scores are also well out in front of previous generations of Intel Core i9 processors. However, in pure multi-threaded rendering the Intel processor is still a little behind AMD. Running Maxon Cinebench R20, the Wired2Fire scored 10,428, whereas the Armari’s AMD Ryzen 9 5950X managed 10,972. However, a real-world frame render with the Blender Gooseberry 3D benchmark takes 485 seconds, nearly a minute quicker than the Armari’s 541 seconds.

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation review: Graphics performance

Consumer-grade graphics such as the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti aren’t recommended for professional 3D applications, but although this system isn’t aimed at 3D work, the SPECviewperf 2020 benchmarks demonstrate that it depends on what software you’re planning to run. The results of 146.69 in 3dsmax-07 and 461.53 in maya-06, for example, show that this system will be more than adequate for animation with Autodesk 3ds Max or Maya.

The results of 82.16 in catia-06, 118.69 in creo-03, and 315.05 in solidworks-05 also reveal that some product design, engineering and CAD applications will run well (Dassault Systemes CATIA, Creo and SolidWorks respectively). As always, Siemens NX is the achilles heel, with just 26.37 in snx-04, which is only barely usable, but if you do want to approach 3D animation or CAD with professional acceleration, Wired2Fire can offer this system with NVIDIA Quadro graphics instead.

However, the 3070 Ti’s OpenCL grunt is good, with a powerful 12,521 in LuxMark 3.1, while rendering the Blender Gooseberry benchmark on GPU took just 180 seconds. In other words, anything needing OpenCL or CUDA will be well catered for.

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation: Verdict

With the Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation, Wired2Fire has put together a very competent professional system. Although you might want to switch to a Quadro for professional 3D work, for the intended video editing activities, it’s a powerful and well specified system for a reasonable price.

More importantly, it also showcases how much Intel has progressed with the latest 12th Generation CPUs. The Core i9-12900K can match and even exceed what AMD has to offer with its comparable flagship, the Ryzen 9 5950X. After a few years of playing second fiddle, it looks like Intel’s finally back in the fight.

Wired2Fire Apollo WS Video Editing Workstation specifications

They say that size doesn’t matter, but while that’s true in many instances, it’s often not the case when it comes to workstations. Take Chillblast’s Fusion Threadripper Pro RTX 3975WX Workstation: this monster PC is large in every aspect, from the name, to the price, to the components inside it.

The biggest and beastliest of these is AMD’s new Threadripper Pro 3975WX chip, the latest in the company’s line of supercharged workstation processors. Chillblast has paired this titanic slab of silicon with Nvidia’s top-of-the-line RTX 3090 GPU, promising seismic stopping-power for modelling, editing and content creating workflows.

Chillblast Fusion Threadripper Pro RTX 3975WX Workstation review: Design

This workstation is many things, but dainty is not one of them. It’s built on Fractal Design’s Define 7 XL case - a towering 78-liter behemoth measuring 240 x 604 x 566mm. It also weighs an absolute ton, and unless you’ve got a seriously sturdy desk, we’d advise you to leave it safely on the floor.

On the other hand, the benefit of such a humungous case is that there’s plenty of elbow room inside should you wish to install or replace any components. To that end, there’s two 5.25in drive cages, as well as space for up to 18 additional 3.5in or 2.5in drives, and up to five dedicated 2.5in SSD mounts. Our review unit, however, came fitted with Asus’ Hyper M.2 PCIe X16 RAID card, which combines up to four M.2 SSDs into a bootable RAID array with up to 16GB/sec throughput.

This card is slotted into one of the motherboard’s seven PCIe slots, and the board in question - the Asus Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE SE WIFI - supports up to four Nvidia graphics cards in an SLI configuration. Be warned, however: the price quoted above includes a Corsair RM850x 80 PLUS Gold 850W PSU, so if you want to use more than one GPU, you’ll need to invest in a beefier power supply. There are also eight DIMM slots, supporting an enormous maximum memory capacity of 2TB.

Chillblast Fusion Threadripper Pro RTX 3975WX Workstation review: Specifications

Our unit came with a comparatively modest RAM allocation of 256GB, supplied as eight modules of Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO Black 3200MHz DDR4 memory. The Asus RAID card was stocked with a quartet of 1TB Seagate Firecuda 520 M.2 PCIe 4 drives, but sadly although the drives and the motherboard support PCIe 4, the card itself is limited to PCIe 3.

The real star of the show, however, is the Threadripper Pro 3975X. Featuring 32 multi-threaded cores, this is a serious CPU for serious workloads. Its base clock speed is 3.5GHz, but thanks to the combination of AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive technology and the Enermax LiqTech II TR4 360 cooler fitted by Chillblast, those cores are able to run at their top boost speed of 4.2GHz for more of the time.

The RTX 3090 is no slouch, either; with 10,496 CUDA cores and a whopping 24GB of GDDR6X memory, this is the pinnacle of Nvidia’s consumer graphics portfolio. While not technically designed for professional use, Nvidia’s mainstream cards have long been favourites of those in the media and entertainment fields due to their excellent rendering and modelling capabilities.

Chillblast Fusion Threadripper Pro RTX 3975WX Workstation review: Performance

So just how much power does this rather monstrous specification deliver? Unsurprisingly, the answer is: ‘a lot’. In our standard benchmark tests, it racked up an overall score of 676, comfortably putting it in the top three fastest workstations we’ve ever tested. That performance was good across the board too, with equally strong results in the image editing, video editing and multitasking tests.

A score of 42,406 in Cinebench R23’s multi-core test further demonstrates the Threadripper’s chops, but a more pertinent question is how the RTX 3090 holds up when it comes to enterprise workloads. As expected, this system blazed through the 3D modelling portion of SPECviewperf 20’s benchmark tests, racking up scores of 192 for the 3dsmax-07 viewset and 482 in maya-06. That puts it more or less in line with the cream of Nvidia’s professional GPU lineup, the Quadro RTX A6000, as seen in the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T.

Where Nvidia’s consumer cards generally lose some ground, however, is in professional workloads, and so it is here. The 3090 was matched the A6000 in the solidworks-05 CAD test, but it was more than 30% slower in both the creo-03 and catia-06 engineering viewsets while the A6000’s score of 617 in the Siemens NX snx-04 test left it in the dust with just 24 points.

This discrepancy is to be expected, however; Quadro cards are built specifically for CAD and simulation workloads, while the consumer RTX range is not. What they do handle well is 3D rendering, and this system will happily chew through any amount of intense modelling with ease - helped in no small part by this system’s outstanding storage speeds. With our four M.2 drives configured in a RAID0 array via Asus’ Hyper M.2 card, we measured sequential read and write speeds of 8.4GB/sec and 7.5GB/sec, handily trouncing any other system we’ve tested.

In short, while this machine isn’t suitable for scientific or product design work, it’s a media professional’s dream. The phenomenal CPU and rendering power on display will make light work of even the most complex tasks, and the enormous quantities of high-speed storage make managing the results a piece of cake.

Chillblast Fusion Threadripper Pro RTX 3975WX Workstation review: Verdict

When you look at this machine’s pricetag compared to the likes of the Armari Magnetar S64T-RW1300G3 or the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T, it may be tempting to think that you’re not getting a huge amount of bang for your buck. Armari’s workstation scored broadly similar results in our benchmark tests and costs half the price, while the Scan system costs the same as this one while delivering vastly improved performance in professional workloads.

However, performance is only one part of a workstation’s appeal. This machine is a powerhouse, but its real strength lies in the fact that it’s packed to the gunwales with futureproofing. The chassis and motherboard supply ample room for adding extra memory, PCIe 4 modules, additional graphics cards and storage drives, and the mighty Threadripper CPU isn’t going to be showing its age any time soon.

Combined with Chillblast’s generous five-year warranty (including two years of collect and return cover for UK customers), this creates a system that, in theory, could still be happily chugging along a decade from now. Spread out over that kind of timescale, this PC’s £7,500 pricetag suddenly starts to look a lot less intimidating.

Chillblast Fusion Threadripper Pro RTX 3975WX Workstation specifications

They may be targeted at a similar type of buyer, but the ConceptD 700 couldn’t look more different from the Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T. This system has enough style to sit on a design agency’s front desk; there’s even a dark wood effect on the top, with Acer hoping that you might just stretch for an accompanying ConceptD monitor such as the CP5271UV.

The pair certainly look well-matched and if you want to commit to the look, then Acer also plans to sell an all-white ConceptD keyboard and mouse. But it would be wrong to focus too much on this machine’s styling, because its real strength lies inside.

First, the Quadro RTX 4000 graphics card, which accounts for almost a third of the ConceptD’s price. This is made to look anaemic by the Quadro RTX A6000 in the Scan, in part because it’s based on Nvidia’s last-generation Turing architecture rather than Ampere, but it packs plenty of impressive stats nonetheless: 2,304 CUDA cores, 36 RT cores, 288 Tensor cores, and a peak memory bandwidth of 415GB/sec.

Then comes the eight-core, 16-thread Intel Xeon E-2288G CPU, a chip designed for parallel processing. With a 3.7GHz base frequency and Turbo Boost capability of 5GHz, it was no surprise to see this PC break the 300 barrier in our benchmarks. That’s an excellent score for an eight-core chip, although it helps that Acer provides 64GB of ECC memory to aid in the multitasking segment of the benchmarks.

With a speedy 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD in place, it blazed through our sequential read and write tests with rates of 3,106MB/sec and 2,602MB/sec respectively. You have everything you need to churn through demanding tasks.

Acer has video editing, 3D visualisation, and 3D modelling in its sights, and Specviewperf 13 certainly showcased its CAD abilities: a score of 163 in the SolidWorks test isn’t far behind the 196 of the Scan. Its Maya result was also strong, with 266 versus 416 for the Scan. SPECviewperf 2020 emphasised this workstation’s appeal to 3D animators, with 291 in the updated Maya.

Sticking with SPECviewperf 2020, but switching our attention to other tests, a gulf emerges. Take the updated 3ds Max test, where the Scan powered to 195 compared to 89 for the Acer. Or the energy-03 viewset, based on OpendTect (seismic visualisation software), where the Scan scored a groundbreaking 130 to the rather more sedate 98 of its workstation rival. In almost all the other tests, the Scan scored two times or even three times higher.

One advantage of the Quadro RTX 4000 over the far beefier A6000 is its power consumption, with the ConceptD consuming around 35W in idle. At peak it hits 332W, but it’s only when under such load that you notice the fans; most of the time they’re barely noticeable, with quiet 80mm fans at the front and rear, along with a 90mm fan atop the CPU’s heat sink.

To discover these, you have to go through the rigmarole of taking off the case – this involves removing six crosshead screws and a good deal of cursing. The main reason for going through such pain is to expand the storage, with one 3.5in bay vacant above the secondary (and rather stingy) pre-fitted 1TB Seagate hard disk. There’s enough space within the case to add more 2.5in SSDs, but no ready-made cages or holders to slip them into; you’ll need to fashion your own or leave them lying loose. Also note that while four SATA connectors sit empty on the motherboard, it only has the one M.2 slot and that, of course, is already full.

Acer saves money by splitting the 64GB of RAM across all four DIMM sockets, so upgrades aren’t possible without disposing of at least two DIMMs. It’s also a pain to access the Wi-Fi 5 module if you want to upgrade it to Wi-Fi 6, so you may find it easier simply to fill one of the three PCIe slots that sit empty.

All this makes the ConceptD 700 feel like a machine meant to be kept in its pristine state rather than fiddled with. It’s very different in character to the Scan, which is designed for easy upgrades. Still, Acer throws in nice extras to sweeten the deal. First is a Qi wireless charger built into the top of the case, right next to a collection of useful ports: three USB-A 3.1, including a sleep-and-charge port, plus a full-size SD card slot. Acer also includes 3.5mm jacks for a mic and headphone, but the surprise inclusion is a headphone holder that pops out from the front.

These are all excellent bonus features, but what earns this workstation its Recommended award is the amount of power hidden inside such an attractive, quiet shell. If you’re used to power-hungry, fan-fuelled workstations – much like the Scan – then sitting next to the Acer ConceptD 700 all day will be a pleasure. It may not be as fast as that beast of a workstation, but it still delivers a punch in several workloads.

Acer ConceptD 700 specifications

Over the space of only three years, AMD has virtually taken over the performance high ground for workstation CPUs –but Nvidia still rules the roost for workstation 3D acceleration for content creation. So, to deliver the best of both worlds, Scan has sensibly outfitted this machine with AMD for the CPU and Nvidia for the GPU.

That Nvidia graphics card is monstrous: the latest flagship Quadro RTX A6000. 6000-series Quadros have always been uncompromising, but the A6000 takes things to another level, with 48GB of error-correcting GDDR6 memory. This is ideal for workloads where predictable precision is paramount, and bandwidth is a whopping 768GB/sec. The A6000 uses Nvidia’s Ampere architecture, boasting an unbelievable 10,752 CUDA cores. The previous Turing-based RTX 6000 only had 24GB of memory and 4,608 CUDA cores – less than half as many.

A GPU as powerful as the Quadro RTX A6000 – which makes up half the price of this system – warrants an equally powerful workstation platform, and Scan delivers. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X isn’t the top of the latest Threadripper range but it’s the most sensible choice for a balanced workstation. It still has 32 cores running at a base 3.7GHz with a boost up to 4.5GHz. With Performance Boost Overdrive, the number of cores that can achieve this at once depends on the power delivery and cooling ability of the workstation, making it a processor that’s equally great for single-threaded and multithreaded tasks.

Scan installs the Threadripper in an Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming motherboard, which has 2.5Gbits/sec LAN and three M.2 NVMe storage slots. Scan has partnered the CPU with a generous 128GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX 3,600MHz DDR4 memory, supplied as four DIMMs to take advantage of the Threadripper’s quad-channel memory architecture. Insert four more identical DIMMs into the vacant slots and you’ll hit the motherboard’s memory ceiling of 256GB.

While the AMD CPU and Asus board support PCIe 4, the Nvidia graphics card only operates at PCIe 3 speed. One peripheral device that does support PCIe 4, however, is the 2TB WD Black SN850 NVMe M.2 SSD supplied as the boot drive. And it’s fast, delivering stunning 7,068MB/sec sequential reads and 5,180MB/sec sequential writes in our tests.

Scan takes the typical approach of partnering this hugely quick main drive with a larger, slower SATA drive for general data. However, the days of conventional hard disks are clearly numbered because this device is a 4TB Samsung 860 Evo SSD. Even though the 570MB/sec sequential reading and 505MB/sec sequential writing speeds it delivers are more pedestrian than the SN850, that’s still more than twice as fast as conventional SATA hard disks.

All this potent hardware has been installed inside a sizeable Fractal Design Define 7 chassis – a serious black obelisk with few external features other than the USB and audio ports on the top front edge, although the version supplied has a glass side panel as well. This case provides bays for six 3.5in or 2.5in drives with potential for up to 14. There are two 2.5in bays, but a further two can be added. The processor is ably water-cooled by a CoolerMaster ML360R with its radiator at the top of the case, and there’s a 1,000W Corsair RMi Series modular 80+ Gold PSU to ensure all the components are reliably supplied with power.

When this machine gets going, you’re hit with a mighty roar, but in return, you get top-notch performance. The overall score in our benchmarks of 633 is excellent: the 3XS managed 226 in image editing, 594 in video encoding and 794 in multitasking. The Cinebench R20 rendering score of 17,526 is even more exceptional, with only AMD’s own 64-core Threadripper 3990X performing better.

The GPU is the star here, though, and running SPECviewperf 13 shows just how powerful the Quadro RTX A6000 is. For content creation, the 3XS managed 336 in the 3ds Max viewset and 417 in Maya. For engineering and CAD, 384 in Catia, 375 in Creo, 617 in Siemens NX and 196 in SolidWorks are all significantly ahead of anything we’ve tested before. And the GPGPU acceleration is out of this world, with 18,347 in LuxMark 3.1 where the previous Quadro RTX 6000 could only manage under 10,000.

In short, there’s little this Scan 3XS workstations won’t accomplish. Its modelling abilities are the best we’ve seen, and those 32 cores mean that multithreaded tasks will be dispatched without drama. The sole negative is its price. However, your £7,500 exc VAT buys a huge amount of workstation, and one that could soon pay you back in time savings for heavy content creation and engineering workloads.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T specifications

Nvidia’s desktop RTX 3000-series cards made a big impact in the autumn, but it’s taken this long for the Ampere architecture to begin appearing in laptops. The first Ampere-powered machine we’ve seen comes from Gigabyte and the Aero 17 HDR YC is a beast, featuring top-tier components crammed inside a slick chassis with a 17.3in screen.

That’s understandably tempting for creatives, but this laptop costs a mighty £3,500 exc VAT. The eye-watering price makes the Aero one of the most expensive machines around, and brings it in line with top-tier competition like the Apple MacBook Pro 16 and the Dell XPS 17.

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR YC review: Design

Gigabyte’s machine uses the same chassis design as last year’s model – which means black aluminium and triangular grilles. It’s subdued and mature, although it’s now looking a little dated when compared to the sleek aluminium of the MacBook and the Dell.

Last year’s Aero suffered with middling build quality, and not all of those problems have been addressed. The screen is sturdier this time around, but there’s still too much movement in the wrist-rest and the exposed seams and sharp edges remain annoying.

The Aero isn’t slim or light, either – its weight has increased to 2.76kg and its chassis remains 21.4mm thick. That’s not a problem for a backpack, or if this machine stays rooted to your desk, but rival machines are far more portable.

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR YC review: Keyboard & trackpad

On the other hand, the Aero’s size means the keyboard benefits from a full-size numberpad, double-height Return key, loads of function options and customisable per-key RGB LEDs. The typing action is decent, too: the buttons are fast and consistent, and they move comfortably and bottom-out softly.

Having said that, the switches could be quieter, and the keys themselves could be a little larger. It won’t be a problem once users familiarise themselves with the buttons, but it’s a tad disappointing on a machine of this size. This is in contrast to similarly-sized rivals, which make up for their lack of numberpads with larger keys.

Elsewhere, the trackpad is fine, with a responsive surface and two shallow, responsive buttons, but if you’re looking for increased real-estate, the MacBook has a far larger pad.

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR YC review: Display

As you’d expect from a laptop aimed at creative types, the Aero has a 17.3in 4K IPS display with X-Rite Pantone certification, and quality levels are superb. The Delta E of 1.45 and the colour temperature of 6,434K are fantastic, the gamma level of 2.15 is decent, and the display renders 99.8% and 99.7% of the sRGB and Adobe RGB gamuts.

The brightness level of 431cd/m2 is paired with a black point of 0.34cd/m2 to deliver a contrast ratio of 1,268:1. Those figures aren’t quite as good as last year’s Aero, but still easily good enough – the screen delivers impressive depth, punch and nuance, and it’s usable indoors or outside.

This screen is a great option for sRGB and Adobe work but, despite the laptop’s name, it’s not good enough for HDR. The Aero only adheres to the entry-level DisplayHDR 400 standard, its brightness level and black point don’t meet the threshold for true HDR, and it only rendered 87% of the DCI-P3 gamut.

For designers seeking a higher-quality HDR experience, both the MacBook Pro and XPS 17 offer improved DCI-P3 coverage, so you’ll get access to a wider band of colours; and the XPS 17’s 3,840 x 2,400 resolution means you’ll also get more on-screen real estate.

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR YC review: Hardware & performance

Nvidia’s latest range of mobile graphics cards use the Ampere architecture to beef up efficiency, improve memory performance and embrace more decoding standards. The RTX 3080 is Nvidia’s new mobile flagship, and it’s got a mighty 6,144 stream processors. Two versions of the RTX 3080 are produced for laptops – one with 16GB of memory and one with 8GB – and the latter is used here. The Aero is also an Nvidia Studio laptop, which means it ships with graphics drivers optimised for creative tools like the Adobe Creative Suite, Unreal Engine 4 and Autodesk, rather than gaming.

Gigabyte pairs the brand-new graphics core with formidable components elsewhere. The Intel Core i9-10980HK processor is a Comet Lake eight-core CPU with a theoretical 5.1GHz Turbo speed, and it sits alongside a mammoth 64GB of memory and two 1TB SSDs.

This hefty specification scored 250 in our benchmarks. That’s fantastic – capable of handling virtually any work task, from photo-editing to 4K video and tough 3D modelling. It won’t balk at tough multi-tasking either. The SSD helps: its read and write speeds of 3,378MB/sec and 3,029MB/sec are very quick, although not as fast as the latest PCIe 4 drives.

However, while the Aero is fast, it’s not flawless. That benchmark score is virtually identical to the older Core i9-9980HK used inside the top-end MacBook – the chips are the same aside from some minor speed tweaks. The newer Aero’s Core i9 part also isn’t far ahead of the Core i7-10875H used in last year’s model. That chip is still used inside plenty of machines, including the Dell, and it scored 229 in our tests.

Also consider AMD for CPU power. AMD’s processors aren’t available in the creative laptops mentioned here, but the Ryzen 7 5800H and Ryzen 9 5900HX are used in RTX 3080 gaming laptops that look just as smart as the Aero – and usually at lower prices. Benchmarks demonstrate AMD’s CPU ability, too: in Geekbench’s single- and multi-core tests the Aero’s Intel CPU scored 1,222 and 7,035 points. The Ryzen 7 5800H was marginally faster across both tests, while the Ryzen 9 5900HX was quicker in the single-threaded test and more than 1,500 points faster in the multi-threaded benchmark.

At this end of the market, processors offer diminishing returns, but AMD chips could provide more performance while Core i7 CPUs could save cash without much of a performance hit.

Nvidia’s latest GPU, on the other hand, is a bona fide barnstormer. In the 3D Mark Fire Strike test the RTX 3080 scored 20,136 points. That’s around 2,500 points beyond the RTX 2070 Super used in last year’s Aero. This is the full-fat RTX 3080 laptop chip, albeit with some power restrictions, and you won’t be short on performance here. It’s twice as good as the weaker AMD graphics chip used in the MacBook, and it’ll leave any laptop with integrated graphics in the dust.

It’s impressive in enterprise workloads, too. In Cinebench’s OpenGL test its 135fps result was better than the 131fps scored by last year’s RTX 2070 Super laptop chip, and the Aero’s RTX 3080 outpaced last year’s desktop flagships in Luxmark. In SPECviewperf, it beat those desktop cards in 3DSMax, it was barely slower in rendering, medical and geographic imaging tests, and it wasn’t far behind in CAD-focused benchmarks. No matter the task the RTX 3080 will cope, and rendering, animation and modelling are key strengths.

It’s somewhat surprising, then, to see that the Aero is such a good thermal performer. In CPU and GPU testing its internal temperatures were fine and noise levels were decent – most high-end laptops are louder. The keyboard deck and wrist-rest are never warm, and although the underside does heat up, its size and weight mean that the Aero is more than likely going to remain on your desk.

Gigabyte has done a solid job of keeping things balanced, albeit by cutting back on speeds: the CPU never quite attains its theoretical top speeds, and Nvidia gives manufacturers leeway to cut Ampere graphics cores back a little - so here the RTX 3080 peaks at a 105W TDP rather than 150W. You lose a little performance, but it does prevent thermal issues.

The Aero lasted for 6hrs 37mins in our battery test. That may not sound like much, but it’s a decent lifespan for something this powerful. For context, it’s within an hour of the MacBook Pro’s result, and although you won’t want to take it on the road, it’s easily enough to get you through to lunchtime.

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR YC review: Features

The Aero has three USB 3.2 ports and one Thunderbolt 3 connection, alongside HDMI and mini-DisplayPort outputs and an SD card reader. On the inside, there’s dual-band Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, as well as super-fast 2.5Gb/sec Ethernet. For security, there’s a fingerprint reader and TPM chip, and internally you can access the memory and M.2 slots along with the wireless card.

In other departments, the features falter. The webcam has a privacy cover, but it’s awkwardly positioned beneath the screen and it doesn’t have IR support for facial recognition. The speakers aren’t great either, offering tinny audio without much bass.

The Aero’s feature set isn’t perfect, but it is impressive. Many other creative machines - including those from Apple and Dell - have more USB-C connectivity but they often omit full-size USB ports, wired internet and card readers.

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR YC review: Verdict

The Aero 17 is one of the most expensive creative laptops you can buy, but it’s powerful enough to tackle virtually any work task and Gigabyte bolsters the components with good thermal performance, a fantastic screen and great connectivity. That’s great, but the weight, design and battery life are middling, and the keyboard could be larger and quieter.

It compares well to rivals: a MacBook Pro 16 with its beefiest components is slower and more expensive, albeit with better battery life, and the XPS 17 can’t come close to matching the graphical power on show here. You’ll only get more performance if you swap over to a desktop workstation. If you’d rather save a bit of cash, you can step down to a less well-equipped model for £1,500 exc VAT - but you’ll be losing some of that impressive speed.

It may not be perfect, but the Aero is enormously fast. If you need a creative machine for tough tasks, then nothing tops the speed of Gigabyte’s impressive heavyweight.

Gigabyte Aero 17 HDR YC specifications

It’s no longer a surprise to see GeForce RTX graphics in a workstation, and that’s in large part due to Nvidia’s Studio initiative. Launched at Computex in May 2019, it’s already a compelling platform: a combination of certified components and drivers that are supported by industry-leading software across 3D rendering, photography, video editing, graphic design and more. All without the premium for AMD and Nvidia’s pro-level cards.

Here, the star is Nvidia’s RTX 3090. This costs £1,500 and includes a specification to make apps tremble. First, the 10,496 CUDA cores provide unparalleled levels of parallel processing. Then you have 328 Tensor cores to give a boost in apps that support deep learning – perhaps most notably in games that support deep learning super sampling (DLSS). Finally, it offers 82 ray tracing (RT) cores and 24GB of memory with a 384-bit width memory interface.

If the Nvidia card takes top billing though, it must be prepared for the 16-core Ryzen 5950X to steal some scenes. Every Ryzen 5000 processor benefits from AMD’s latest Zen 3 architecture, which uses a tweaked design to give all of the cores access to the Level 3 cache. In combination with higher boost frequencies (the 5950X jumps to 4.9GHz, for example, while the 3950X could only manage 4.7GHz), this helps it in single-threaded applications such as most games.

AMD claims that Zen 3 also gives a 19% uplift over Zen 2 in instructions per cycle (IPC) when multitasking, which is significant. Bigger, in fact, than Zen 2 over the first generation.

Then we come to the memory and storage. 64GB of RAM spread across two channels provides a powerful punch, with room to easily upgrade to 128GB. Note this is 3,600MHz RAM, a 400MHz boost over that supported by previous Ryzen chips.

Scan provides the incredible 1TB Samsung 980 Pro as the system drive, with much of its speed due to its support for PCIe 4. In AS SSD, it returned sequential write speeds of 3,900MB/sec and sequential reads of 5,287MB/sec. Not content with this, Scan further supports it with a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD to cover your storage needs. And if you want to add more storage, one press of a latch opens up the right-hand side of the PC and reveals three mounts for SATA SSDs and two 3.5in bays for hard disks.

With such a high-profile cast, it was no surprise to see strong performances, and top billing goes to 3D animation. The G132R led our 3ds Max and Maya tests by a distance, outpacing the Scan 3XS GWP-ME Q164T by more than 50 points in each. That £8,000 machine included a Threadripper 3970X and a Quadro RTX 6000 card.

The Quadro still has its place, however, with the Siemens NX test (part of SPECviewperf 13) a stark example: here the G132R scored 28 to the 318 of the £2,800 Chillblast Fusion RTX 4000. The Chillblast was using the lowliest Quadro RTX 4000 graphics chip, too. This emphasises the importance of driver compatibility.

As its Cinebench R20 score of 9,723 shows, 32 Zen 2 cores still hold an undeniable advantage over 16 Zen 3 cores, despite AMD’s best efforts. This will stay true for any apps that use all available cores. Bearing this in mind, we can only admire the Studio Pro’s performance in our benchmarks. An overall score of 583 is the fastest we’ve seen from a 16-core PC, soundly beating the 3950X-powered Chillblast.

What’s even more impressive is that the Scan Studio does all this while barely rising above a whisper. In general, you won’t even notice that it’s switched on – it really is that quiet. The main reason for this is that Scan opts for the largest air cooler we’ve ever seen, with the Noctua NH-D15’s double-width construction and two 140mm fans keeping the 5950X’s temperatures under control without resorting to whine-inducing speeds. That’s despite the power draw of this system peaking at 543W in our tests, up from an idle draw of 63W.

We’re a star-struck fan when it comes to the Fractal Design Define 7 chassis too; it’s chunky but in return offers sound-dampened sides and all the elbow room you need if you want to take advantage of the expansion options provided by the Asus RoG Strix X570-F Gaming motherboard.

While this board’s name gives away its gaming heritage, it’s perfectly at home in a super-powered system such as this thanks to its top-end X570 chipset, potential for SLI graphics via the second PCIe 4 x16 slot and plentiful connectors. More prosaically, there are two more PCIe slots sitting vacant if you wish to add Wi-Fi or a sound card.

All this quality, power and finesse comes at a cost, but if you see this as a three-year professional investment – the duration of the warranty – it starts to make sense. Unless your workloads frequently call up all 32 cores of a Threadripper or require the ISV certification of a Quadro card, it will save you time as well as give you silent pleasure.

While we still await the arrival of 5000 Series Threadrippers in early 2021, and fully expect them to break all CPU-based records, this powerful workstation goes straight to the top of our A-List.

Scan 3XS RTX Studio Pro G132R specifications

Server and workstation vendor AMAX has announced support for Nvidia's professional-grade RTX A6000 GPU in its workstations.

The company, which aims its AceleMax workstations at artificial intelligence (AI), rendering and visualization work, will include the new Nvidia GPU in its lineup. Its systems are designed for use with software tools like Google's TensorFlow AI system for compute-intensive training workloads that are a key part of building AI software, and are also well-suited for scientific visualization work.

Announced in early October, The RTX A6000 is Nvidia's latest pro-grade GPU and is the successor to the RTX 8000 and 6000 Quadro units. It features over 10,000 CUDA cores and 48 GB of video RAM that’s expandable to 96 GB when connected to two GPUs. The new card comes with four DisplayPort connectors and is rated at 300 watts.

In October, Nvidia said the RTX A6000 would be available in mid-December.

The cards are based on Nvidia's new Ampere architecture, which is its first GPU design to feature a 7nm process. They feature Nvidia's third-generation Tensor Cores dubbed the Tensor Float 32, which provide up to five times the throughput and up to 20 times the performance of the existing Floating Point 32 data type.

It also features Nvidia's third-generation NVLink technology, which is a high-speed data exchange bus allowing multiple cards to work in concert. The new architecture's second-generation RT cores offer a performance boost for ray tracing, which is important in 3D animation.

This card represents a significant upgrade for AMAX, which currently uses NVIDIA's Quadro and GeForce cards in its workstations. The new Nvidia card will be available in the AceleMax DL-E110A, DL-E120A, and DL-E140A workstations, which feature AMD Ryzen AM4, Threadripper, and EPYC processors respectively.

AMAX will also support the new card in its Xeon-based DL-E440 unit. These workstations already support the Quadro and GeForce card families.

Customers will be able to fit a single A6000 in the DL-E110A, two in the DL0E120A, and four in the DL-E140A and DL-E440.

AMD’s development of its Zen Microarchitecture has been relentless over the last three years. The company has gone from an also-ran in the CPU market to the primary choice. AMD is even the supplier of the processors in the forthcoming Frontier supercomputer, set to be the fastest in the world.

But AMD’s successes aren’t just at the HPC end of the market; it’s also making inroads in every other sector, particularly for workstations. The Threadripper has found considerable favour amongst digital content creators, and since the last generation, even the Ryzen is a serious contender in this area. The latest flagship Ryzen 9 5950X has 16 cores running at up to 4.9GHz, giving it huge potential for every workload. Our first look comes in the form of Armari’s Magnetar V16R-RD850G3.

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 review: Processor and memory

The first thing we should stress is that in theory the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is a high-end desktop processor, not specifically designed for workstations like the Threadripper range. However, with 16 cores and symmetrical multi-threading (SMT) giving it 32 threads, it has the raw processing potential of the original AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, and even more besides; where the latter’s boost clock went up to 4GHz, the 5950X can hit 4.9GHz.

Unlike Intel’s strict hierarchy of core frequency stepping, AMD’s depends on platform capability, particularly cooling, thanks to the Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) software. So, with good cooling and power delivery, more cores can run closer to the top boost level. Armari has equipped the Magnetar with liquid cooling incorporating a 140mm Noctua fan on its radiator, to maximise its capabilities.

AMD’s CPUs used to fall down a little with per-core clock frequency against Intel’s, but the 5950X is based on 7nm process technology. In contrast, the equivalent Intel CPUs are still on 14nm, which means the logic features are much bigger and the processor is less power efficient. AMD, meanwhile has been using 7nm since the previous Ryzen generation; the Ryzen 9 3950X was also a 7nm 16-core chip, but with a 4.7GHz ceiling rather than 4.9GHz. There are some architectural differences, however. The 3950X has a ‘Zen 2’ core and the 5950X uses ‘Zen 3’.

With Zen 2, four CPU cores share 16MB of L3 cache, whereas for Zen 3 eight CPU cores share 32MB of L3 cache, which is more flexible. The 16-core package still combines two of these eight-core “chiplets” so that they both talk to a single 12nm I/O die with integrated memory controller and PCI Express 4.0 connectivity. There are 24 PCI Express lanes to be shared across graphics connectivity, storage and communicating with the motherboard chipset.

Armari has equipped the Magnetar with two 32GB DIMM modules of Corsair V.LPX DDR4-3600 C18 memory, for a 64GB total, which should be more than enough for most content creation tasks. The CPU supports memory up to 128GB DDR4 running at up to 3,200MHz, but the motherboard only has two DIMM slots, and an upper capacity of 64GB, so upgrades are out of the question. One additional limitation of the Ryzen 9 over a Threadripper is that the memory controller is only dual-channel rather than quad-channel, although you won’t see much difference in most applications.

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 review: Graphics acceleration

Where AMD has had huge success against Intel with its Zen Architecture CPUs, its graphics cards still languish behind Nvidia’s alternatives for market share. Nevertheless, Armari has partnered the Ryzen 9 processor with an AMD Radeon Pro W5700 graphics card, which is a direct competitor to the Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, with almost identical pricing.

The W5700 also uses a 7nm production process, like AMD’s CPUs. It sports 2,304 stream processors, the same as the number of CUDA cores on the Quadro RTX 4000, although these are not directly comparable in ability to NVIDIA’s CUDA cores. However, the W5700’s 8GB of GDDR6 memory is very similar, offering 448GB/sec of frame buffer bandwidth, which is a little higher than the Quadro RTX 4000’s 416GB/sec and on par with the Quadro RTX 5000, but using the same 256-bit interface.

The power rating of the W5700 is a bit higher at 205W compared to 160W for the Quadro RTX 4000, but that’s the maximum and doesn’t necessarily mean the card will be more Watt-hungry in everyday usage.

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 review: Storage

AMD’s latest processors support PCI Express 4, which means that M.2 storage drives can make use of this too. The Asrock B550 Phantom Gaming ITX/ax motherboard only includes one NVMe M.2 PCI Express 4 connection, however, while the other M.2 slot runs at PCI Express 3 speed. Armari has populated the first M.2 slot with a 1TB PCI Express 4 Corsair MP600 NVMe drive.

With CrystalDiskMark 7, this delivers 5,005.32MB/sec sequential reading and 4,268.21MB/sec sequential writing, showing just how fast PCI Express storage can be. If you need more, there’s the second M.2 socket, and the chassis has two 2.5in bays for SATA drives, but there’s no space for any 3.5in disks. If you need high-capacity storage with this machine, it’ll have to be external.

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 review: Chassis design

Armari has chosen to showcase the new AMD processor in its amazingly compact V-series chassis, which we first saw used with the VG25R-RA750G2 , our first look at the second generation of Ryzen 7. Apparently, this tiny case can even accommodate a 64-core AMD EPYC processor. The small space means the motherboard used is of the Mini-ITX variety, and a riser is employed to shift the orientation of the graphics slots to vertical from horizontal. This provides support for either two single-width PCI Express graphics cards or a single double-width adapter. If you install two cards, these will be running at 8x.

Opening up the side panel reveals the all-in-one sealed water-cooling unit with its 140mm Noctua fan and radiator. This swing-out assembly also incorporates the 2.5in drive bays. There are a couple of USB 3 ports on the front and a USB-C connection on the side edge of the front fascia. The motherboard supplies 2.5Gbit Ethernet, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A and C, and four USB 3.2 Gen1. There are also antenna connections for WiFi, taking advantage of the motherboard’s WiFi 6 802.11ax radio. Amazingly despite the chassis size, the PSU is 850W, which will be more than enough for any internal peripherals you’d care to install.

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 review: Processor performance

The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X takes over where the 3950X left off when it comes to performance. Scan used the latter very effectively in its 3XS GWP-ME Q132R, but the Armari system shows how far AMD has gone in just a few months. In the IT Pro Media Benchmarks, it got an overall score of 617, which is 23% faster than the Scan’s 503. The individual results of 242 in image editing, 575 in video encoding, and 769 in multitasking are all phenomenal, too. Putting this further in perspective, the Intel Core i9-10980XE, as showcased by the PC Specialist Onyx 994RG only managed 486 overall in the Media Benchmarks. Intel clearly has a lot of work to do to catch up.

Turning to the Maxon Cinebench R20 CPU 3D rendering benchmark, the 5950X managed 10,972, whereas Scan’s 3950X only achieved 9,097 and PC Specialist’s Intel processor a mere 8,843 – with two more cores than either AMD processor. Translating this to a more real-world test, the Blender Gooseberry 3D render took 541.06 seconds, compared to Scan’s 645.01 seconds and PC Specialist’s 689.59 seconds. Despite its size, the Armari workstation has exemplary 3D rendering ability. Just to hammer this home, the Geekbench 4 scores of 6,864 single-threaded and 63,162 multi-threaded show just how much processing power is on tap with this CPU.

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 review: Graphics performance

AMD may not be winning with its graphics anywhere near as much as it is with its processors, but the Radeon Pro W5700 is still a capable accelerator. Running SPECviewperf 13, it competes very well with the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000. Looking at key viewsets, the result of 194.6 in 3dsmax-06 is a little behind the NVIDIA equivalent, but 347.99 in maya-05 is significantly ahead, making this a very capable card for 3D animation.

Turning to CAD workloads, 343.17 in catia-05 is ahead of the RTX 4000 (and even the more expensive RTX 5000), 257.03 in creo-02 is virtually identical, while 360.79 in snx-03 is a little ahead and 197.13 in sw-04 considerably higher. This is a great accelerator for engineering design work as well as traditional 3D modelling. There’s plenty of OpenCL on call, too, with the W5700 providing 2,746 in Luxmark 3.1. However, this is significantly behind what NVIDIA’s Quadro RTX 4000 can deliver (close to 6,000).

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 review: Verdict

Just when we thought AMD had a considerable lead over Intel, the company has unveiled something even better. A mere three years ago we were amazed by the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X’s 16 cores, but now the Ryzen 9 5950X delivers the same number of cores for much less money and with much greater overall performance. Armari’s Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 packs a huge amount of content creation workstation power into a small space.

Along with its AMD Radeon Pro W5700, this system is great for design or engineering work, and the CPU can deliver multi-threaded rendering abilities that are unprecedented in a box this small. If you need more storage, you might want to opt for a larger chassis, and it’s not exactly a budget system. But otherwise this is an all-conquering workstation for every type of creative workload.

Armari Magnetar V16R-RD850G3 specifications

The benefits of AMD’s 7nm process technology keep coming thick and fast. It’s now filtering through to the Threadripper CPU line, which is entering its third generation. With each new iteration, the maximum Threadripper core count doubles, with 64-core and 48-core variants planned for release later this year. For now, however, the top model is still 32-core. It’s called the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, and our first look comes in the shape of the Armari Magnetar S64T-RW1300G3 workstation.

The 3970X is essentially the successor to the 2990WX, and it’s a big leap forward. Thanks to the modular design of AMD’s Zen 2 architecture, which allies 7nm 8-core “chiplets” with a 14nm I/O die in one package, the base clock speed has leapt from 3GHz to 3.7GHz, and Turbo from 4.2GHz to 4.5GHz. Thanks to Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), you don’t get set frequency steps like you do with Intel processors. Instead, the system will provide all-core frequencies up to what your power delivery and cooling can handle. Armari’s use of Enermax Liqtech 280 water cooling means the processor will run comfortably at 4.15GHz across all cores under full load, and 4.5GHz with only a couple of cores. So, unlike most high-core workstations, the S64T-RW1300G3 can offer leading single-threaded grunt alongside phenomenal multithreaded performance.

The new Threadripper natively supports 3,200MHz DDR4 memory in a quad-channel configuration, which is ahead of the 2,933MHz memory supported by most top-end Intel processors. However, Armari populated the ASRock TRX40 Creator motherboard’s eight DIMM slots with four 32GB 2,933MHz modules due to the non-availability of certified 3,200MHz ones at the time of review, for a very healthy total of 128GB. The shipping system will use 3,200MHz memory.

Armari sells a lot of machines to games developers and animators who request consumer-grade graphics, meaning this system comes with a Zotac Blower Nvidia GeForce GTX 2080 Ti accelerator, rather than a Quadro. This is still a beast of a card, with 4,352 CUDA cores running at a base 1,350MHz with a 1,545MHz boost, and 11GB of GDDR6 memory running at an effective 14,000MHz on a 352-bit bus. This provides a huge 616GB/sec of bandwidth. The 2080 Ti has the potential to annihilate any 3D task that isn’t specifically coded for professional graphics drivers. But it’s only PCI Express Gen 3, and the Threadripper 3 motherboard will support Gen 4 cards such as AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 and Radeon Pro W5700 series.

You also get PCI Express 4 support for NVMe storage, and here Armari takes full advantage by supplying a pair of 1TB Corsair Force MP600 M.2 SSD drives. The primary SSD managed 4,984MB/sec reading and 4,285MB/sec writing when tested with CrystalDiskMark 6, which is phenomenal. The fastest PCI Express 3 SSDs we’ve seen only offer two-thirds of the reading throughput, meaning you will enjoy faster boot times and software loading. If you need more storage, there are four 3.5in and two 2.5in cold-swap bays available.

How fast is that 32-core CPU? Well, we can confidently say that this is the fastest workstation we’ve ever tested by a country mile. The overall score in our benchmarks of 682 is 56% better than the fastest 32-core Threadripper 2 workstation we’ve reviewed, and thanks to the high single-core clock speed, there are no weak areas with single-threaded tasks. The image-editing score was 226, with 658 in video encoding and an unbelievable 849 in multitasking.

This system is top of the pack for every type of media activity, and the story continues with 3D rendering. The Maxon Cinebench R15 rendering score was 7,837, 37% faster than the previous 32-core Threadripper, and Cinebench R20 returned a whopping 18,316. We also tried the Blender Gooseberry 3D render test, which it completed in just 348 seconds – almost twice as fast as the previous Threadripper model.

If this system has one Achilles’ heel, it’s that the consumer-grade graphics aren’t so impressive for CAD and product design. In SPECviewperf 13, the system returned 175 in catia-05, 104 in sw-04 and a miserable 20.3 in snx-04. If you’re running Siemens NX, specify a professional graphics card instead with this system. But creo-02 was a very decent 270, and the GeForce 2080 Ti is great for 3D animation and games design: with a 3dsmax-06 score of 256 and maya-05 returning 376, this workstation will blitz 3ds Max or Maya.

However, that’s just a matter of graphics card choice for your given workstation application, and it doesn’t change the underlying fact that this system’s CPU will be brilliant for either modelling or rendering, and this ability is already finding favour with professionals. For instance, Blur Studio used early Threadripper 3 samples to create the VFX for the recently released film Terminator: Dark Fate precisely because it’s so good for modelling, yet doesn’t require a server farm to output renders – you can do this on the workstation itself just as quickly. The Magnetar S64T-RW1300G3 isn’t cheap, but when you consider its firepower, it doesn’t seem that expensive, either.

Armari Magnetar S64T-RW1300G3 specifications

What does the “D” stand for in Acer’s ConceptD brand? Pretty much anything you like: dynamic, design, discovery, detail, and development are among the ideas Acer has put forward.

Strip away the marketing buzzwords, however, and you quickly realise that the ConceptD 7 is a mobile workstation targeted at creatives. Acer backs that up with some bold choices of components, and one of its biggest sells is its IPS display. Not only does its 4K resolution stretch across a 15.6in diagonal, but it’s also Pantone Validated and capable of reproducing 100% of the Adobe RGB colour space.

Fortunately, it’s also an excellent screen. In our tests, it matched Acer’s Adobe RGB coverage claims with a result of 99.6%. With volume coverage of 103.8%, and an average Delta E of 0.8, what you see onscreen is what you’ll get when you print using a professional service.

The backlighting is very even, too, ensuring that, wherever you look at the display, it’s going to give the same representation of colour and tone. It’s also more than bright enough for its intended use, with a top brightness of 365cd/m2 in our tests. Unless you’re planning to use this laptop outside, that’s plenty.

While test scores provide the figures, anecdotally we can say that it’s far too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of watching nature videos and drone footage of epic landscapes when the display quality is this good.

The high-quality speakers certainly help. They’re positioned on the front corners of its base, which is usually a bugbear of ours as it sends audio down into whatever surface the laptop is resting on – and if that surface is soft then the audio can sound muffled. That said, we were impressed by the quality produced by the ConceptD 7’s internal speakers. There’s clarity at maximum volume with little distortion, and its output is pleasingly loud.

You can tweak the audio via Acer’s “ConceptD Palette” app using the MaxxAudio suite of tools. These allow you to create sound presets for Gaming, Movies, Music and Voice, while Waves Nx promises to “turn any pair of headphones into a high-end 360° surround-sound system” by tracking your head movements via the laptop’s 720p webcam and adjusting the audio as you move. It only works with wired headphones but we found its surround-sound effect surprisingly convincing.

The ConceptD 7 we tested uses a ninth-generation hexa-core Intel Core i7-9750H running at a base frequency of 2.6GHz, backed up by 32GB of RAM and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 graphics. It can efficiently run the demanding tasks involved in 2D/3D design, video creation and editing, and even live streaming.

It performed well in our in-house 4K benchmark tests, scoring an impressive 185. That puts it ahead of all but one of the laptops we’ve tested running eighth-gen Core i7-8750H processors, including the MSI P65 Creator 8F, which is designed for a very similar purpose.

It also holds up well against other Core i7 laptops. The only laptop that pulls ahead of the ConceptD 7 is Apple’s 16in MacBook Pro, which employs an eight-core, 2.4GHz Intel Core i9-9980HK, 32GB of RAM and a staggeringly fast Western Digital NVMe SSD.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 graphics chip is a year old but it’s still a great choice for mobile gaming. It averaged 139fps in our Metro: Last Light Redux test at 1080p on High settings, which is up there with top performing gaming laptops we’ve tested, including the 2019 Razer Blade 15.

It even averaged 31.9fps in the Hitman 2 1080p benchmark, which is so demanding that the majority of laptops we review can’t run it. It may not be designed or marketed as a gaming laptop but, in terms of graphical performance, the ConceptD 7 has the capability to double as one. It’s also worth mentioning that during even the most arduous benchmarking tests, the ConceptD 7’s fans kept noise to a minimum.

Kudos again goes to Acer for the ConceptD’s robust aluminium chassis, which measures 359 x 255 x 17.9mm (WDH). Given what Acer has crammed into such a slim package, keeping the weight to 2.1kg is impressive. The only downside is its chunky power supply. At 628g, it weighs nearly as much as the HP Elite Dragonfly, and you’ll probably need to bring it with you on daily outings.

With the screen set at a brightness of 170cd/m2, this laptop only lasted 4hrs 52mins in our video-rundown battery test. This isn’t a terrible result given how powerful the machine is, but means the laptop is best viewed as a portable workstation rather than a truly mobile laptop.

It’s certainly happiest on a desk, with a wide array of connectivity options. There’s a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port on the right side of the laptop, where you’ll also find two USB-A (USB 3.1 Gen 1) ports and a mini-DisplayPort. On the left side sits another USB-A port, HDMI, two 3.5mm jacks and an Ethernet port, which you’ll want to be a little wary of as its uncovered edges are sharper than ideal. The only glaring omission is any form of SD card reader.

Sadly, the ConceptD 7 isn’t capable of connecting to the latest Wi-Fi 6 networks, either: there’s no 802.11ax radio here, merely 802.11ac. Nor is there a fancy way to sign in to the ConceptD 7, with no Windows Hello face recognition and (surprisingly) no fingerprint scanner.

The good news for your fingers is that the keyboard is excellent. The keys are perfectly spaced out and enable fluid typing. You don’t get a huge amount of travel to each key, but they still offer positive feedback.

Acer decided against a numeric keypad, but all the essential hotkeys you’d expect are present: sleep mode, screen brightness control and a key for controlling the keyboard backlight. The backlight is an eye-catching amber colour and provides ample illumination for darker environments.

The ConceptD 7’s 105 x 65mm diving board-style touchpad is centrally positioned and surrounded by a reflective silver border. In use, however, we found it too “sticky” and resorted to using the tip of our finger to make it more comfortable to use.

While we tested the ‘low-end’ model with a 1TB SSD and GeForce RTX 2060 graphics, you can upgrade to a GeForce RTX 2080 with 8GB of dedicated RAM for £2,799. There’s also a “Pro” version for £2,499 with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and an Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 GPU with 6GB of RAM.

Not that Acer is your only choice. Apple’s 16in Macbook Pro is the main rival when it comes to laptops aimed at creative professionals. It comes in several configurations, but for one with specs closest to our ConceptD 7 review model you’ll be paying £2,799. This gets you an Intel Core i9-9980HK processor, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and AMD Radeon Pro 5500M graphics.

The good news is that even against the Apple MacBook Pro, the ConceptD 7 stands proud: this is a superb mobile workstation suitable for designers, photographers, and video editors. Its display is a delight and demonstrates exceptional colour accuracy across the Adobe RGB gamut.

Its ninth-generation Core i7 processor and GeForce RTX 2060 GPU provide graphical performance on par with some of the best gaming laptops on the market, while it copes with complex tasks quietly and effortlessly. The rather short battery life prevents it from being truly great, but the ConceptD 7 is a premium laptop that delivers where it matters.

Acer ConceptD 7 specifications

After an extended period of unchallenged Intel dominance, recent years have seen successively more pugnacious possibilities from AMD. We’re now on the third generation of Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper, and with each iteration the maximum core count has doubled. This month, we see the arrival of a single-socket workstation with a whopping 64 cores, in the form of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X

Although the top price in this roundup is £8,000 inc VAT, most manufacturers tend to plump for the more versatile 3970X with 32 cores. And for good reason, as this is a hugely capable CPU. The lower-end price of the machines in this list is around £3,000 inc VAT, which is still a decent amount of money for a powerful workstation.

AMD’s resurgence has now been so forceful that it’s now comparatively rare to see Intel-based workstations, even at the lower price. You’ll need to read on to see the detail of how they fare against the AMD alternatives, but we’re sure you’ll be as surprised as we are at the difference that a couple of years of concerted technological develop have made.

In particular, you can now enjoy 16 cores for £3,000 inc VAT or less, and if you opt for 32 cores you’ll get even better modelling ability and the processing power of a dedicated render node. So this is a great time to buy a workstation: it seems you truly can have it all in one system.

A workstation aimed at content creation and other high-end 3D-focused activities is the pinnacle of PC performance. It warrants the very best components at every level – a fast CPU with as many cores as possible, lots of RAM, high-end professional graphics and speedy, capacious storage. But few buyers can afford the best possible components in every category, so here are the main six features you should consider when specifying your perfect workstation.

1: Processor

There used to be a clear divide between workstations offering fewer cores but a faster frequency versus more cores with a lower clock speed. Now, however, you can have your cake and eat it. Almost. There’s still a few hundred MHz difference between the top Turbo modes of processors with more than 16 cores and those with this number or fewer. But if you’ve got the money, you can opt for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, which has a 4.5GHz Turbo mode and 32 cores that run at 3.7GHz or above. So this CPU will give you supreme rendering with little compromise on single-threaded performance.

That said, if you can’t quite afford this 32-core monster, you can still enjoy at least 16 cores. Again, AMD is at the forefront. Thanks to the company’s 7nm chipset design, the Ryzen 9 can pack in more cores than Intel for the same money. The fact that so few manufacturers actually use Intel processors in their machines illustrates how far AMD has come. The Ryzen 9 3950X will give you 16 cores for the same sort of money that Intel will charge for eight, ten or possibly 12 cores at a pinch. And although Intel still has a slight advantage with single-core frequency, the difference is now almost negligible.

So, rather than choosing fewer cores but a faster clock for modelling-type activities, and more cores for rendering, the main question now is how many cores you can afford. You’ll probably be choosing between an AMD Ryzen 9 or Threadripper.

2: Memory

While you could still get away with 16GB of memory in a gaming rig, professional work demands as much RAM as you can afford. A 32GB allocation is a bare minimum, and we’re starting to see quite a few systems with 64GB. When you’re dealing with large 3D models, or editing high-resolution photos and 4K video, having lots of memory really helps. More of the content you’re working on can be held in main RAM so your workflow will be faster. With a system sporting lots of cores, a large amount of RAM means you can have more tasks operating at once – such as a background render whilst you carry on with design work.

Both Intel and AMD processors support dual-channel memory at the consumer end of the market. But, while the memory controller on Intel processors is officially limited to 2,666MHz DDR4, AMD’s latest Ryzens support 3,200MHz, meaning you’ll be able to benefit from faster bandwidth. The higher-end enthusiast and workstation Core i9 10000 series do support quad-channel memory, at up to 2,933MHz. However, AMD’s Ryzen Threadrippers also support quad-channel memory configurations, and the latest versions can run memory officially up to 3,200MHz. So here, again, you get a boost in RAM bandwidth with the AMD option.

3: Graphics acceleration

Although AMD does now have a credible Radeon Pro option at the sub-£1,000 end of the market, most 3D professionals will still choose a graphics card from Nvidia. The official advice is to go for one from the professional range – so a Quadro. Yet, although this guarantees support for any problems you might have with your professional content creation software, some content creators consider the extra expense to be a waste of money.

Games designers in particular tend to favour consumer-grade Nvidia GeForce cards, which makes sense if they want to test their game code on the same workstation they’re using to create it. Two of the most popular 3D animation applications – 3ds Max and Maya – run well on GeForce. Also, if your applications use GPU rendering, you get a lot more CUDA or OpenCL for your money with a GeForce or Radeon. However, CAD applications tend to struggle with GeForce drivers, particularly Siemens NX, a popular piece of product design software. If you’re using this, we’d definitely recommend a Quadro or Radeon Pro.

If you want to be sure of compatibility across a range of software, a Quadro is still the way to go. The RTX 4000 will handle pretty much any application, with 2,304 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 memory offering 416GB/sec of frame buffer bandwidth. For more demanding 3D work, the RTX 5000 ups the CUDA cores to 3,072 and runs them at a higher frequency, whilst doubling the GDDR6 allocation to 16GB and increasing the bandwidth to 448GB/sec. The RTX 6000 is for particularly specialised applications but is in a league of its own, with 4,608 CUDA cores (twice as many as the RTX 4000) and a 24GB GDDR6 frame buffer on a wider 384-bit bus, so boasts 672GB/sec of bandwidth. But it’s hugely expensive and only worth the outlay if you really need the very best graphics performance.

4: Storage

Yet another new feature introduced by the latest AMD CPU generation is support for PCI Express 4, and the first area where you’ll see the benefit in workstations is with storage. Both the Ryzen 9 and Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series support PCI Express 4 NVMe SSDs, so make sure any system you purchase with either processor has at least its main OS and application storage device in this format. The sustained throughput will be 30% to 40% higher than the PCI Express 3 NVMe storage that’s the fastest possible for Intel systems.

However, the choices for PCI Express 4 NVMe drives are still quite limited, as well as expensive. That means you’re likely to want to add a cheaper high-capacity unit on top. Despite all the talk of SSDs replacing hard disks for over a decade, the mechanical hard disk remains the most cost-effective choice. While a 4TB SSD will set you back around £500, the same capacity hard disk is £100 to £150. Even conceding the fact that their throughput is less than half and access times far slower, hard disks remain cost-effective for storing large files such as 4K video.

5: Chassis

Workstations tend to be huge black behemoths because they’re meant for very serious activities. But size is of real value for this kind of computer. Two key areas to look for are the ability to fit high-end triple-radiator watercooling, and plenty of room for drive upgrades. You can’t really have either of those in a compact case. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper’s Precision Boost Overdrive feature dynamically monitors your cooling and tailors core frequencies accordingly, so having strong watercooling will mean faster performance. Tool-free features are also useful in a chassis, particularly for secondary drives. You might well find that you need to add more storage to cope with additional media assets, – so being able to slip this in without too much case deconstruction is a big plus.

6: Power supply

One of the most likely causes of PC instability is an underspecified power supply. Consequently, for a workstation it’s always best to err on the side of caution and overspecify here. For a 16-core workstation, 650W is a bare minimum, and we’d recommend 750W or more. For a 32-core system, we suggest 850W or higher. An 80 Plus Gold efficiency rating or better will also mean the vast majority of the watts that are fed in will end up being used by your components, rather than wasted.

As you read through the following contenders, it’s worth noting that they almost all conform to these guidelines closely.

Armari is one of few manufacturers to supply a chassis that it designed itself, rather than taking something high quality off the shelf. This enclosure is intended specifically to get the most out of the 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X and comes with a 420mm radiator, plus a trio of 140mm Corsair fans. However, Armari has chosen to supply our sample with the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, rather than the 64-core monster.

This is most likely because the 3970X has a base clock of 3.7GHz, whereas the 3990X starts at 2.9GHz. Although the 3990X’s top Turbo mode is still an impressive 4.3GHz, the chip is more skewed towards dominance with multithreaded tasks than the all-round brilliance of the 3970X, so the latter makes more sense for a general-purpose workstation.

To accompany this CPU, Armari has only included 64GB of 3,600MHz DDR4 SDRAM, supplied as a quartet of 16GB DIMMs. We say “only”, but this should still be enough for virtually any current task, and there are four more slots free if you feel the need to upgrade.

Unlike Scan, Armari hasn’t opted for the all-conquering Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 for graphics acceleration. Instead, it supplies the less powerful RTX 5000, but this is still a potent card. It sports 3,072 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6 frame buffer, offering 448GB/sec of bandwidth, so it should make light work of every real-time 3D task, from modelling to CAD to scientific visualisation.

Armari supplies two identical 1TB Corsair PM600 M.2 NVMe SSDs. These are PCI Express 4 drives, and Armari has striped them together as RAID0 to further increase performance. You get the full 2TB in this configuration, and sustained throughput is virtually doubled to 8,944MB/sec when reading and 8,407MB/sec when writing.

You don’t get a hard disk for storing larger files, but Armari’s custom design pays dividends for expanding storage. There are four bays that can accommodate 3.5in or 2.5in drives, and you can optionally add four more for 2.5in drives only. The downside is this chassis’ sheer size, measuring more than 500mm deep and high. It’s also extremely heavy. Still, Armari installs helpful carry handles on the top to help move it.

One criticism is the lack of USB-C amongst the ports on the top of the chassis, although this is a removable module so we urge Armari to offer this (note the Type-C header on the ASRock TRX40 Creator motherboard). The board also sports not just 10Gbit Ethernet but 2.5Gbit, too, so you can have two fast LAN connections.

In our own benchmarks, this system was only slightly quicker than Armari’s cheaper 24-core offering, and notably behind Scan’s high-end system and Workstation Specialists’ submission. The overall result of 655 is still phenomenal, though, with excellent scores in every area, and the Magnetar sat top of the pile for purely processor-intensive tasks. The score of 18,388 in Maxon Cinebench R20 is the fastest by some margin, and the Blender Gooseberry CPU render completed in a table-topping 352 seconds. Its IndigoBench CPU scores were the highest, too. This is also the speediest system for Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020 video encoding.

The use of the RTX 5000 instead of the 6000 means that this system isn’t as fast in the SPECviewperf 13 viewsets as Scan’s high-end system. But it is the second fastest in most of them, with the notable exception of snx-03, where the Chillblast and Workstation Specialists high-end systems soared ahead. Still, a result of 452 is highly impressive.

Overall, this system epitomises what the third-generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper has to offer. It’s perfectly at home with modelling but when it comes to rendering out the results it absolutely flies. The custom chassis with its beefy cooling gets the best out of multithreaded tasks, making this a Recommended system for content creators who don’t want to trouble the machine room when it comes to rendering out their work.

Armari Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL specifications

The Chillblast Fusion Ryzen Render RTX 4000 sticks out among most workstations like a sore thumb, thanks to its choice of a white Corsair Carbide 275R chassis. If this wasn’t enough to catch your eye, the Corsair H100i RGB watercooling radiator is up top behind a grille, meaning its multicoloured pulsating lighting will be in full view.

But don’t let the bling deceive you into thinking this system is all bark and no bite, because inside is a serious collection of workstation hardware. This starts with the sensible choice of a Ryzen 9 3950X CPU. With 16 cores that can all run at 3.5GHz or above, and a top 4.7GHz Boost mode, this is a great all-rounder. Chillblast only supplies 32GB of DDR4 memory, but this is the 3,200MHz variety so takes full advantage of the Ryzen 9’s controller speed. You also get two free DIMM slots for future upgrades.

There are no surprises when it comes to graphics acceleration. The Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 is the obvious choice at this price, offering 2,304 CUDA cores allied with 8GB of fast GDDR6 memory. For an affordable high-end workstation, this is the de facto choice. It’s also a 160W card so isn’t overly power-hungry considering its level of performance.

It’s good to see Chillblast taking advantage of the Ryzen 9’s support for PCI Express 4 by including a 1TB Corsair MP600 NVMe M.2 SSD as main storage. This delivers sustained reading of 4,794MB/sec and writing of 4,287MB/sec, which is much quicker than any PCI Express 3 SSD we’ve tested. Chillblast supplements this with a conventional mechanical hard disk, namely the 4TB Seagate Barracuda Pro; this 7,200rpm drive isn’t the quickest in its class, with sustained 227MB/sec reading and 217MB/sec writing. Looking through the glass side of the Corsair chassis, there doesn’t appear to be much space for extra storage; open up the other side panel, however, and you find another 3.5in plus two 2.5in bays free.

The Fusion Ryzen Render achieved some impressive results in our tests, starting with a commendable overall score of 528 in our benchmarks; still, InterPro’s Ryzen 9 was quicker. Chillblast’s proved the fastest Ryzen 9 system in Maxon Cinebench R20, though, achieving 9,527, and this translated to just 623 seconds to complete the Blender Gooseberry render. Admittedly, this was marginally behind InterPro, as were the Fusion’s scores in IndigoBench 4, as well as video encoding with Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020.

Still, this is another fine showcase for the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, which beat Intel’s much more expensive 18-core Core i9-10980XE in every test; except for being one second slower in Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020.

Thanks to the fast single-core speed of 4.7GHz, you lose almost nothing when running tasks that favour single-threaded frequencies. Comparing the Chillblast’s SPECviewperf 13 results to those of the PC Specialist system with a Core i9-9900K, which can run at up to 5GHz, there are few areas of weakness. The 3dsmax-06 result is almost as good, although the maya-05 score of 280 is a little further behind. So this system will be virtually the same for 3D animation. With CAD and engineering, catia-05, creo-02, snx-03 and sw-04 scores are all a little behind the Intel system, but not so much that it would slow down your workflow. And the final rendering or simulation would be so much faster that it’s no competition.

The icing on the cake with the Fusion Ryzen Render is the price. Chillblast has come in £200 inc VAT below the average in its price bracket, with no obvious area of serious compromise in specification, and certainly none when it comes to performance. Whether you love or hate this workstation’s looks, it’s our top choice for under £3,000.

Chillblast Fusion Ryzen Render RTX 4000 specifications

As well as being one of PC Specialist’s more expensive systems, this machine is also the most unusual entry in this roundup. Not only is it using an Intel processor, but it also comes with a gobsmacking four graphics cards. This makes it a very good workstation for one particular task, but also means it’s much less well rounded than other workstations in this price bracket.

A year ago, PC Specialist’s choice of an Intel Core i9-10980XE (had it been available then) would have been quite valid, as this 18-core processor would still have stacked up well against even the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX. This year is a different matter. Even though the 10980XE has a Turbo Boost frequency of 4.8GHz, and the non-overclocked maximum for all cores is 3.8GHz, it can’t provide serious competition to a Threadripper capable of running 32 cores at this frequency or higher. Our only caveat is that PC Specialist supplies the Core i9 running at stock speeds and there’s considerable room for overclocking.

It partners the Core i9 with 64GB of DDR4 SDRAM, but note that some rivals supply twice as much at this price. The RAM is provided as four 16GB modules, leaving four DIMM slots free, but here again, Intel lags behind AMD because the platform only supports 2,933MHz memory where AMD’s latest Ryzens hit 3,200MHz natively.

The graphics card specification is the most unusual part of the setup. Not only have four of them been supplied, but they are all consumer-oriented PNY Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Blower models. These are hugely powerful cards, with 4,352 CUDA cores each and 11GB of GDDR6 memory providing a whopping 616GB/sec of bandwidth. This won’t make modelling any smoother, but should blow away any GPU rendering tasks. Although the PC Specialist’s AS WS X299 SAGE/10G motherboard has seven PCI Express x16 slots and only four graphics cards, the fact that they are all double-width means that no slots are free.

Storage is another area of differentiation. Instead of using a M.2-based NVMe SSD, this system calls upon the motherboard’s U.2 connection for a 2.5in Samsung PM883 enterprise-grade SSD. This still operates via the PCI Express 3 x4 protocol, however, so it should be just as fast. It’s still no match for PCI Express 4 drives, though, with sustained 3,485MB/sec reading and 1,583MB/sec writing. More unusual is the quartet of 4TB Seagate IronWolf Pro 7,200rpm hard disks, which PC Specialist has configured as RAID5 – a mode that provides both redundancy and performance enhancement. So you only get 12TB of the 16TB capacity, but the sustained read and write speeds are SSD-like with 707MB/sec and 616MB/sec respectively.

The hard disks take advantage of the industrial-strength Inwin IW-PLG chassis, which sports eight front-mounted 3.5in hot-swap drive bays, and there’s an additional 2.5in bay internally as well. However, with all the graphics cards and an air cooler, this is a noisy system at full pelt.

How far Intel has been left behind by AMD was immediately obvious in our benchmarks, where the Onyx’s overall score of 486 fell behind even the Ryzen 9 3950X systems this month. Its Cinebench R20 result of 8,843 was also slower, and this was mirrored in the IndigoBench 4 CPU tests and the Blender Gooseberry CPU render, which took 690 seconds. The Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020 video encode was one second faster than the slowest Ryzen 9 in this test, and way behind everything else bar the other Intel system.

However, the LuxMark 3.1 score of 37,070 shows just how much GPU compute power is on hand, which is further underlined by the GPU scores in IndigoBench 4. Taking just 144 seconds to complete the GPU Blender Gooseberry render, less than half any other system, makes this system’s strong area clear. However, whilst the consumer-grade graphics show decent scores for 3dsmax-06 and maya-05 in SPECviewperf 13, CAD viewsets such as catia-05 and sw-04 are not as impressive, and snx-03 is woeful. Do not use this system for design work with Siemens NX.

Ultimately, the PC Specialist Onyx 994RG is a master of one trade – GPU rendering – but its Intel CPU lags behind the 32-core AMD Threadrippers in every other respect.

PC Specialist Onyx 994RG specifications

In this workstation roundup, we’ve split the contenders into two price brackets: £3,000 and £8,000 inc VAT. Previously, workstations in the lower price band have been dominated by the Intel Core i9, but it’s a sign of the times that in 2020, out of all of the machines in this class we’ve only seen one Intel CPU. It’s not hard to see why when you appreciate what the Scan 3XS GWP-ME Q132R can do.

Based around the top AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor, you get 16 cores and 32 threads, which will storm through multithreaded CPU-intensive tasks. The top 4.7GHz Turbo mode will also make light work of anything single-threaded. Scan has partnered this potent processor with a generous 64GB of 3,600MHz DDR4 memory, taking advantage of the Ryzen 9’s official support for 3,200MHz RAM. As this 64GB helping is supplied in the form of two 32GB modules, there’s still room for upgrades if you need it.

Scan’s graphics acceleration of choice is no surprise at this price, consisting of the Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000. With 2,304 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR6 memory providing 416GB/sec of bandwidth, the RTX 4000 is the logical sub-£1,000 GPU for professional use.

Although we traditionally expect to see a combination of fast primary boot storage and a slower but larger secondary device, Scan opted to supply just one primary SSD with the Q132R. However, it’s the sizeable 2TB Corsair MP600 M.2 NVMe, which supports PCI Express 4 so can take full advantage of the AMD Ryzen 9 processor’s support for this faster connection type. With a sustained sequential read rate of 4,988MB/sec and writing at 4,276MB/sec, this is a hugely fast storage device and the 2TB capacity will be enough unless you venture into capacity-hungry applications such as video editing.

If you do want to add more storage, there’s an additional M.2 NVMe slot available, and the Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C chassis provides a quartet of 3.5in bays accessible from one of the side panels. There’s also a front 5.25in bay, should you need to install an optical drive or other removable storage device. We’re not convinced by glass panels on workstations, but the R6 does this tastefully, and this chassis also provides a USB-C port on the top.

We tested this with a PCI Express 4 external storage device, and found it delivered 1,023MB/sec reading with 952MB/sec writing – much faster than an internal SATA/600 connection. The Asus RoG Strix X570-E motherboard also includes 2.5Gbit Ethernet as well as regular Gigabit, so you’re well served for network connectivity.

The Scan’s overall benchmark score of 503 fell behind the InterPro and Chillblast, although its image-editing score was the best at 217. Video encoding proved a slight weakness, and it was one of the slower systems in Adobe Media Encoder 2020 CC. It again fell a fraction behind rival Ryzen 9 systems in Cinebench R20, while the Blender Gooseberry frame took 645 seconds to appear; Chillblast and InterPro were again faster here.

However, the Q132R was the fastest in most of the SPECviewperf 13 3D modelling viewsets at this price, with a particularly commendable 351 in snx-03, showing strong ability when doing engineering design with Siemens NX. Overall, this swings things back into Scan’s favour. We also appreciate that most people won’t want to rush to upgrade the main storage or main memory, so having 2TB of the former and 64GB of the latter provide future-proofing out of the box. Add in 2.5Gbit Ethernet and you have a system that beats the Ryzen 9 competition on features, rather than brute performance.

Although we suspect everyone reading this roundup will be lusting for a workstation based around the Threadripper 3970X, if you’re on a more limited budget then the Ryzen 9 3950X offers a superb balance of performance for a much keener price. Scan’s 3XS GWP-ME Q132R may not be the fastest in every area, but the well-considered specification makes it our pick for the best all-rounder.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME Q132R specifications

If someone had told us two years ago we would be seeing a 24-core workstation for under three grand exc VAT, we would have laughed and quickly walked away. But this is what Armari has sent us for the cheaper of its two systems in this roundup.

The processor in question is the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X, which has slipped under the radar in all the excitement about the 32-core 3970X. This is still a potent beast, though, with a base 3.8GHz clock and 4.5GHz Turbo mode. Armari has partnered this CPU with 64GB of 3,200MHz DDR4 SDRAM supplied as four 16GB modules to take advantage of the Threadripper’s quad-channel memory controller.

Like all the systems aimed at the lower price, the Gravistar TCX comes with Nvidia Quadro RTX graphics. In this case, it’s the 4000 series, which is the professional graphics sweet spot at this level. There’s a speedy PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 Gigabyte Aorus SSD for main storage, offering sustained 4,992MB/sec reading and 4,282MB/sec writing. However, whilst this offers a reasonable 1TB capacity, there’s no secondary storage.

One area where Armari has compromised its usual standards is by supplying a generic case rather than one of its Magnetar custom designs. While the Fractal Design Meshify S2 is less sturdily constructed than the Define R6, it’s still got plenty of features. There are three 3.5in or 2.5in drive bays available, plus a brace of 2.5in-only bays, so there’s lots of room for more drives.

The 24 cores make light work of every CPU-intensive task. The overall score of 644 in our benchmarks is only slightly behind the 32-core Threadrippers, and way ahead of other systems in this price bracket. Unsurprisingly, the Cinebench R20 score of 14,078 sits somewhere between the Ryzen 9s and other Threadrippers, as does the 425 seconds to complete the Blender Gooseberry render on CPU only. Video encoding is almost as quick as other Threadrippers, whilst 3D modelling and CAD performance in SPECviewperf 13 are on par or ahead of other systems using the Quadro RTX 4000, with a particularly good result in snx-03.

This workstation just tips over the £3,000 mark with VAT included, but while that technically exceeds the lower price bracket for this roundup, it’s such a well-put-together package that not giving it an award would feel a little mean - this is still an amazing amount of workstation for your money. If your budget won’t stretch to one of the highest-end 32-core offerings in this Labs, the Armari Gravistar TRX gives you almost as much modelling and rendering power for a lot less cash.

Armari Gravistar TCX specifications

This Chillblast system is another eye-catching design. This one is still black, like most workstations, but the Corsair Crystal Series 680X is a Borg-like cube in shape, which really makes it feel like a supercomputer. With a 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X inside, this system lives up to that image as well.

The supplied 64GB of 3,200MHz DDR4 RAM sounds ample, but our benchmarks suggest 128GB is better for a system with 32 cores or more. Like most of the other systems in this category, Nvidia’s Quadro RTX 5000 matches the processor well for modelling capability.

The generous storage provision includes a 2TB Seagate Firecuda 520 SSD for operating system and apps. This PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 device provides fast sustained reading of 4,984MB/sec and writing at 4,252MB/sec. A 6TB Seagate Barracuda Pro 7,200rpm hard disk handles general data, with sequential reading of 239MB/sec and writing at 234MB/sec.

You’d hope that a chassis this big has plenty of room for storage upgrades. There are two more 3.5in bays alongside the one holding the existing hard disk, and four 2.5in bays. Perhaps not as much as you might expect, but certainly enough. Like the Corsair chassis supplied with Chillblast’s cheaper systems, this one incorporates some bling RGB lighting, although our sample sensibly came with the lighting turned off by default.

Hampered by the 64GB of RAM – the first time we’ve ever written those words – the Fusion Ripper Render was the slowest 3970X-based system in our benchmarks, achieving 646 overall. That’s only two points quicker than the 24-core Threadripper from Armari. It was also the slowest with the Maxon Cinebench R20 render. However, it took less time than Workstation Specialists’ system to complete the Blender Gooseberry frame with CPU only, and its Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020 video encoding was second only to Armari’s Magnetar. The modelling performance with SPECviewperf 13 is also second to Armari in many viewsets, though, with the notable exception of snx-03.

The Fusion Ripper Render RTX comes in well below the budget for this category, at a penny under six grand inc VAT. However, it’s not the fastest in its class, and the larger hard disk doesn’t make up for its RAM deficit over Workstation Specialists’ offering. We would also have liked 2.5Gbit or 10Gbit networking. But this is still an extremely powerful, well-specified workstation for the money.

Chillblast Fusion Ripper Render RTX 5000 specifications

We normally expect InterPro to supply systems in both categories for our workstation roundups, but this time the company chose just to contest the lower price band. However, since the IPW-R9 sports the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, it’s still got some major grunt available.

The 3950X only offers a dual-channel memory controller, but manages to outperform the Threadripper 1950X and 2950X CPUs that were AMD’s previous 16-core offerings. InterPro has supplied 3,600MHz-capable DDR DIMMs to take advantage of the Ryzen 9’s support for 3,200MHz memory, although only two 16GB modules are supplied for a 32GB total, while Scan provided 64GB in this price category. It’s no surprise to see Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 graphics in place for this price, offering 2,304 CUDA cores.

However, we were a little surprised by the use of a Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD for main storage. With a 1TB capacity it’s large enough and uses the NVMe M.2 interface, but this is only a PCI Express 3 model, so supplied sustained reading of 3,571MB/sec and writing of 3,341MB/sec. This is very quick, but it’s missing the even greater performance opportunity of PCI Express 4 NVMe drives. Yet InterPro has also included a very generous 6TB Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC310 conventional 7,200rpm SATA hard disk, which is also the fastest hard disk this month with sustained reading of 262MB/sec and writing of 256MB/sec.

Like Scan, InterPro opts for the excellent Fractal Design Define R6 chassis, which provides USB-C connectivity on its front ports. There is room for a second 3.5in hard disk, but the 5.25in drive at the front can’t be used because the watercooling radiator obstructs this area. Also, unlike the motherboard used by Scan’s Ryzen 9 system, the InterPro’s Asus Pro WS X570-ACE only offers a pair of conventional Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports rather than 2.5Gbit.

The InterPro proved the fastest Ryzen 9 system in our benchmarks, with an overall score of 537. It was also the quickest in this class to complete the Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020 video encoding job. However, its Cinebench R20 score of 9,373 and Blender Gooseberry CPU render time of 615 seconds were behind the Chillblast Ryzen 9 system. Modelling abilities were as capable as we’d expect from a Quadro RTX 4000.

Overall, this is a powerful workstation for the money with plenty of fast secondary hard disk capacity. It’s just a slight shame about the choice of SSD.

InterPro IPW-R9 specifications

Last year, the Intel Core i9-9900K was a common sight among budget-friendly workstations, and it often put in a respectable showing. Now, however, its comparatively rare to see a manufacturer opt for Intel at this price. Looking at how the PC Specialist performed in most of our tests, it’s easy to see why this change has occurred.

Although the Intel Core i9-9900K was already available a year ago, it remains one of Intel’s top eight-core offerings, with only a KS version above it. Both have a top 5GHz Turbo mode, but whilst the KS can run all its cores at this speed, the K tops out at 4.7GHz for all cores. PC Specialist has backed the Core i9 with 32GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 SDRAM, which is adequate if not generous. Graphics is taken care of by the obligatory Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 for this price level.

Where PC Specialist goes to town is storage, with a total of five devices. Two are 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVMe SSDs, whilst the other three are 2TB Seagate IronWolf Pro 7,200rpm SATA hard disks. The implication is to mirror the SSDs for data security and configure RAID5 for the hard disks, although PC Specialist hasn’t done either out of the box. Being only PCI Express 3, the SSD achieves 3,536MB/sec reading and 3,332MB/sec writing, significantly behind PCI Express 4 NVMe devices. The hard disks achieve a respectable 245MB/sec reading and 242MB/sec writing.

The Intel CPU really does let this system down when compared to AMD’s offerings. The overall benchmark score of 323 is only 64% as fast as the slowest Ryzen 9 3950X workstation. Although the image-editing score of 186 is reasonable, video encoding and multitasking scores are left in the dust. Having half the cores particularly affects rendering, with less than half the performance of the Ryzen 9 in Cinebench R20 at 4,557 and taking nearly twice as long to complete the Blender render with CPU.

It’s not all doom and gloom for the PC Specialist system in performance terms, though. The Intel processor doesn’t hold back the Quadro RTX 4000, and some of the SPECviewperf 13 results are the best in this price band, such as catia-05, creo-02, 3dsmax-06, sw-04 and maya-05. So for pure CAD and 3D animation, this is still a capable system.

Overall, whilst this PC is a decent choice for modelling, its rendering and everyday media application abilities show why most workstation vendors are now switching to AMD Ryzen 9 processors at this price.

PC Specialist Onyx 880GE specifications

When we told manufacturers that the top price for this roundup was going to be £8,000 inc VAT, only PC Specialist and Scan decided to take full advantage. However, in the case of the 3XS GWP-ME Q164T, Scan has opted for a more balanced all-round specification, and crucially opted for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X.

This 32-core monster is truly cementing AMD’s resurgence. Scan partners it with a 128GB of 3,600MHz memory in four 32GB DIMMs, taking full advantage of the Threadripper’s 3,200MHz quad-channel memory controller, whilst leaving four DIMM slots free for upgrade.

Although RAM is expensive, the main area where Scan has spent its eight grand budget is in the graphics department. This is the only workstation on this list to opt for Nvidia’s hugely pricey Quadro RTX 6000. It’s a beast of a card, with 4,608 CUDA cores – twice as many as the RTX 4000 – and 24GB of GDDR6 RAM, which is three times as much memory. This runs on a 384-bit bus, so offers a whopping 672GB/sec of bandwidth.

No expense is spared for storage, either, with a PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 SSD for the main drive in the shape of a 2TB Corsair MP600, delivering blistering sustained reading of 4,829MB/sec and writing of 4,266MB/sec. The secondary drive is an SSD as well, but in this case a SATA-connected 4TB Samsung 860 Evo; as a result, its sustained reading and writing rates are a more pedestrian 549MB/sec and 485MB/sec respectively, but this is still twice as fast as any conventional hard disk.

The Q164T achieved a stunning 702 overall in our benchmarks. True, the Scan was outclassed by Armari in rendering, achieving 17,180 in Cinebench R20 and taking 359 seconds to complete the Blender Gooseberry frame on CPU. It was also a little behind Armari and Chillblast with the Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020 4K video encode. However, with 9,856 in LuxMark 3.1 and the fastest single-graphics card render time in Blender Gooseberry, this is a superb system for GPU compute activities. Naturally, with the RTX 6000 on hand, this is also the fastest system by a country mile for 3D modelling viewsets. The SPECviewperf 13 results show that this system will handle the largest 3D designs or scientific visualisations with ease.

This is a beast of a workstation, making its exc VAT price of £6,666.66 numerologically correct, and also what you’d expect to pay for this much workstation ability.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME Q164T specification

Workstation Specialists is a small but focused UK-based manufacturer of systems for content creators. As its previous machines have demonstrated, the company has a good handle on hardware trends in this market, and this is another system based around AMD’s stunning Threadripper 3970X.

Although the CPU supports 3,200MHz memory, Workstation Specialists has only used 3,000MHz DDR4 SDRAM – but this means it can supply 128GB of it. It sensibly chooses Nvidia’s Quadro RTX 5000, which balances well with the high-end CPU. With 3,072 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6 frame buffer providing 448GB/sec of bandwidth, this card will tackle any 3D modelling task with aplomb. The Antec P110 Luce chassis is particularly stylish, with a sleek unfussy exterior and tempered glass side panel, but it doesn’t have USB-C at the front. However, the ASRock TRX40 Creator motherboard provides both 2.5Gbit and 10Gbit networking.

Workstation Specialists has sensibly chosen a 2TB Gigabyte Aorus NVMe M.2 SSD as main storage, which supports PCI Express 4. But we only recorded reading at 3,463MB/sec and writing at 3,461MB/sec, which are more like PCI Express 3 speeds. The 4TB Toshiba N300 7,200rpm hard disk is a good capacity for large media asset files, but with 209MB/sec reading and 208MB/sec writing, it’s also slower than the hard disks supplied with other systems this month.

This proved the fastest system in our benchmarks, however, achieving a phenomenal 711 overall and a particularly stunning 896 in multitasking. On the other hand, the WS-1640A-G4 is 7% behind Armari’s Magnetar with 17,098 in Cinebench R20 and took 5% longer to complete the Blender Gooseberry render on CPU. Its CPU scores in IndigoBench 4 were similarly lower, and it was the slowest 3970X-based system for encoding video with Adobe Media Encoder CC 2020.

As with other systems using the 3970X, the 3D viewset scores in SPECviewperf 13 are mostly on par for a system sporting Nvidia’s Quadro RTX 5000, with a particularly stunning 500 in snx-03, showing strong capability with modelling in all categories.

Overall, this is a well-specified and constructed workstation, with particularly good general media application performance. But otherwise it’s simply put into the shade by the best of the 3970X-based systems.

Workstation Specialists WS-1640A-G4 specifications

Just when you thought the pressure from AMD on Intel's market dominance might be about to abate, yet more competition is building. The Zen 2 architecture is paying dividends across all levels of the processor business, from mobile to server. But it's at the high end that Zen 2 particularly makes its mark. We've already taken a deep dive into what the latest generation of AMD EPYC has to offer for servers with its ability to deliver up to 64 cores per socket, but it has great potential for the workstation market too. Here, we take a first look at what 64 cores can do for content creation users with a system from British vendor Armari, catchily named the Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC.

Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC review: Processor and memory

To show what the new EPYC really has to offer, our review sample arrived with the top-end AMD EPYC 7742. This is a processor aimed at a dual-socket configuration, and you would be more likely to purchase this system with the much cheaper 7702P aimed at single sockets only, since this is a single-socket workstation. There's not a huge difference between the two, apart from the significant 2,000 cost reduction for this system with the 7702P instead of the 7742. The 7742 has a 2.25GHz base clock and 3.4GHz turbo mode, where the 7702P has a 2GHz base with 3.35GHz turbo mode.

These nuances are overshadowed by the fact that both CPUs offer a whopping 64 cores and 128 threads. Putting this in perspective, Intel's current Xeon Scalable range tops out at 28 cores, and those cost twice as much as the EPYC 7742, or more than three times as much as the 7702P. Intel has announced a 56-core Xeon Platinum 9282, but that's currently only available through select datacentre-oriented server OEMs rather than for workstations, and likely to be an order of magnitude more expensive still.

So the 64-core EPYC is an incredible achievement for AMD, and putting this even further in perspective is the power envelope it operates within. The 7742 has a 225W TDP, and the 7702P requires 200W. But the 56-core Intel Xeon Platinum 9282 has a 400W TDP whilst the fastest 28-core 8284 is 240W. On paper, therefore, the EPYC is incredibly power-efficient, so your electricity bill will be lower too.

However, things aren't quite as simple as that. Although Intel processors have clearly defined frequencies that different numbers of cores can run at - two at the top frequency, then four at the next one down etc - AMD's processors are much more complicated. The consumer-grade processors and Threadrippers offer Precision Boost. This clever system learns the capabilities of your motherboard power supply and CPU cooling to dynamically control the frequency of each core according to what the system can handle without throttling, so if you have really meaty water cooling you can get better performance.

The EPYC range doesn't have Precision Boost in such an aggressive way, but it does have something called cTDP which acts in a similar fashion and has to be turned on in the BIOS. Because the AMD EPYC range is more concerned with stability, if you have meaty cooling you can enable a higher TDP and more cores will run at a higher clock frequency. For the 7742, the regular TDP is 225W, but the cTDP is 240W, which Armari has enabled here. The 7702P, however, only offers a 200W setting, so will generally run at a lower clock compared to the 7742.

Armari's R80 chassis is designed to fit 240W-capable liquid cooling so that CPUs like AMD's can get the best performance possible, and this comes in the form of an Enermax Liqtech unit. During testing, we saw all 128 threads hit 3.35-3.4GHz consistently, and this was still a surprisingly quiet system.

Another advantage of the new 2nd-generation AMD EPYC is that it now officially supports 3,200MHz DDR4 memory. The architecture sticks with eight channels, but this is still two more than Intel's Xeon Scalable's six channels, although the recently announced Cascade Lake-AP version sports 12 channels. Armari has equipped the R64ER-RS1280/LC with eight 16GB modules of 3,200MHz DDR4 ECC Registered SDRAM. This takes up all the available slots, but 128GB of RAM isn't going to need an upgrade anytime soon anyway.

Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC review: Graphics acceleration

Armari has played it safe with graphics acceleration. Since this system is more likely aimed at rendering than constant modelling, an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 has been supplied rather than the higher-end 5000. The RTX 4000 takes up the usual slot for Quadro 4000-series GPUs as the affordable high-end choice.

The RTX version sports a commendable 2,304 CUDA cores running at a base 1,005MHz with a 1,545MHz boost. There's 8GB of GDDR6 frame buffer on board, operating at an effective 13,000MHz, providing a hefty 416GB/sec of bandwidth. Despite the powerful GPU and fast memory, this is still a 160W TDP card, so is reasonably frugal on power consumption as well. It should still provide some very usable 3D modelling ability and a decent level of CUDA or OpenCL compute if needed.

Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC review: Storage

Although this system has plenty of room for storage, of which more later, Armari has chosen to supply just a boot drive in the shape of a Samsung PM981 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD. One of the benefits of the new EPYC is that this system supports PCI Express 4.0, but the choice of NVMe storage with a PCI Express 4.0 interface is not yet that great, so Armari has opted for the Samsung due to known dependability. This drive still managed sequential reading at 3,269MB/sec in CrystalDiskMark 6, with sequential writing at 2,378MB/sec, so it's hardly a slouch. However, we've seen PCI Express 4 NVMe SSDs achieving 50% faster throughput.

Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC review: Chassis design

The R64ER-RS1280/LC is built around Armari's custom-designed R80 workstation chassis, which is a very solid steel box that can also be configured as a rackmount, although you can't use water cooling in rackmount configuration due to the location of the radiator and vents on the case. Befitting the serious focus of this system, a 1,280W modular power supply is integrated that can simply be slid out the back if it needs to be changed.

This chassis also has a couple of cold-swap 3.5in drive bays accessible from the rear, plus two 2.5in cold-swap bays at the front. By default, these are for SATA or SAS drives, but can optionally be reconfigured with NVMe U.2 backplanes. There aren't any more bays inside the case, but with two PCIe Gen4-capable M.2 slots on the ASRock ROMED8-2T motherboard as well, you've got space for up to six drives, so plenty of room for workstation-level capacity and RAID 0 or 1 configurations if desired. Unsurprisingly, there's no room for a 5.25in optical drive at all.

The front of the case sports two USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, with minijacks for headphone and microphone. The motherboard supplies a healthy selection of rear ports, including two 10Gbit LAN connections and another RJ45 aimed at IPMI management. There's a VGA port plus two USB 3.1 Gen 1 and a single USB 3.1 Gen2 Type C. There's even a COM port for hardware management systems that still use this interface.

Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC review: Processor performance

The two obvious comparisons in our recent reviews are Armari's own Magnetar X200 and the PC Specialist Axiom. However, the Intel Xeon W-3175X in the X200 appears to have been discontinued already, and the Axiom costs more than twice as much as this system. So this should put our performance results in some perspective.

In our Media Benchmarks, where the X200 managed 678, the R64ER-RS1280/LC achieved an overall score of 618, with an image result of 176, video encoding result of 581, and multi-tasking score of 790. Image editing is the weakest here, held back by the single-core clock speed that can't keep up with processors that have fewer cores but run them a lot faster. However, considering that you can't get the X200 anymore, the fact that the R64ER-RS1280/LC is second fastest to it is moot. The Axiom only managed 471 overall, with lower scores in every category, so for everyday tasks other than image editing, this is the fastest workstation you can currently buy that we've tested.

The results in the various flavours of Maxon Cinebench's CPU benchmark really hammer this home. This is a test that can really benefit from lots of cores. The R64ER-RS1280/LC managed an incredible 8,857 in R15 and a huge 21,729 in R20. The X200 only managed 6,299 in R5 and 15,080 in R20, whilst the Axiom achieved 7,170 in R15. A workstation based around the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX (which uses the previous-generation architecture) only manages around 5,700 in R15. As you'd hope for a 64-core system, the EPYC 7742 totally canes multi-threaded activities.

However, this does come with a caveat that became evident when we tried some other CPU-focused tests. The Blender Gooseberry 3D render took 564.69 seconds, which is noticeably faster than a 32-core Ryzen Threadripper, but not by as much as you'd expect, and the X200 finished this render in 409.7 seconds. It's clear that Blender isn't giving the full benefit of 128 threads, and the Geekbench 4 scores of 4,398 single-threaded or 35,492 multi-threaded also illustrates a similar theme. This makes sense compared to the Axiom, which has a faster single-core clock but fewer cores, so has a better single-threaded result and slower multi-threaded. But the X200 managed 80,509 multi-threaded with only 56 threads, so this test clearly doesn't get the full benefit of lots of cores.

Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC review: Graphics performance

Graphics aren't the focus of this system, but you will want to know that it doesn't lag in this department. The R64ER-RS1280/LC's NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 managed a very respectable 178.69 in Maxon Cinebench R15's viewport test, and SPEC Viewperf 13 results were also decent. You will see better scores than 197.73 in the 3dsmax-06 test from workstations with faster single-core frequencies, but this is still a great result, as is 260.06 in maya-05. Likewise, 244.86 in catia-05, 37.74 in creo-02 and 327.39 in snx-03 are good, but 133.98 in sw-04 is merely mediocre.

Nevertheless, this system will be perfectly capable for 3D animation modelling, CAD and industrial design. The Quadro RTX 4000 also achieved 5,993 in Luxmark 3.1, so there's a decent amount of CUDA or OpenCL-based GPU compute available too.

Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC review: Verdict

Overall, it's the multi-threaded performance that is the real benefit here, thanks to those 64 cores and 128 threads. However, you will need to ensure you use software that can take full advantage of them. If not, a workstation with higher single-core clocks, based around Intel's recently-released Core i9 10980XE, the AMD Ryzen 3000 series or soon-to-arrive third-generation Threadripper might be more suitable. But that takes nothing away from what has been achieved here. AMD has packed a gobsmacking amount of compute power into a single socket, and for tasks that can make use of all the threads, this is an awesome amount of performance for the money.

Verdict

The Armari Magnetar R64ER-RS1280/LC showcases just how much compute power AMD’s latest EPYC has to offer workstation users – if you have the right software

The Acer ConceptD range made a big splash when it was announced in April, and now the first machines are arriving on shelves.

This 2,250 exc VAT ConceptD 5 Pro is one of the beefiest and most expensive machines from the new range, which means it's ready for high-end creative tasks like 4K video editing, photo-editing and professional design.

Acer ConceptD 5 Pro (CN517-71P) review: Design

The ConceptD 5 Pro has a shell made from sturdy magnesium alloy alongside smart, subtle new logos. The corners have neat angles, and there are no unsightly stickers.

It's a good start, but closer examination reveals small issues. Much of the ConceptD 5 Pro's design is borrowed from Acer's gaming laptops, for instance, so you're not getting a brand-new laptop here - and it also means you get ugly, angular exhaust vents that look out of place on a professional machine.

There are obvious, visible seams around the borders of this machine too, and the base edges are uncomfortably sharp. Build quality is inconsistent throughout, in fact. The base section is strong, but the lid is too easy to flex back and forth. A sleeve is advisable to keep this machine safe.

It's an unconvincing start among strong competition. The MSI P65 Creator 8RF is an impressive recent arrival that had smarter, sleeker design than the Acer (despite its gaming-focused heritage), and the Razer Blade 15 and 15in Apple MacBook Pro are both perennial challengers, with market-leading design and admirable build quality.

The Acer tips the scales at 2.2kg, and it's 21mm thick. Those dimensions aren't great: every rival is a few hundred grams lighter and a little slimmer.

The Acer also has mediocre connectivity. The ConceptD has two USB 3.1 ports and a Type-C connection, but its third full-size USB port uses the slower USB 2.0 standard. It's got a Gigabit Ethernet socket and an HDMI output, but it's missing Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, a card reader and a fingerprint reader. Those are notable omissions on a machine designed for creativity and productivity.

On the inside, you get super-fast WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, so that's a better bill of health.

The Acer's design is disappointing when its price is considered, too. The MSI is currently available with a slower RTX 2060 graphics core for just 1,750 exc VAT. The Razer has great design and costs 2,142 exc VAT for an RTX 2070 and a 4K screen.

The MacBook Pro is a design leader, as usual, although beefing up its specification to match the Acer means that it costs 3,045 exc VAT - hardly a surprise.

Acer ConceptD 5 Pro (CN517-71P) review: Keyboard & Trackpad

The ConceptD has a chiclet keyboard, and the layout is good. There's a numberpad, a solid range of options on the function row, and none of the major keys have been reduced in size.

The sturdy build quality on the Acer's base means the keyboard is underpinned by a strong plate of metal - in turn, that means you can hammer the buttons with consistency and force.

The buttons have ample travel and speed, and they're pleasingly quiet. It's easy to use this typing unit for long periods while still being comfortable and without making any mistakes.

The trackpad is good too. It's large, with a smooth surface that offers precision and has full gesture support, and its two buttons are rapid and responsive.

Acer ConceptD 5 Pro (CN517-71P) review: Display

The screen is crucial for a design laptop, and the Acer starts well. Its 15.6in diagonal is paired with a 4K resolution, which means a density level of 282ppi. That's huge, which means the screen offers tremendous detail and crispness - and there's room for multiple windows if that's important.

The Delta E of 1.9 is stellar - it's below the point where human eyes can detect colour accuracy deviations, so colours will be near-perfect. That's paired with a temperature of 6,329K, which is close enough to the 6,500K ideal to avoid any issues.

Acer's screen returned sRGB and Adobe RGB gamut coverage levels of 99.8% and 98.9%, so you can easily work in both of these colour spaces.

The brightness level of 385cd/m2 is high enough for anything, the black level of 0.26cd/m2 is suitably deep, and the contrast ratio of 1,480:1 is great - better than most laptops, and high enough to deliver depth, vibrancy and accurate images in any situation.

The Acer's screen is just as good as the Razer and Apple offerings and noticeably better than the MSI panel. It's easily good enough for creative and colour-sensitive work, which is fitting for a machine that's explicitly aimed at creative professionals.

The speakers have impressive volume and lots of high-end clarity, but the mid-range is a little muddy and the bass is minimal. They're fine for casual media playback, but not good enough for work.

Acer ConceptD 5 Pro (CN517-71P) review: Hardware & Performance

Graphical grunt comes from the Quadro RTX 3000 - a professional chip that uses Nvidia's latest Turing architecture and delivers performance similar to the consumer RTX 2070 GPU.

The RTX 3000 has 6GB of dedicated memory and 2,304 stream processors. Because it's a professional chip, it has ISV certification - which means that dozens of prominent professional applications are tested to ensure that they run smoothly.

The professional GPU is joined by the popular Core i7-9750H. Its six cores mean that there's enough versatility for multi-tasking and work applications. Its base and boost speeds of 2.6GHz and 4.5GHz are excellent, enabling rapid performance in single-threaded scenarios, like Office tools, web browsers and some photo-editing apps.

The Acer's overall benchmark score of 171 edges the MSI machine, beats the Razer and is barely behind recent MacBook Pro notebooks. That great result it means that the Acer will have no problem handling photo editing, video work and design tools. You're only going to need more power if you're running intense 4K video tools, database applications or CAD software. If that's the case, a Core i9 chip will deliver a benchmark score of around 200.

The RTX 3000 GPU scored 190.56fps in the Cinebench OpenGL test - a benchmark that illustrates graphical grunt in work-focused tasks. That's fantastic - the RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 tend to score around 120fps and 110fps respectively in the same test.

The core components are bolstered by a whopping 32GB of memory - twice as much as rivals. The main boot drive is created by two 512GB SSDs in a RAID 0 array that provide 952GB of formatted space - alongside read and write speeds of 3514MB/sec and 3153MB/sec. That speed beats every rival, and it means that application and file loading times are excellent.

It's worth noting, though, that the use of RAID doesn't translate to any data protection or failover capabilities. RAID 0 delivers great space and speed, but it doesn't mirror data - so if one SSD fails, all data goes with it. This isn't a negative - after all, no other laptops feature RAID redundancy - but don't be lulled into a false sense of security.

The Acer's thermal performance was inconsistent. Graphics temperatures are fine, noise levels are pleasingly modest, and the exterior doesn't get hot. However, the CPU throttled to 2.4GHz after a short period of 100% load, and a full-system stress-test saw the CPU throttle to 1.5GHz.

This will only be a problem if you plan to run the CPU at 100% load for prolonged periods of time - unlikely in most situations. Despite that, it's worth remembering if you do want to push the chip.

The battery is middling. In our video test the Acer lasted for five hours and 14 minutes - three hours short of the MSI and Apple laptops. This isn't unusual for a high-performance machine (especially one with a 4K screen), but if you're pushing the components hard, you won't make it to lunchtime.

Acer ConceptD 5 Pro (CN517-71P) review: Verdict

The Acer ConceptD 5 Pro offers lashings of power thanks to its pro-level GPU, Core i7 CPU and impressive storage and memory - so it can tackle virtually any work task, from tough photo-editing and design to 4K video editing.

Elsewhere, the 4K screen is fantastic, but the Acer falters when it comes to battery life and thermal performance.

The Acer is only middling on the outside too. Its keyboard and trackpad are good, but its design is underwhelming, its port selection could be better and it's thicker and heavier than competitors.

It's certainly not the most stylish laptop around, and it's not the best option for longevity. If those are important, the MSI and Razer machines are cheaper, and Apple's machine is more expensive but it does offer market-leading design.

However, Acer's machine does deliver huge power and superb screen quality for less than Apple's laptops - and it offers more power than the MSI and Razer machines. If performance is a key consideration, the Acer ConceptD 5 Pro is a firm contender.

Verdict

This Acer machine has huge performance levels, a great screen and a solid keyboard, but its design, connectivity and battery life can’t quite compete with stronger competition

The MSI P65 Creator 8RF is one of the most eye-catching productivity laptops around - even among a market that's filled with good-looking machines.

That's because this 1,416 exc VAT machine is a limited-edition version of the P65, which means a white finish, a smart wooden box on arrival and some specification upgrades.

MSI P65 Creator 8RF review: Design

The bright white metal throughout is disarming: it's bolder than virtually all other work machines, and even looks more outlandish than some gaming laptops. The white finish isn't the only extravagant design flourish; the sides and rear are covered with angry, angular heat vents, and a neat hexagonal speaker grille sits above the keyboard.

It's certainly flamboyant. However, hands-on time reveals potential issues. The base is strong, but the screen is weaker - we'd use a protective sleeve. And there are more visible seams around the edges of this laptop than on many rivals, like the Dell XPS 15 and Apple's MacBooks.

The MSI weighs 1.9kg and is 18mm thick, so it's not overly chunky for a 15in workstation-grade device - but this is another area where the P65 falls behind sleeker rivals, with slimmer and lighter laptops easy to find in the wider market.

Around the edges you get three USB 3.1 ports, headphone and mic jacks and HDMI and mini-DisplayPort outputs. This limited-edition machine also has a Thunderbolt 3 port that supports USB 3.1 and DisplayPort - something normal P65 machines don't include.

Connectivity is good: you get dual-band 802.11ac wireless and Bluetooth 5.0, and MSI's machine includes a full-sized Gigabit Ethernet port. That's a pleasing and increasingly rare addition in a market where laptops are getting slimmer, and ditching wired internet as they go.

MSI P65 Creator 8RF review: Keyboard & Trackpad

MSI's keyboard is fine: it's fast and responsive, with acceptable travel, and its action is crisp and robust - it's snappy and clinical rather than too soft, and easily solid enough to handle long work sessions.

However, it's not perfect. The MSI has no numpad, its Return key is single-height, and the cursor keys are squeezed into the main body of the keyboard with no separation. Users will soon become familiar with these quirks, but they're irritating at first.

The trackpad is good, though. It's large, smooth and responsive, and has full gesture support as well as a built-in fingerprint reader.

MSI P65 Creator 8RF review: Display

This limited-edition P65 is the only version with a 144Hz screen. While having a higher refresh rate has limited usefulness when working, its smoother motion will help in some scenarios - like animation. It's also handy for gaming.

The screen itself is a 15.6in 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel, and if you want 4K, you'll have to spend a lot more. Quality levels are generally capable; the MSI returned an impressive contrast ratio of 1,304:1, with a peak brightness level of 274cd/m2 and a black point of 0.21cd/m2. The contrast is high enough to ensure good punch and clarity, while the black point delivers solid, inky depths. The brightness level is fine for the office and for photo and video work, but it's not high enough to enable solid conditions while working outdoors.

The MSI's colours are middling, too. Its Delta E of 3.26 is average, and its colour temperature of 7,770K is cold, making images appear pallid. It also only handled 83.8% of the sRGB colour gamut.

The P65's screen isn't perfect, then, but its contrast and colour levels are still good enough for basic colour work - and it does have its 144Hz refresh rate. However, if you're looking for pure image quality, the XPS 15 is a better option thanks to superior contrast and colour accuracy throughout.

MSI P65 Creator 8RF review: Hardware & Performance

Under the hood the MSI relies on a Core i7-8750H processor and a GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q graphics core. That hardware is from Intel and Nvidia's older ranges, but we're not hugely concerned - Intel's newer processors are only marginally quicker, and the last-gen graphics core remains powerful.

The i7-8750H is a six-core chip with Hyper-Threading and base clock speeds of 2.2GHz. Its replacement, the i7-9750H, also has six cores and runs at 2.6GHz. Both use the same architecture, so differences are minimal. The GPU still has a whopping 2,048 stream processors and 8GB of dedicated memory, so it's no slouch even when compared to newer chips. Those core components are paired with 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD.

It's a solid loadout at this price - Dell's current models use the newer i7-9750H CPU, but they still rely on a weaker graphics core and they're still more expensive than the MSI. Apple's machines, similarly, use 9th-gen processors but are poorer in the graphics department - while still arriving at a higher price.

The MSI is quick. By default, it runs in its Sport mode, and here the MSI returned a benchmark score of 170. That's enough to handle intensive photo-editing and video work without a struggle; just eight points behind the Dell and three points behind last year's Apple MacBook Pro.

MSI's system also has Comfort and Eco modes. The Comfort option didn't make much difference - the MSI still returned a benchmark score of 169 thanks to miniscule changes to clock speeds - but the Eco mode limited clock speeds dramatically and dropped the benchmark score to 150, so avoid this mode if you want to use demanding applications.

The SSD's reasonable read and write rates of 1,606MB/sec and 1,035MB/sec are enough to keep Windows feeling snappy, and there are no thermal issues on this machine - there's a bit of fan noise during tougher tasks, but it's not intrusive and the exterior doesn't get too hot.

On top of that, the MSI is graphically impressive. Whether you want to handle photo work, video tools or gaming, the GTX 1070 Max-Q will handle it. And, like with the CPU, there's barely any performance difference between the MSI when running in Sport and Comfort modes.

This laptop has an 82Whr battery, which lasted for 8hrs and 23mins in our video test. That's a solid result - almost an hour better than the XPS 15. There's certainly enough battery life to last a full day in some work situations, although that figure will be reduced if you run the screen at a higher brightness level and rely on apps that really strain the CPU and GPU. If that's the case, you won't make it through a day at work without plugging in.

MSI P65 Creator 8RF review: Verdict

The MSI P65 doesn't have the finesse or the screen quality of rival machines. If you're concerned about having more brightness, better colours and a slimmer, lighter and more mature design, opt for the likes of the Dell XPS 15 or the larger MacBook Pro. However, there's still loads to like about the P65. Its screen still has enough quality to handle photo and video work unless you're particularly discerning - or if you rely on Adobe software.

Elsewhere, the P65 has impressive CPU ability, more GPU power than rivals, and good components throughout. It's ergonomically sound, with decent battery life, and its prices are competitive. If you're fussed about power and value rather than style and screen quality, the P65 is a solid option.

Verdict

Better screen quality and physical design can be found on more expensive rivals, but the limited-edition P65 has the power to handle creative software alongside good ergonomics throughout

Asus's tagline is "In search of the incredible", and with the Asus Mini PC ProArt PA90 it might just have found it. Part of the company's range of ProArt enterprise devices, the PA90 is aimed squarely at the likes of professional designers, video editors and graphics professionals.

However, while most professional workstations are great big boxy monstrosities, this machine is altogether sleeker and more intriguing. From the moment you power up this workstation and watch in wonder as the top plate moves up and down like a miniature TARDIS engine, you know it's something different.

Asus Mini PC ProArt PA90 review: Design

If that phrase has the ring of Apple to it, we make no apologies; the ProArt PA90 itself has more than an echo of the old-school Mac Pro. A cylindrical workstation dressed in dark grey isn't a wholly novel concept, after all. It's also somewhat similar in looks to the Corsair One i160, although it's the Mac Pro that it's most reminiscent of.

This machine is taller than the Mac Pro, though, standing just over a foot high. Asus is also less shy than Apple when it comes to showing you what's inside the ProArt, with components visible through the honeycomb-like skin.And what a set of components those are.

Asus Mini PC ProArt PA90 review: Specs and performance

The headline act is an Intel Core i9-9900K processor, with eight cores and 16 threads. They run at 3.6GHz as standard, but Asus has found space for watercooling inside the PA90 and overclocked them to 4.7GHz. It deserves plenty of kudos here: not only does it control temperatures but also noise levels. There's always a noticeable hum coming from the ProArt, but it's quiet enough to fade into the background of an office, and even when you really push this system to the max, it only rises in volume by a notch. Besides, you'll be so besotted by the sight of the plate lifting to increase airflow that you won't care.

Then we come to the Nvidia Quadro P4000 graphics card. This has just been usurped by the Quadro RTX 4000, but remains a powerful all-rounder for rendering and 3D modelling. Add 32GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 RAM (not ECC) and a speedy PCIe SSD and you have a potent-sounding machine.

And potent it is, too. It racked up an enviable overall score of 314 in our media benchmark tests, along with scores of 1,862 and 219 in the CPU and GPU portions of the Maxon Cinebench R15 tests, a Luxmark GPU score of 3,919, and 218 in the SPECViewPerf 13 Maya test.

These scores aren't that far off the Workstation Specialists WS-182A, although the latter's RTX 4000 card powered it to greater heights in some of our GPU rendering-based benchmarks. It also scored better than the iMac Pro in our benchmarks, which gives an indication of the kind of power we're dealing with here. In short, what this means is that the PA90's pricetag is well justified; it's up there with fully-fledged workstations costing around 2,500 in terms of performance, despite its size. It may not look like one, but the ProArt PA90 is a true workstation.

Asus Mini PC ProArt PA90 review: Ports and features

While Asus has restrained itself to two USB-A 3.1 ports and dedicated mic and headphone jacks on the front of the ProArt, it hasn't been so shy about shoving ports onto the rear. Here you'll find two further USB-A 3.1 ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a line out and two connectors for the stylish fin-shaped aerial. This is for the 802.11ac wireless chip within, but we simply took advantage of the Gigabit Ethernet port.

You can drive four monitors via the DisplayPort outputs, or take advantage of those Thunderbolt 3 ports. For a compact PC, that's a staggering amount of video outputs, although we suspect that many people will be tempted to use the Thunderbolt ports to expand on the 1.5TB of total storage. For a modern workstation, that sounds light.

The other key design choice Asus made is to use external power supplies rather than have a kettle lead go direct into the rear of the tower. So, unlike the Mac Pro or iMac Pro, you'll have to find room for two power bricks. And it's no surprise when you see how much power this machine gobbles up. In idle, it's satisfied with 32W, but fire up all those cores and the graphics card and the figure ramps up to 244W.

Asus Mini PC ProArt PA90 review: Verdict

So it's time to make a decision. And it boils down to this: how much do you value stylish design over storage capacity and expandability? The Workstation Specialists WS-182A costs around 100 less yet offers a much greater storage capacity, including a 2TB PCIe SSD, while stealing a handy lead in every benchmark.

On the other hand, that performance is housed in a big, meaty tower chassis, and the PA90 makes it look positively monolithic by comparison. Realistically there's only one rational answer as to which is the more sensible investment, but the ProArt is such a winner when it comes to designer chic - if you can hide the power bricks - that you have every right to be tempted.

Verdict

While this diminutive workstation may not quite be able to rival the big boys for sheer power, it’s plenty capable of holding its own, and does so while rocking one of the most appealing designs we’ve seen on a machine in this category

AMD made a noticeable impact with its Ryzen Threadripper. However, the more mainstream Ryzen 7 merely showed Intel stiff competition, rather than dominance. Now the third version of the Ryzen 7 - containing the second generation of AMD's Zen architecture - has arrived to see if it can take things that little bit further. We got our first look at the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X in the WS-182A workstation from Workstation Specialists.

Workstation Specialists WS-182A review: Processor and Memory

The AMD Ryzen 7 3700X takes over from where the 1700X and 2700X left off, offering the same eight-core configuration - but the underlying architecture is quite different. For its second generation of Zen, AMD has separated the processor cores from the on-chip I/O, putting the cores on a 'chiplet'. Each chiplet has eight cores, with some disabled for the lesser Ryzen models, whilst the Ryzen 9 has two chiplets offering 12 or 16 cores in total.

The benefit of this separation is that the cores can be manufactured using the latest 7nm process for higher frequencies and lower power consumption, whilst the I/O die including the memory controller remains at 12nm to save money and manufacturing complexity. The two elements communicate with each other via AMD's superfast Infinity Fabric.

The 3700X has a base clock of 3.6GHz and a 4.4GHz boost, whilst there's also a 3800X with a 3.9GHz base and 4.5GHz boost clocks. On the plus side, the 3700X only has a 65W TDP, compared to the 3800X's 105W, so it won't be as hungry on the power supply. However, the performance differences might not be that great in practice. Workstation Specialists hasn't overclocked this CPU, although there will be plenty of room for this. However, AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive will squeeze as much performance out of the chip as the cooling will allow. We've found it very effective with the Threadripper CPUs.

All the chips have the same new features, highlights of which include support for 3,200MHz DDR4 memory and PCI Express 4.0, which doubles bus width from 256-bit to 512-bit, effectively doubling maximum throughput - if you have a PCI Express 4.0 device. Workstation Specialists has partnered its 3700X with a very healthy 64GB of 3,400MHz DDR4 SDRAM, and is using this clock speed via an XMP setting. The memory is supplied as four DIMMs, filling all four of the available slots on the ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PLUS motherboard, leaving no room for upgrade, but with 64GB as standard, you probably won't need to.. Sadly, although there are four modules, the processor only supports dual-channel memory, unlike the Threadripper CPU.

Workstation Specialists WS-182A review: Graphics Acceleration

Workstation Specialists has made a sensible choice for a system in this class by including the current 'affordable' high-end professional graphics champ - the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000. The headline feature with the RTX series is its hardware acceleration for real-time raytracing, but most of the time you'll just appreciate its greater performance compared to the previous P4000.

The RTX 4000 has 2,034 CUDA cores, rather than 1,792 for the P4000. These run at a base 1,005MHz with a 1,545MHz boost, whereas the P4000 only hits 1,480MHz, so there should be a notable performance improvement. Both cards have 8GB of frame buffer on a 256-bit interface, but the RTX 4000 uses GDDR6 whereas the P4000 uses GDDR5. The effective clocks are significantly different - 13,000MHz versus 7,604MHz. This makes for much greater bandwidth of 416GB/sec versus 243.3GB/sec.

The one downside is that the RTX 4000's maximum power is now 160W, whereas the P4000 consumed a much more frugal 105W. But aside from the new raytracing ability, the RTX 4000 also supports resolutions up to 7,680 x 4,320 at 60Hz, and there's a USB-C port alongside three full-sized DisplayPort 1.4 connections, whereas the P4000 just had four of the latter. Suffice to say, there are lots of advantages with the new card.

Workstation Specialists WS-182A review: Storage

As we mentioned earlier, the new AMD Zen 2 chips support PCI Express 4, and one of the first places where you'll be able to take advantage of this is storage. You can already get PCI Express 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSDs, and Workstation Specialists has selected a Gigabyte AORUS unit with a 2TB capacity that promises 5,000MB/sec reading and 4,400MB/sec writing. When we tested these claims with CrystalDiskMark 6.0, we found them entirely borne out. The AORUS achieved 4,988MB/sec sustained reading and 4,530MB/sec sustained writing, with the latter actually ahead of the specification.

To put these figures in perspective, these speeds are around 20 times faster than the current quickest conventional 7,200rpm SATA hard disks. The Ryzen 3000 series has 24 PCI Express 4.0 lanes, which are around twice as fast as PCI Express 3.0, and only four are used for connecting to the X570 chipset. So there's enough bandwidth for a second PCI Express 4.0 M.2 NVMe slot, plus eight SATA 6Gb/sec ports. However, Workstation Specialists hasn't included any secondary storage with this specification.

Workstation Specialists WS-182A review: Chassis Design

The Fractal Design Define S chassis is reasonably compact and has the usual serious black appearance of most workstations. It has room for 3 x 140mm or 1 x 180mm fan water cooling at the top, although Workstation Specialists has opted for air cooling with this model. There are two USB 3.0 ports on the front top edge, alongside audio minijacks for headphone and microphone.

Inside, the case has room for three 3.5in or 2.5in drives, and there are two further 2.5in drive mounts. So there's the possibility for plenty of extra capacity if you're planning on performing storage-intensive tasks like video editing, even if the 2TB main drive will be perfectly adequate for less hungry activities.

The power supply included is 550W 80-Plus Gold Certified, which should be adequate for the components included. However, if you're thinking of adding another graphics card then the 750W option that is available might be the better choice.

The rear backplane sports a legacy PS/2 port for mouse or keyboard, alongside four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (essentially the same as the former 3.0). There's a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C port and two Type A, plus Gigabit LAN. The DisplayPort and HDMI connections on the backplane are for use with processors that have built-in graphics, so won't be active with the Ryzen 7 3700X. Finally, you get the usual array of five analog audio minijacks and S/PDIF optical digital. It's a reasonable selection of ports, but not overwhelming.

Workstation Specialists WS-182A review: Processor Performance

Although the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X has the same number of cores as its two predecessors, the performance tweaks have been significant. In Maxon Cinebench R15's CPU test, the WX-182A managed 2,039, where the previous 2700X only managed 1,791 in the Armari Magnetar V25R-RA750G2. That's a 14 per cent improvement and places the 3700X close to what Intel's Core i9-9900K can achieve, which is 150 more expensive. The Maxon Cinebench R20 score of 4,698 is commendable, although we don't have much to compare with for this recently released benchmark.

In our IT Pro Media Benchmarks, the WS-182A managed an overall result of 339; again, not far off what an Intel Core i9-9900K could achieve. The image editing result of 196 would be a little ahead, whilst the video editing score of 327 and multi-tasking result of 394 would be a little behind - but you're still getting great results for all manner of media-related activities.

Looking at Geekbench 4, the single-threaded result of 5,609 is, amazingly, almost identical to the monster Armari Magnetar X200, although the multi-threaded result is far behind at 35,542, due to the 20-core deficit. But if you compare these results to the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, you're getting 12% faster single-threaded performance and 33% quicker multi-threaded speed - quite a boost.

Workstation Specialists WS-182A review: Graphics Performance

Whilst the AMD processor is holding its own for CPU-related tasks, the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 is a clear leader in its class for graphics acceleration. It managed a commendable 210.84 in the OpenGL portion of Maxon Cinebench R15. Looking at selected highlights from SPECviewperf 13, this will be a great system for 3D modelling for animation, with 205.51 in 3dsmax-06 and 280.85 in maya-05. If CAD, engineering or product design are more your focus, the WS-182A will excel here too, with 286.32 in catia-04, 273.82 in creo-02, 346.94 in snx-04, and 161.99 in sw-04. There's plenty of grunt here for GPU-based rendering as well. The Quadro RTX 4000 posted 6,002 in the LuxMark 3.1 OpenCL test.

Workstation Specialists WS-182A review: Verdict

Overall, the Workstation Specialists WS-182A will be a great 3D modelling, animation or engineering design system and it has plenty to offer when you need to render out your work too. It will be great for image processing and video editing or encoding, although the latter might necessitate a storage upgrade. If you're looking for a capable workstation that doesn't break the bank, choosing one based around AMD's latest Ryzen 3000 series has become a seriously sensible decision.

Verdict

The Workstation Specialists WS-182A shows that AMD’s latest Ryzen 7 generation can offer professionals true competition for the Intel Core i9 alternative.

Apple's range of iMacs has certainly received a mixed bag of attention, from both consumers and business users since it was first released in 1998. It's loved by those in the design industry as much as those looking for a beautiful desktop design. They're powerful, beautiful and now, its latest range of iMac Pros have been taken to a whole other level, with the performance to power some seriously labour-intensive workloads.

The iMac Pro is Apple's first enterprise-level machine since the Mac Pro. But this power comes at a price and this is where the company has received some criticism. With pricing from 5,000 all the way up to more than 12,000 for the top-of-the-range machine, it's not surprising some have given the company some negative press.

But truly, the iMac Pro is a force to be reckoned with. It's Apple's most powerful machine to date, equipped with a massive 18-core Intel Xeon W processor and 128GB of DDR4 memory. When you mix its might with Apple's prowess, you have a machine that's seriously tempting for enterprises looking to beef up their computing arsenal.

Apple iMac Pro review: Design

One of the things that Apple consistently leads the market on is the design of its entire range of devices. The iMac design has evolved a lot over the last two decades and many have tried to copy its sleek aesthetic, but no one has really managed to hit the same level of class.

Understandably, Apple hasn't messed with its winning formula, and the iMac Pro is visually identical to the vanilla iMac. It's got the same minimalist aluminium shell and the same clean lines. There are a few critical differences, though. For a start, the iMac Pro is the only member of the iMac family to come in Space Grey - which is the only colour it comes in.

Each machine comes with one of Apple's Magic branded keyboards, as well as a Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse, both of which are the second generation versions. All of these peripherals come in Space Grey, which is currently the only way to obtain that colour.

If it isn't obvious already, we're besotted with the look of the iMac Pro - it manages to keep that classic iMac design while adding an air of business-like sophistication with the Space Grey finish.

Yet, its appeal isn't just superficial. Its perfect mechanical balance means you can tilt and rotate the screen with absolute ease, and a handful of new mounting features mean it will likely be a hit among business users - specifically, you can now detach the base and fix it to a wall mount or third-party stand.

One gripe we still have with the iMac design, however, is the lack of any means to adjust its height, but that's a fairly minor criticism when the rest of the construction is this good.

What may prove to be a bigger problem is the lack of customisation available. It's certainly possible to get into the case and replace a number of its components, but this requires considerable effort and users risk voiding any warranty they have with Apple. Windows workstations, by comparison, are a doddle to repair and upgrade, with easy access to the internals and no tricky proprietary standards to cause you headaches.

Apple iMac Pro review: Display

Apple's hardware is famous for its image quality, and the display quality of its latest iMac range is absolutely stunning. Unsurprisingly, the iMac Pro is every bit as capable as its stablemate in this regard, and the 27in screen is an absolute joy to behold.

It's got a 5K resolution (which translates to 5,120 x 2,880 if you want to be specific) and supports the wide colour DCI-P3 gamut. It was effectively flawless in our display tests, covering 98.9% of the DCI-P3 gamut and producing gorgeous, accurate colours and sharp, crisp blacks with deep contrast. At 551cdm/2, the maximum brightness is actually slightly blinding - we had to turn it down to about 75% to reach a comfortable level.

The iMac Pro's display is sure to be a big hit with designers and graphics professionals, for obvious reasons. Not only is it huge, pin-sharp and incredibly accurate, it also supports a wide range of different colour profiles for a variety of different professional use-cases. It's a perfect demonstration of why Apple has earned such a sterling reputation for creating beautiful, high-quality displays.

Apple iMac Pro review: Performance

Apple has brought out the big guns for the iMac Pro. It's the company's most powerful machine to date, and intended to handle pretty much anything a business can throw of it, short of heavy-duty server operations. With an 18-core Intel Xeon W processor, 128GB of DDR4 memory and AMD's Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics chip in the top-spec configuration, it's fair to say that this machine is an absolute monster.

Of course, you'll have to fork over a truly eye-watering amount if you want that much power - the most expensive configuration costs in excess of 12,000. Paying that much money for a desktop computer may sound like utter madness, but it's important to put that number into perspective. A comparably-specced Windows workstation would cost at least 10,000 - and that's without including the cost of a 21in 5K monitor.

With this much firepower on display, you'd hope that the iMac Pro would be capable of some seriously impressive feats, and Apple's workhorse certainly doesn't disappoint. We tested the standard (and least powerful) configuration, which comes with 3.2GHz octocore Intel Xeon W-2140B processor, an 8GB Radeon Pro Vega 56 GPU and 32GB of RAM.

Even though this is the iMac Pro's entry-level configuration, it easily blew last year's bottom-tier 5K iMac out of the water in our benchmarks, racking up an overall score of 283 - well over double the regular iMac's score of 109. It's worth noting that these improvements are almost entirely centred around multi-core operations. The iMac Pro scored similarly to the 5K iMac in our single-core image editing tests, but it was more than twice as efficient at video editing, and multitasking was around three times faster.

Graphics performance is good as well. On Unigine's heaven benchmark - a reasonably demanding test of graphical horsepower - the iMac Pro managed to achieve 48fps at a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and medium detail. Although this is only marginally better than the 5K iMac's result from last year, it's nonetheless impressive. It even managed a smooth 35fps on the ultra quality setting. We should also point out that at no point during our testing did we notice any loud cooling fans, and machine felt cool to the touch throughout the duration. It's one cool cucumber.

Unlike most Macs, this machine is specifically designed for use with 3D modelling, rendering and CAD tasks, which means it needs a bit more grunt than your average MacBook. Thankfully, however, the iMac Pro doesn't disappoint in this regard, keeping pace with hulking Windows workstations such as the PC Specialist Apollo X02, the Scan 3XS WI4000 and the Chillblast Fusion Render OC Lite in our workstation performance benchmark tests.

Storage is lightning-quick, too, with the 1TB PCIe SSD delivering measured read speeds of 2.4GB/sec and write speeds of 3GB/sec - well over twice the speed of the 2017 iMac's Fusion Drive. In fact, compared to the latter's 130MB/sec write speed, the iMac Pro is over 2,000% faster.

All of which is to say that this is an almost frighteningly powerful machine. It's not as quick as the beefiest Windows workstations on the market, but it's far and away the most capable piece of hardware that Apple has ever produced - and this is just the entry-level configuration. From 3D rendering to extreme multi-tasking and demanding media editing work, there's not much that this sleek all-in-one won't be able to handle - including virtual reality hardware and apps.

Apple iMac Pro review: Ports and features

Apple may have abandoned the idea of versatile connectivity options for its MacBook range, but it certainly hasn't given up on it with its desktop devices. The iMac Pro is sporting a robust suite of port options, including 10Gb Ethernet, an SDXC card reader, four USB 3.0 ports and no less than four Thunderbolt 3 inputs. These allow you to connect not only two external 5K monitors, but also an external GPU, letting you bolster your iMac Pro with additional graphics processing power.

Apple iMac Pro review: Verdict

The iMac Pro is one seriously heavyweight contender. It's fitted with some of the most powerful components ever to grace an Apple machine, and it puts them to great use. The display is as gorgeous as you'd expect and the whole thing runs like a dream.

Let's address the elephant in the room, though. Yes, it's expensive, but as we mentioned earlier, it's actually not that much more expensive than Windows machines in the same category. Admittedly, you will be paying a noticeable markup compared to similarly-equipped rivals, but remember that for your initial entry price, you'll also be getting a truly spectacular 27in 5K display, and the whole package is wrapped up in by far the sleekest and most attractive chassis of any enterprise workstation.

If the iMac Pro is Apple's attempt to reclaim the business market, then we have to say that it's putting up one hell of a fight. This machine takes all the raw grunt you'd expect from a heavy-duty enterprise PC and crams it into Apple's signature all-in-one design in a way that virtually defies comprehension.

It may not be the most powerful - and it's certainly not cheap - but as far as we're concerned, the iMac Pro represents the pinnacle of business-grade workstation design. Go on, why not treat yourself?

Intel may have conceded a lot of the recent headlines to AMD's increasingly competitive Ryzen, Threadripper and EPYC processors, but there's still plenty of fight in the old blue dog yet. Armari's X200 is a custom system made to order that is designed to get the very best out of what Intel has to offer for the workstation user. Inside this gargantuan system - the heaviest PC we've had in the labs - sits a super-powerful 28-core Intel Xeon processor. And that's not all this behemoth has to offer.

Armari Magnetar X200 4.5GHz 28c WS review: Processor and Memory

The Xeon in question is the Skylake-SP-generation W-3175X, which on its own would set you back nearly three grand. It doesn't have quite as many cores as the AMD Threadripper 2990WX, but it's not far off - 28, giving 56 virtual cores with Intel Hyper-Threading. The frequencies are also a little higher than AMD's flagship Threadripper. Nominally the W-3175X is a 3.1GHz processor, but up to two cores can run at 4.3GHz, and all 28 at up to 3.8GHz. These frequencies drop in AVX2 mode, and even further with AVX512.

However, although this processor is rated for a TDP of 255W, Armari has chosen to build it into a system with much more water-cooling potency than this would require, hence the huge X200 chassis. The upshot of the extra cooling is that more of the W-3175X's potential can be unlocked. Armari has set it up so that all 28 cores can run at 4.5GHz, eight can run at 4.6GHz, and four at 4.7GHz. This should provide a big performance hike in every kind of application. Again, these figures drop in AVX2 and AVX512 modes.

Alongside the 28 cores, Armari has given the X200 a sizeable 96GB of 3,200MHz DDR4 SDRAM. This may seem like an odd quantity, but the figure is tied to the fact that the Xeon processor has a six-channel memory controller, so you have to add memory in sextets rather than pairs, quads, or (in the case of AMD's EPYC) octets. As a result, the ASUS ROG DOMINUS EXTREME motherboard is populated with six 16GB DIMMs, leaving six of its 12 slots free for upgrade. You would need to populate all six with identical DIMMs to maintain six-channel memory performance, however.

Armari Magnetar X200 4.5GHz 28c WS review: Graphics acceleration

To go with the potent CPU choice, Armari has chosen to equip the X200 with not one but two graphics cards. However, this system is aimed more at GPU compute than 3D modelling, so the two cards are both consumer-grade NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti accelerators. Nevertheless, these cards are the current fastest available. Each one has a huge 4,352 CUDA cores, running at a base 1,350MHz with a 1,545MHz boost.

The two cards also have 11GB of 1,750Mzh GDDR6 memory each on a 352-bit bus. The end result is 616GB/sec of frame buffer bandwidth, which is about the fastest currently on the market. Although these are consumer cards, they should still provide superb performance with most professional applications, and the amount of GPU compute power here will be enormous.

Armari Magnetar X200 4.5GHz 28c WS review: Storage

Armari's storage choice is unusual and Intel-focused. The main boot drive is an Intel Optane 905P 480GB U.2 SSD, and there's a 4TB Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC300 conventional 7,200rpm hard disk for more general capacity. But the latter has a trick up its sleeve in the shape of a 64GB Intel Optane M15 NVMe drive that is set up as a cache for the hard disk. The end result is performance that has a few surprises.

The 905P provides sequential reading at 2,764MB/sec and writing at 2,453MB/sec, which are fast but not as quick as some of the latest NVMe SDDs, particularly the PCI Express 4 ones you can use with the recently released AMD Zen 2 platforms. However, Intel Optane has faster random access than conventional SSDs and a longer MTBF due to the way the underlying 3D Xpoint memory works.

The big surprise is how the M15 drive accelerates the hard disk. Thanks to the cache, you get sequential reading at 1,965MB/sec and writing at 921.4MB/sec. Obviously, if you were reading the whole 4TB drive in one go, performance would drop, but for frequently used files you're seeing much faster throughput than the underlying hard disk, which won't be delivering more than around 250MB/sec.

Armari Magnetar X200 4.5GHz 28c WS review: Chassis design

If awards were handed out solely on the basis of weight, the Armari X200 would already be the best PC of all time. This is without question the heaviest system we have ever reviewed. Part of the reason for this is that it has not one but two water cooling systems, to cope with the huge power draw of the Xeon processor when running at full pelt and overclocked. One radiator sits at the top of the chassis, and one vents out the side. The X200 is a bespoke custom design by Armari, designed specifically for the Xeon W-3175X and forthcoming AMD processors with high core density.

This accounts for a lot of the extra size compared to a system with a single radiator bank, and some of the weight, although the solid steel construction of the case is also a major contribution. Another reason is the presence of two 1600W power supplies. These aren't dual-redundant, but actually a necessity to keep this system up and running. With all 28 cores running at 4.5GHz, the Xeon CPU can draw as much as 750W on its own, and the two graphics cards could use 250W apiece, so you're approaching the abilities of a single PSU already with just these components.

The storage upgrade options aren't enormous considering the chassis size, but certainly more than adequate. On the rear are two externally accessible cold-swap 2.5in bays with U.2 connections (one taken by the Intel Optane 905P), and there are two more SATA 2.5in cold-swap bays inside, plus four 3.5in cold-swap bays. So you can add plenty of drives quickly and easily if you're using this system for a task where capacity is paramount, such as video editing. But unlike some of Armari's chassis, there is no space for an external optical drive.

The top of the case sports two USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, with minijacks for headphone and microphone, plus USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C. The motherboard supplies a wealth of rear ports, including eight USB 3.1 Gen1, alongside four USB 3.1 Gen2 (two Type-C, two Type-A). There's the usual array of six audio ports, including optical S/PDIF. Last but by no means least is the pair of LAN ports, one of which is Aquantia AQC-107 10Gbit Ethernet, whilst the other is a more mundane 1Gbit Intel connection.

Armari Magnetar X200 4.5GHz 28c WS review: Processor performance

Looking at this system's obvious competition, our experience with AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX impressed us greatly, but it requires a lot of power and cooling. Some of the systems we've seen incorporating it haven't taken this into account, meaning that the cores slow down on a long gruelling task like rendering. Armari has avoided this with the X200, which has water cooling capable of dissipating over 1,000W, so there's no chance of its Xeon CPU throttling, even with the frequency enhancements.

The end result is the most incredible set of CPU benchmark results we have seen. The overall result in the IT Pro media benchmarks was an unbelievable 678 - way ahead of anything we've ever tested before. The scores that drove this were an incredible 864 in the multi-tasking section, and 649 in video encoding. The image editing score of 179 is good, but here the 4.7GHz CPU clock ceiling holds it back compared to processors with fewer cores that can run at higher frequencies.

Not surprisingly, with 28 cores this system is a rendering phenomenon. For reference, we ran the now-deprecated Maxon Cinebench R15, and the CPU result was an incredible 6,299. To put this in perspective, we see around 5,700 from a system using an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX, so this workstation is faster despite the four-core deficit. For an even more stark comparison, the PC Specialist Axiom with two 28-core Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs achieved 7,170, although these CPUs max out at just 3.2GHz across all cores. We don't have comparisons for this yet, but the X200 also managed 15,080 in the recently released Cinebench R20.

The benefits are even more pronounced with a longer render. We tried the Gooseberry benchmark with the 2.8 RC2 version of 3D animation software Blender. It took just 409.7 seconds, where the fastest 2990WX-based system we've seen took 663.77 seconds. Rounding things off, the single-core score of 5,610 and multi-threaded result of 80,509 in Geekbench 4 are well beyond anything we have ever seen in this test.

Armari Magnetar X200 4.5GHz 28c WS review: Graphics performance

The graphics configuration is aimed more at GPGPU than modelling, but you still get some great capabilities with some professional 3D applications. Generally speaking, the GeForce drivers are fine for 3D animation software but not so much for CAD, product design or engineering. The Cinebench R15 OpenGL result of 190.1 is great, and turning to SPECviewperf 13, 231.1 in 3dsmax-06 and 322.71 in maya-05 are superb. However, although 324.62 in creo-02 is very good, a Quadro RTX 5000 would be 50% faster, whilst 154.09 in catia-05 and 97.08 in sw-04 are about half as fast. You should also avoid using this card with Siemens NX, as the result was 21.5 in snx-03, whereas a Quadro RTX 5000 would be more than 20 times faster.

However, the two GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards are there to provide compute power, and here the X200 is again a phenomenon. The LuxMark 3.1 OpenCL score of 18,422 is nearly three times that of a single Quadro RTX 5000. Putting this in a more real-world context, running the Blender Gooseberry render on CUDA took just 198.67 seconds - less than half the time it would take on a NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000.

Armari Magnetar X200 4.5GHz 28c WS review: Verdict

In other words, the Armari X200 provides an unparalleled amount of performance for whatever you throw at it. You're not going to find anything faster unless you switch to a dual-socket configuration, and even then not by much, and not with the single-threaded abilities this system has to offer. This is unquestionably the fastest workstation we have tested, although you do pay accordingly (a more basic version is available for 7,994 exc VAT). Armari will be producing the X200 to order with a longer lead time than normal (six weeks, compared to a month or less), but if all-out speed is what you need, this system will be well worth the wait.

Verdict

The X200 showcases what Intel processors can do when given a no-holds-barred platform to run on, with the fastest single-socket performance we’ve seen and oodles of GPU compute grunt on tap too.

Corsair is marketing the latest iteration of its One desktop as a machine for professionals as well as gamers - and it certainly has enough processing and graphical power to scythe through tough productivity software.

It's expensive, though, at 2,833 exc VAT, and the One faces strong competition from plenty of conventional workstations.

Corsair One i160 review: Design

The Corsair One has been around since 2017, and it's always been small, near-silent and incredibly powerful. It's always looked fantastic, too; the Corsair is built from rock-solid aluminium, with two bands of RGB LEDs down the front and a smart power button. It's subtle and stylish enough to grace any office.

Corsair's machine looks better than many desktop workstations, and it's smaller too. It's just 380mm tall and 172mm wide, and it only weighs 7.38kg. All of the Corsair's rivals are larger, conventional machines. The Dell Precision 5820 is taller, deeper and weighs 15kg, and the Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 uses a BeQuiet enclosure that's 523mm tall and 514mm deep. The InterPro IPW-CL also uses a full-sized enclosure.

The Armari is the only rival that costs more than the Corsair - it has a 24-core AMD CPU and tips the scales at 3,295 exc VAT. The Dell and InterPro machines are around 400 cheaper than the Corsair.

The Corsair's high price is partly justified by its design. It takes plenty of work to build compact PCs that can handle high-end components, and this latest iteration needed several internal changes to cope with a new generation of hardware.

Older versions crammed the big components into the bottom of the rig. The mini-ITX motherboard was installed on one side, with the PSU, with the graphics card on the other side of the machine. That was sufficient, but it wasn't perfect. Cables trailed untidily around the interior, making most of the components hard to reach and hindering airflow.

This year's model moves things around. The power supply is still at the bottom, but it's in its own compartment. The motherboard moves to the top, while the graphics card still occupies the other side. The motherboard's higher position means it's not obscured by cables, so components can be accessed. The separate PSU compartment means cables are better-hidden and well-routed, which benefits the whole interior.

There are other, less obvious internal changes. The CPU and GPU are chilled by dedicated water-cooling units in the side panels. The CPU cooler has been made smaller with no reduction in performance, which cleverly allows the PSU to have its own source of cool air. That means it doesn't have to rely on the Corsair's sole 140mm fan, which sits in the roof of the machine.

The Corsair remains relatively easy to open. A button on the back allows the top to lift free, and two screws on either side release the side panels. Once that's done, the motherboard, memory and storage are accessible. If you need access to the main components, you'll have to remove the cooling units which is a more involved job.

The front ports move from the top to the bottom of the redesigned chassis. You get two USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectors, an audio output and an HDMI port. On the rear, you get two faster USB 3.1 Gen 2 connectors - one full-size, one Type-C. Rear display outputs include three DisplayPort connectors, but there's no rear-mounted HDMI.

Corsair's machine is an example of fantastic design, but its rivals are better in some areas. All three of those larger machines have more upgrade room and space to work, and the Dell is easier to get inside and service than anything else mentioned here.

Corsair One i160 review: Hardware

The layout isn't the only thing that's changed with the new unit; the Corsair One has also had a complete component upgrade. The model reviewed here has an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. It's one of Nvidia's most powerful consumer cards, with 11GB of GDDR6X memory and 4,352 stream processors. It also has a small overclock for a little extra pace.

It uses the Turing architecture - which means you get ray-tracing for improved lighting and particle effects and deep-learning super-sampling for AI-powered anti-aliasing. The GPU supports a maximum resolution of 7,680 x 4,320, and it supports OpenCL 1.2, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.1 and DirectX 12. The new features aren't supported in many applications, but they're sure to be adopted by more developers over time. As this is a consumer GPU, you don't get ISV certification, but there's no denying the huge raw power on offer.

The processor is an eight-core Hyper-threaded Intel Core i9-9900K, which uses the company's latest Coffee Lake-S architecture - a consumer architecture which nevertheless delivers better base and boost clock speeds compared to workstation chips with more cores.

The i9-9900K's sixteen addressable threads are ample for multi-tasking, Office applications, photo and video work and database tools. However, it doesn't have the core count to handle CAD design software, engineering tools and other applications that are designed to thrive on proper workstation CPUs like the Armari's 24-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX CPU.

The Corsair includes a generous 32GB of DDR4 memory, although its 2,666MHz speed could be better. Still, that's enough for most work applications. You also get Windows 10 Home on a 512GB Samsung PM961 SSD alongside a 2TB hard disk. The storage is capacious, and that SSD is not slow, but there are minor issues here: Samsung's latest 970-branded consumer drives are faster, and the hard disk's rotational speed of 5,400rpm is sluggish.

The parts connect to a modified MSI Z370I Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard. It's got dual-band 802.11ac wireless and Gigabit Ethernet built in, but it doesn't support more than 32GB of memory. Of course, it is a mini-ITX motherboard, so upgrade room is limited. If you're after more memory slots, extra PCI connectivity or more storage options then a full-size ATX system will be better.

Corsair One i160 review: Performance

In our performance benchmarks, the Corsair racked up an overall score of 299, with scores of 176, 296 and 342 in the image encoding, video encoding and multi-tasking tests, respectively. That puts it ahead of Dell's Precision on all fronts - which isn't entirely surprising given that the Precision uses a Xeon W-2125 processor with half the number of cores, as well as a less powerful GPU - but behind the Armari and InterPro for most tests. The former rig's 24-core CPU makes it better at multi-tasking, and the latter has a Core i9-9900K with faster memory.

However, a look at Cinebench reveals how far the Core i9-9900K is behind proper workstation chips. The Corsair's score of 1,854cb is fine - ahead of the Dell and almost level with the InterPro. But it's not even half as good as the 4,651cb recorded by the Armari and its 24-core CPU.

The tough SPECviewperf benchmarks illustrate the Corsair's strengths and weaknesses. It outpaced the Dell in almost all tests - Again, no surprise given the Dell's weaker components. The Corsair's RTX 2080 Ti was faster than the Armari's Radeon GPU in the 3dsmax-06, maya-05 and creo-02 tests, so 3D animation and modelling will clearly work well on the Corsair - along with photo and video applications. However, the Corsair delivered a poor score in the snx-02 benchmark, and was behind the Armari in the catia-04 tests. CPU-intensive tasks like rendering, engineering and product design will be slower.

And then, finally, there's the tough Blender Gooseberry render test. In this benchmark the Corsair took 2,011 seconds to render a scene - but the 24-core Armari managed it in 899 seconds.

The Corsair offers impressive performance levels in mainstream applications, and its thermal performance is even better. The CPU and GPU peaked at solid temperatures of 72C and 64C, and there were no throttling issues. The CPU ran consistently at 4.7GHz and at 4.2GHz with all cores at load, and the GPU rattled along at 1,870MHz.

Impressively, the Corsair is essentially silent when handling numerous work applications. When the components were really stressed, the Corsair produced a low rumble - but it's so quiet that you won't notice the noise in an office.

Corsair One i160 review: Verdict

The Corsair One i160 is a superb PC. The revised design is neater and more accessible, and it helps the i160 deliver a performance boost without thermal issues. The Corsair is smaller and better-looking than all of its rivals - and with better build quality.

Corsair's machine serves up decent power considering its size. It's got enough CPU ability for mainstream design, productivity and Office tools and it'll handle multi-tasking too. The GPU is great for photo and video editing, design work and 3D animation.

However, you'll need workstation-level components to smoothly run the toughest rendering, engineering and CAD software. The small chassis also means there's basically no upgrade room, and you can't add more memory. The GPU isn't ISV certified, and there could be a broader selection of ports and display outputs.

The Corsair One i160 is the middle machine from the range, but it's undoubtedly expensive. The Corsair One i140 costs 2,375 exc VAT and includes an i7-9700K processor that has eight cores but no Hyper-Threading alongside an RTX 2080 graphics card. The more expensive Corsair One Pro i180, meanwhile, costs a mighty 3,983 exc VAT, and it's the more intriguing alternative option. It has a 12-core i9-9920X that offers more grunt for creative work and database tools. It retains the RTX 2080 Ti, and upgrades the storage to a 1TB SSD.

Nevertheless, plenty of offices will be better served by a small, quiet PC with loads of power than by a huge tower - and the Corsair certainly fits that brief. It's expensive, but the Corsair One i160 is an excellent option if you need lashings of mainstream work ability in a small package.

Verdict

Although its multi-threaded performance can't match machines with beefier workstation-grade chips, the Corsair One i160 is a fantastic mid-range unit for light to moderate workloads, with a small footprint, smart internal design and quiet running.

Processor: 3.6GHz Intel Core i9-9900K

RAM: 32GB 2,666MHz DDR4

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB

Storage: 512GB Samsung PM961 SSD, 2TB hard disk

Operating system: Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Optical: N/A

Connectivity: Dual-band 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, Gigabit Ethernet

Ports: Front: 2 x USB 3.1 Gen1, 1 x audio, 1 x HDMI; rear: 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 2 x USB 2, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x PS/2, 1 x optical S/PDIF, 5 x audio

Dimensions: 173 x 200 x 380mm (WxDxH)

Weight: 7.38kg

Warranty: 2yr RTB

The Gigabyte Aero 15-X9 is a curious laptop that tries to enhance its normal workstation features with the kind of design that's usually seen in gaming machines.

The end result is a laptop that costs a whopping 2,416 exc VAT - but a machine that tries to take the fight to more conventional work notebooks by deploying a powerful graphics core, a Pantone-certified 4K screen and a high-end Intel Core i9 CPU.

Gigabyte Aero 15 (15-X9) review: Design

You certainly wouldn't anticipate those internals just from the exterior. Gigabyte's Aero design has been around for a couple of years, and it looks smart and understated. Most of the machine is made from matte black aluminium, with an illuminated Gigabyte logo on the lid and the Aero logo inscribed below the screen.

It's certainly not bad-looking, but it is showing its age. There are visible seams around the base and screen, and the like last year's Dell XPS 13, the webcam is installed in the hinge - so the angle results in an unflattering view up your nose if you're having a video conference. Most rivals install their webcams above the screen for good reason, despite ubiquitous slim bezels.

The Dell XPS 15 has a more modern design than the Aero, which mixes bright metal and carbon fibre, while the 15in Apple MacBook Pro has its familiar aluminium body. Neither machine has many visible seams - although the XPS 15 shares its awkwardly-placed webcam.

The Aero loses out when it comes to physical dimensions, too. It weighs 2kg and is 19mm thick, making for a pretty chunky beast. Both rivals are slimmer and narrower, while the Apple machine is lighter too. Moreover, despite the Aero being chunkier than the competition, its build quality isn't as good. There's flex in the metal around the keyboard, and the screen bends back and forth a little too much for our liking.

The Aero isn't weak, but its rivals are sturdier while also proving a little slimmer and lighter. We'd be comfortable slipping the Dell or Apple machines into a backpack without any extra protection - but we can't say the same about the Gigabyte.

The Gigabyte does better when it comes to connectivity. The Aero has a USB 3.1 Type-C port and a faster Thunderbolt 3 connection. You also get three full-size USB 3.1 ports, and one of those uses the faster Gen 2 protocol. Elsewhere, there's Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, one audio jack and a full-size SD card reader.

Although the Dell XPS 15 has a full-size HDMI port and SD card slot, it's only got one USB-C port and two full-size USB connectors, while the Apple machine has loads of Thunderbolt - but little else.

There's versatility underneath, too. It takes a little while to unscrew all the base panel's Torx screws, but once you're inside you can access all of the major components - alongside a spare NVMe connector should you wish to add an extra SSD.

Gigabyte Aero 15 (15-X9) review: Keyboard & Trackpad

The Aero's keyboard stretches across the entire base, and even includes a numberpad. The layout is fine, with full-size space and enter keys, and you get per-key RGB LED backlighting that can be altered or disabled via software. The buttons have ample travel for a machine of this size - alongside a consistent typing action. The base is reasonably solid, and we had no problems hammering through documents.

It's not perfect, however. The buttons aren't particularly tactile: they feel muddy and indistinct when they're pushed down. It means that they don't feel light or clicky, especially when compared to the rapid snap of the buttons on the Dell and MacBook.

The Aero's typing quirks won't slow anyone down, but you'll want to look elsewhere if you want a keyboard that offers a lighter and faster typing experience. The trackpad is fine, though. It has a smooth glass surface that supports multi-touch, and the buttons are good - snappy and shallow enough to get close to a proper desktop mouse.

Gigabyte Aero 15 (15-X9) review: Display

There are two different kinds of screens available across the Aero 15 range. Our 15-X9 has a 4K IPS panel with a 60Hz refresh rate, while a 1080p, 144Hz IPS version is also available. Both are calibrated by Pantone to deliver superior colour accuracy.

The Full HD, 144Hz version is better if you want some after-hours gaming, or if you work in applications where smooth animation is important. The 4K option, conversely, is better for work where precision or extra screen real estate is more prized.

The Dell XPS 15 is available with Full HD or 4K panels, with the latter calibrated to handle the Adobe RGB colour gamut - a key attribute for design work. The MacBook Pro has a 2,880 x 1,800 IPS screen that can't match quite the Gigabyte or Dell 4K panels for sharpness or screen real estate, despite its overall quality.

It's a solid specification, but the Aero didn't deliver particularly good colours. The colour temperature, for starters, sits at 7,118K - a little too far from the 6,500K target for a laptop that's supposed to be ideal for design. Similarly, the average Delta E of 3.95 is mediocre - not bad, but not as good as it could be. As a result, colours look a little tepid.

Those results also mean that the screen's colours aren't quite comparable with how colours will look in print, or on displays with better calibration. It's a shame that the colours are a little chilly and underwhelming, because the screen can display nearly 100% of the sRGB and Adobe colour gamuts.

That won't influence many kinds of work tasks, where resolution and contrast are more important - but it does mean that the Gigabyte's screen is not suitable for situations where colours are key, like design work or professional photo editing.

The colour situation is a shame, because contrast and uniformity are both better. The Aero's peak brightness level of 380cd/m2 is excellent - good enough that the screen doesn't lose any clarity beneath bright office lights. The black measurement of 0.23cd/m2 is just as good, and those figures deliver a contrast ratio of 1,652:1.

That's great, and it ensures that the Aero's panel has loads of depth and punch, with dark areas rendered with loads of depth and bright colours handled with vibrancy and punch. Uniformity is excellent too. The screen's backlight strength only deviates by 4% at its worst point, and it's better in most areas of the screen.

The Gigabyte's screen has a 4K resolution, great coverage and impressive contrast, making it effective for plenty of different work situations. However, its colours are a little chilly, and not as accurate as they could be. That's disappointing for a Pantone panel, and it means that the Gigabyte is not suitable for work where extreme colour accuracy is required - like in certain design or photography situations. If you do need more colour accuracy, the Dell XPS 15 is better.

Gigabyte Aero 15 (15-X9) review: Hardware & Performance

Under the Aero's hood you'll find a 32GB of DDR4 RAM and a Core i9-8950HK, which is one of the most powerful mobile CPUs that Intel builds.

It's got six cores, a base speed of 2.9GHz, and can reach 4.3GHz across all cores and 4.8GHz on one and two cores. It's also overclockable and has 12MB of L3 cache, and in this machine its performance is dynamically managed by Gigabyte's software, which claims to ramp up the Aero's abilities in tasks where extra grunt is required.

The Core i9 was also included in the latest Apple MacBook Pro 15, and it's better than the Core i7-8750H that's usually in high-end laptops. That chip also has six cores, but it has weaker base and boost clocks of 2.2GHz and 4.1GHz as well as a smaller cache. The Gigabyte is available with Core i9 and Core i7 CPUs - and the Dell and Apple machines can also be configured with both chips.

The Core i9 CPU zipped through our benchmarks to deliver an overall result of 206. That's significantly quicker than the MacBook Pro, which used the same Core i9 CPU, 32GB of RAM and a weaker GPU to score 173.

Machines with the more conventional i7-8750H often score around 170 in benchmarks, so you're getting a significant boost over the familiar Core i7 silicon too. It's a good bill of health that'll see the Core i9 chip handle almost anything, from video and photo applications to CAD tools and huge databases.

However, more testing reveals that this chip isn't as quick as it could be. When the CPU was tasked with single-core workloads, it peaked at around 4GHz - and when it was handling multi-core tasks in ran between 3.8GHz and 4GHz. In a CPU stress-test, with all cores at 100% load, the chip peaked at 3.5GHz. With the CPU and GPU stressed at 100%, the CPU hovered between 3.2GHz and 3.4GHz.

Those speeds are a long way short of what the Core i9 can theoretically achieve, and they mean that you're not getting maximum performance. The throttling does make some sense, though - with the CPU stress-tested the chip peaked at 73C, and with the entire rig stressed the CPU topped out at 90C. The chassis clearly wouldn't be able to cope if the CPU were left unfettered.

The Gigabyte produced modest fan noise during a CPU stress-test, but was louder with the whole system stress-tested. The noise is noticeable, and it's louder than the Dell and Apple machines - but it's not the worst we've heard. It can be drowned out by using a headset or just by working in a busy office, and we're also pleased that the exterior never became too warm.

The Core i9 CPU is paired with RTX 2070 graphics. It's one of Nvidia's more powerful mobile chipsets - although Gigabyte has relied on the Max-Q version, which means reduced clock speeds to improve efficiency at the expense of performance.

Nevertheless, the Aero easily beats the competition. The Dell only wields the older, slower GTX 1050 Ti, while Apple lags behind with underwhelming AMD Radeon GPUs. The Gigabyte's GPU delivered a score of 121.07fps in Cinebench's OpenGL benchmark, which replicates graphics-intensive workloads. That's about 20fps ahead of the GTX 1050 Ti.

You get extra graphics power with this machine, and you also get additional features, like Nvidia Ray-Tracing and DLSS. They have limited usefulness now, but it's worth having if they become a big deal in future graphic design applications.

The rest of the Gigabyte's specification is impressive. There's a 1TB Intel 760p SSD as well as Killer-branded Ethernet and dual-band 802.11ac wireless. The extra memory and large SSD are beneficial for work and play, although those networking chips will only come to the fore in games.

The Gigabyte's 2,416 exc VAT price compares well to rivals with similar hardware, too. To get an equivalent Dell XPS 15, with the Core i9 CPU and 32GB of memory, you'll have to spend 2,666 exc VAT - and that only gets you the GTX 1050 Ti GPU, which is the only graphics option available for that machine. If you want an equivalent MacBook Pro 15, it'll cost you a mighty 2,999 exc VAT, and that's with a weaker AMD graphics chip.

Gigabyte has kitted the Aero out with a 94Wh battery that offers surprising longevity for a machine with gaming DNA. In our tests, the battery life came in at 6hrs 35mins - a little behind the MacBook Pro, and a couple of hours behind the latest Dell machines.

You'll be able to nurse the Gigabyte through a day's work away from the mains if you use low-intensity applications and keep the screen brightness down, but only just. Also remember that tougher work will slash the battery life - expect four hours (or less) if you run applications that hammer the CPU and GPU.

Gigabyte Aero 15 (15-X9) review: Different Models

Alternative specifications are available if the Core i9 CPU is overkill - or if you want more GPU power. The Aero 15-Y9 has an RTX 2080 that delivers extra graphics power, and it comes with the 1080p screen variant the Core i7-8750H CPU. It costs 2,642 exc VAT.

A version of the 15-X9 is also available with the weaker Core i7 CPU, 16GB of DDR4 and the 144Hz Full HD screen alongside this review's RTX 2070 graphics core, costing 1,917 exc VAT.

The cheaper Aero 15-W9 has the Core i7 CPU and the 1080p screen, and it cuts back elsewhere with 16GB of memory and an RTX 2060 graphics core. That costs a more affordable 1,559 exc VAT, and that graphics core will still outpace the older, weaker graphics hardware inside the Dell and Apple machines.

Gigabyte Aero 15 (15-X9) review: Verdict

The Gigabyte Aero 15-X9 doesn't have as much style or finesse as its rivals, but it does deliver more power and with better value.

That approach does have its own pros and cons. The Core i9 CPU delivers a huge amount of processing power despite its throttling, and the RTX 2070 serves up more graphical grunt even though its clocks are cut back. Together, when combined with 32GB of DDR4, they create a specification that can handle a wider variety of work tasks than either rival.

The Gigabyte's thermal performance isn't awful - especially for a machine with gaming DNA - and it's still reasonably slim and light.

However, the screen doesn't live up to its billing, instead offering a high resolution and great contrast but with colours that should be better. The keyboard is divisive, and battery life is good - but some rivals last longer.

You won't get more CPU power in a laptop at this size, though, and Gigabyte's machine offers it with more GPU power and a lower price than the competition. The Aero 15-X9 isn't a flawless mobile workstation, but it's a good option if you need more power than other machines at this size can deliver.

Verdict

It can’t make full use of its power, but this laptop still delivers loads of performance inside a relatively slim and light chassis

Processor: 2.9GHzGHz Intel Core i9-8950HK

RAM: 32GB DDR4

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q 8GB

Storage: 1TB Intel 760p M.2 SSD

Display: 15.6in 3,840 x 2,160 IPS

Operating system: Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Optical: N/A

Connectivity: Dual-band 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.0

Ports: 3 x USB 3.1, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 1 x Thunderbolt 3, 1 x audio, 1 x SD card, 1 x HDMI 2.0

Dimensions: 356 x 250 x 19mm

Weight: 2kg

Warranty: 2yr

Nvidia has unveiled a high-performance data science workstation in collaboration with the world's leading OEMs and system builders.

HP, Dell and Lenovo are among the first wave of global providers to deliver the new workstations, which are aimed at helping data scientists, analysts and engineers quickly wrangle data and boost productivity.

The workstations will be powered by Nvidia's high-end Quadro RTX GPUs and CUDA-X-AI acceleration libraries. This underpinning technology will arm data scientists in fields ranging from finance to retail with the computational power needed to prepare, process and analyse data.

Tom Tobul, VP, speciality commercial client solutions at Dell, said of the Nvidia partnership: "Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies are game-changers for businesses embarking on digital transformation efforts For organisations of all sizes, there's a huge opportunity to speed up processes and deliver tailored services to increase customer loyalty, engagement and satisfaction.

"Dell is in a unique position to offer edge to core to cloud solutions and expertise to customers looking to implement AI and ML into their workloads. Dell Precision workstations, in combination with Nvidia's reference architecture for data science, will help to streamline data into useful and actionable information while updating IT infrastructure with technology that best suits a customer's needs."

Speaking at GTC 2019, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that the new workstations "allow data scientists to develop predictive models that can revolutionise their business".

"Enterprises are eager to unlock the value of their business data using machine learning and are hiring at an unprecedented rate, data scientists who require powerful workstations architected specifically for their needs," he said.

Addressing journalists at his post-keynote Q&A session, Huang stressed that the rapidly-growing importance of data science is evident by the the surge in uptake in education.

"It is the most popular course in school, the most oversubscribed course in school. It is likely going to be a required class for every single field, from mathematics to computer science, from oceanography to biology and chemistry," he said. "[A data scientist] is the most sought-after professional. The reason for that is because we all have so much data, and for the very first time we have the methodology to predict the future with the data we have today."

The Nvidia-powered data scientist systems are available immediately through HP Z Workstations, Lenovo AI Workstations and the Dell Precision line.

There's no such thing as 'one size fits all' when it comes to business IT hardware. While one business may need simple machines to run the simplest of tasks (such as sending and receiving emails, the ability to create and view documents and run little other software), other businesses and even departments may need something to deal with more intensive tasks.

Take, for example, the graphics and design industry. The admin side can be handled by standard machines but when rendering, 3D modelling and video editing comes into play, something more powerful may be required.

When the standard MacBook Pro starts struggling, it's time to start looking for a more robust piece of kit. Although you could go down the route of the super PC, such as the Scan 3XS WI6000 Viz or the PC Specialist Axiom, there are alternatives that offer a decent power upgrade, with a lower price point.

One such machine is the Dell Precision 5820, an entry-level workstation that has been designed specifically to handle tasks that have outstripped the standard, consumer PCs, but aren't quite on the same level as the aforementioned computers. It's built to deal with "moderate-to-high intensity" for businesses that are running out of capacity with their standard machines, such as design agencies, graphics professionals, video editors and can handle everyday activities seamlessly.

The model on test is a relatively basic spec as far as workstations go no sign of a dual-socket CPU or twin graphics cards here but it's highly configurable at the point of purchase, maxing out with a 14-core Xeon W processor and twin professional-grade GPUs courtesy of either Nvidia or AMD. There's also plenty of scope for expanding and upgrading it in-house, in case your needs evolve over time.

Dell Precision 5820 review: Processor and Memory

The beating heart of this workstation is a quad-core Intel Xeon W-2125, which runs at a nominal 4GHz but with a top 4.5GHz Turbo Mode for one core. Although this is a quad-core processor, it supports Hyper-Threading, so presents eight threads, for improved rendering abilities. This CPU is from the Skylake-W range, and close to the bottom of that range, but offers high single-core frequencies that will be good for modelling software.

The processor has been partnered with 16GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 SDRAM, which is a reasonable starter amount, but surprisingly supplied as two 8GB DIMMs. This does leave six DIMM slots free for upgrading to the system's maximum of 256GB. But it also doesn't take advantage of the quad-channel memory architecture of the Xeon Skylake-W. Although Core i7 Skylakes use a dual-channel controller, the Xeon W version has twice as many channels, for twice the bandwidth, and you will miss out on that with this configuration.

Dell Precision 5820 review: Graphics Acceleration

However, the graphics provision is very sensible for the rest of the specification, which is aimed at mainstream modelling and design work. The Nvidia Quadro P4000 is currently the most popular high-end professional graphics card for everyday content creation tasks. This is from NVIDIA's Pascal GPU generation, and boasts a hefty 1,792 CUDA cores, delivering up to 5.3 TLOPS of 32-bit single precision floating point performance.

The P4000 also includes a healthy 8GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, capable of 243GB/sec bandwidth. Yet despite these powerful specifications, the P4000 only consumes 105W, so it can provide a lot of modelling ability whilst remaining relatively eco-friendly.

Dell Precision 5820 review: Storage

As with the rest of the specification, our 5820 sample comes with an entry-level storage allocation. The 512GB capacity will be enough for the operating system and everyday applications, but heavy data requirements such as video editing would require further storage provision, either on the workstation itself or connected via high-speed networking.

On the plus side, the main storage is in the form of a Class 40 NVMe Solid State Disk, which will be very quick to load your software. Running CrystalDiskMark 6, this drive delivers 3,105.7MB/sec reading, which is closest to the best, but 457.3MB/sec writing, which is slower than some faster SATA-connected SSDs.

Dell Precision 5820 review: Chassis Design

Other than the warranty and support backing provided by a huge company like Dell, one of the reasons to buy a workstation from this company is the design of the chassis, which will have been specifically oriented towards the intended use. The 5820 chassis is extremely easy to open, using a catch on the side panel, although a tab at the rear allows this to be padlocked shut. The interior is efficiently laid out, with tool-free access to many components.

The four front-accessible drive bays sit behind a plastic grille that is released to pivot out with the press of a switch. These are 3.5-in bays with quick-release caddies, although one contains the NVMe SSD, whilst the others have SATA ports at the rear for drives to slide into. Above this are some useful ports, including a headphone minijack, two USB 3.1 Type C ports, two Type A USB ports, and an SD card reader. There's even a space for a slimline optical drive here, although this wasn't populated in our sample.

Dell Precision 5820 review: Processor Performance

We ran a host of benchmarks on the 5820 to give a complete and thorough assessment of its performance. In our in-house benchmarks, the system achieved a decent score of 141 in image editing, a more pedestrian 154 in video editing, and relatively lowly 165 in multitasking, resulting in 157 overall. The single-core speed is good for applications like Photoshop, but with only four cores, multi-threaded tasks aren't so impressive. For example, Scan's 3XS WI4000 Viz, with a six-core processor, manages 278 overall in our Media Benchmarks.

Similarly, as a system for rendering 3D, our 5820 sample is merely mediocre, with 940 in the CPU portion of Maxon Cinebench R15, where the Scan system manages 1,559. The Dell workstation's processor cores run fast at 4GHz, but there are only four of them, and even Hyper-Threading can't make this system an ideal one for more than a quick test render at preview resolutions. The GeekBench 4 CPU score was similarly as expected for a quad-core processor at this frequency, with 5,240 in the single-core testing and 18,228 in the multi-core portion.

Dell Precision 5820 review: Graphics Performance

In GFXBench 4, the P4000 only managed 1,425.08 frames onscreen, but 14,992.5 frames offscreen in Car Chase, and just 964.289 frames onscreen but 21,216.6 frames offscreen, implying that it's not very well optimised for this test. Nevertheless, modelling is where this system sits most comfortably, and that is reflected in its SPECviewperf 12.1 scores.

The result of 131.14 in 3dsmax-05 is on par for a Quadro P4000, around the same as the Scan system, which has identical graphics. Likewise, 109.84 in maya-04 is on par with Scan. So this system would be good for 3D modelling for animation, and 168.13 in sw-03 shows strong abilities in the popular SolidWorks product design application.

SPECviewperf 12.1 Results

Overall, the P4000 performs well in a broad range of engineering, product design and content creation applications. The Precision 5820 will be a great tool for any of these types of modelling work. Similarly, the result of 180.34 in the OpenGL portion of Maxon Cinebench R15 confirms this system's abilities when animating 3D with Maxon Cinema 4D, although we have seen faster results, with Scan managing 226.95.

The graphics provide plenty of benefit available for GPU-powered rendering. The LuxMark 3.1 result of 3,149 is very good, as we expect from a Quadro P4000, showing strong OpenCL performance. Similarly, OctaneBench 3 produces a score of 104.26, which implies strong CUDA capabilities, and on par for the number of cores available on the P4000.

Dell Precision 5820 review: Verdict

The Dell Precision 5820 is a relatively quiet workstation in operation, and the configuration we were sent consumed less than 200W even when under heavy load. However, it's a distinctly middle-of-the-road machine in many ways; it's worryingly expensive compared to some of the competition, and the performance it offers isn't really as good as it needs to be in order to justify its price.

Nevertheless, it's a well-constructed, solid workstation with excellent design and content creation abilities, and sure to find favour in larger agencies and media companies.

Like the vast majority of Razer's output, the Blade 15 is made for gaming - and pretty serious gaming too, judging by its dedicated 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q graphics processor and hexa-core Intel Core i7-8750H.

Still, could such muscular hardware give it a second life as a mobile workstation? It's certainly an interesting prospect, as even this top-of-the-line 4K model we've been using is thousands of pounds cheaper than the 15in MacBook Pro model we tested last year. Drop down to one with a more equivalent 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD, and Apple's laptop is still a lot more expensive at 2,474 before tax. The 2,050 Blade 15, therefore, could be a canny alternative.

Razer Blade 15 (2018) review: Design & connectivity

The 2.1kg Blade 15 is heavier than the 15in MacBook Pro, which weighs 1.83kg, though by gaming laptop standards this is one of the more portable ones. It's also a couple of millimetres thicker, at 17.3mm when closed, though the upside is a far better selection of ports than the MacBook Pro.

Whereas Apple's design relies solely on four USB-C ports and a headphone jack for data, video output and peripherals, the Blade 15 serves up three full-size USB 3.1 ports, a Thunderbolt 3-enabled USB-C port of its own, a full-size HDMI output, a mini-DisplayPort and a headphone jack. It's clearly more readily-equipped for things like mice, external hard disks and desk monitors, with much less need for a cumbersome dock.

Strangely, there's no Ethernet port on this 4K model, unlike the 'Basic' 1080p version of the Blade 15, but it still supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

It's a well-made laptop overall, with a solid-feeling aluminium chassis and a firm hinge - and, as opposed to a lot of gaming laptops, it's smart enough aesthetically to use in an office without getting strange looks. It's only really lacking a fingerprint reader, though it's also worth noting that there's nothing directly comparable to the MacBook Pro's TouchBar controls.

Razer Blade 15 (2018) review: Keyboard, trackpad & touchscreen

That said, you do get touchscreen capability - which works well enough - plus something else the MacBook Pro doesn't have: full RGB backlighting for the keyboard. More importantly, Razer has done fine work with the keyboard's general usability: the chiclet keys are nicely sized and spaced, and key travel is noticeably deeper than on the MacBook Pro. This is partly down to intentional design choices on Apple's part - the MacBook Pro favours a lighter actuation force over travel depth - but we do feel that the Blade 15's keyboard is easier to get used to.

The trackpad is smaller than the MacBook Pro's gargantuan pad, but is still comfortably proportioned for the 15in screen. Its smooth texture and general responsiveness are easy to like, too. Although this is a clamshell-style laptop and not a convertible, we also found it quite natural to flick between touchscreen and trackpad inputs.

Razer Blade 15 (2018) review: Display

Touchscreen tech does bump up the price, as does the 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, but the latter's upside is a much higher pixel count than the 15in MacBook Pro. The Blade 15's contrast, which we measured at a high 1,486:1, is higher too.

Otherwise, Apple's laptop performed better in most of our tests. The Blade 15's peak brightness of 397cd/m2 and rather high average delta E of 4.45 both come up short of the MacBook Pro, which also covered 99% of the DCI-P3 gamut, whereas the Blade 15 covered 88%. Knowing this, and the Blade 15's lower colour accuracy, the MacBook Pro's would likely serve better for photo and video editing even with its lower resolution.

That said, the Blade 15 hardly looks bad. It covers 99.4% of the narrower sRGB colour gamut, so it's very vibrant indeed, and its high brightness helps counteract the reflective effects of its glossy surface. It may not be perfect for media editing, but we'd happily use it for anything else.

Razer Blade 15 (2018) review: Hardware and performance

The Blade 15 is easily one of the more powerful mainstream laptops around, with its Core i7-8750H (which can Turbo Boost from 2.2GHz all the way up to 4.1GHz), 16GB of DDR4 memory and GTX 1070 Max-Q. In our 4K benchmarks, it scored 157 overall, which is lower than the MacBook Pro's 173 - although not that much lower, considering the latter had what should on paper be a massive advantage in its Core i9-8950HK.

Also of note is that the most recent Dell XPS 15 scored 178 with the same Core i7-8750H. The Blade 15 gets pretty toasty to the touch when under load, so there's likely some throttling going on.

Elsewhere, the MacBook Pro beats the Blade 15's GeekBench 4 scores, specifically 4,959 in the single-core test and 17,545 in the multi-core test. However, Apple hasn't won the victory it might have appeared to: in Cinebench R15's CPU test, the Blade 15's score of 924 was only barely behind the MacBook Pro's 968, and the GPU-reliant OpenGL test actually favoured the Blade 15, with its 111fps result beating the MacBook Pro's 105fps.

This brings us that GTX 1070. It may be a less powerful Max-Q edition, but it still runs rings around the MacBook Pro's GPU, the AMD Radeon Pro 560X. Take the LuxMark graphics test: whereas the MacBook Pro managed 1,533, the Blade 15 sailed to 3,112. Razer's laptop is obviously the better device for modelling and rendering, then, despite its slower CPU.

That's not to say that it's on par with a proper workstation - in SpecViewPerf, results like 116.99 in 3DSmax-06, 193.87 in maya-05 and 66.56 in sw-04 put the GTX 1070 Max-Q below Nvidia's Quadro P3200, laptops equipped with which can be found for around the same price as the Blade 15. For a moonlighting gaming machine, though, it's more capable than you might think - and certainly better on graphics performance than the even more costly MacBook Pro.

Sadly, it also has a serious weakness in battery life. It only lasted 2hrs 34mins in our tests - less than half the time of the MacBook Pro as well as that of the XPS 15. We'd point a finger at the thirsty 4K display, but then the XPS 15 we tested also had this resolution, and it still managed 7hrs 14mins.

Razer Blade 15 (2018) review: Storage

512GB is plenty of space to start with, and the Blade 15 gives it to you for far less cash than the MacBook Pro. This comes at the cost of speed, however: we measured a sequential read speed of 1,301.8MB/sec and a sequential write speed 486.6MB/sec. These aren't terrible results, but as the MacBook Pro surpassed 2,600MB/sec in both tests, they're not great either.

Then again, in practice we never felt like the SSD was slowing us down. The Blade 15 boots to the login screen almost instantaneously, and apps open just as quickly.

Razer Blade 15 (2018) review: Verdict

Outside of its resolution and graphical prowess, the Blade 15 is a technically inferior desktop replacement to the Core i9 MacBook Pro: it's not as effective at colour-dependent work like photo editing, its endurance away from the mains is terrible, and its storage is slower.

Nevertheless, a cash saving in excess of 400 before tax - at minimum - buys the Blade 15 quite a lot of slack. In fact, we're not even convinced that the MacBook Pro's CPU performance is sufficiently higher to justify spending so much more - Razer's laptop will still happily cope with hardcore multithreading, and its far stronger GPU arguably makes it a more balanced laptop overall.

On top of that, you'd be getting the crispness of 4K, plus more extensive and varied physical connectivity. This won't kill off the MacBook Pro, but it is a viable alternative.

Specifications

Just when you thought the competition between Intel and AMD's processors had settled down a bit, AMD is piling on even more pressure. Hot on the heels of the amazing 32-core 2990WX and second generation 16-core 2950X comes another round of new CPUs, including the 12-core Ryzen Threadripper 2920X and 24-core 2970WX. Here we take a look at the latter in an Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 workstation.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 review: Processor and Memory

Since our first test of the 2990WX, we have noticed that whilst this CPU has a nominal 250W TDP, many supposedly compatible cooling systems can't quite keep up with taming 32 cores running at full pelt, although our initial review system had this aspect covered. The 24-core 2970WX, however, has a nominal 180W TDP so has a bit more headroom when used with 250W-capable water coolers. In theory, then, it could supply more of its performance more of the time.

The 2970WX uses the second-generation Ryzen core, which has had a few tweaks over the original version, although these are all under the hood. It still has virtual threading, so presents 48 virtual cores from its 24 physical ones. The base and boost frequencies are the same as the 2990WX -- 3GHz and 4.2GHz respectively. Perhaps the biggest feature of the latest Threadrippers is Precision Boost Overclock (PBO), which dynamically increases individual core clock speeds depending on power delivery and cooling capabilities.

This is why we think the 2970WX is particularly interesting. Despite the 180W TDP of this processor, Armari has still chosen to include the triple-fan Enermax Liqtech TF4 360mm water cooling system, which can cope with TDPs in excess of 500W. This will mean that cooling will not be the limiting factor for PBO, and potentially more of the cores can run at close to 4.2GHz for longer. We have included an extra benchmark to test this, which we'll talk more about later.

One thing that isn't new, however, is the motherboard. Armari has stuck with the ASRock Taichi X399 that arrived with the first Threadripper generation, which is compatible with the new CPUs after a simple BIOS update. The RAM is also the same quartet of 8GB 3,000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 DIMMs, for a total of 32GB of memory. This leaves four slots free for upgrades upto the motherboard's maximum of 128GB, and ECC memory is supported although not used in this case.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 review: Graphics Acceleration

Until the NVIDIA Quadro RTX graphics accelerators arrive, AMD has a reasonably competitive offering for professional 3D. The most recent addition was the Radeon Pro WX 8200, included here, which costs half as much as the WX 9100 but offers much more than half the performance. It boasts 3,584 stream processors versus 4,096, but with the same 1,200MHz base clock and slightly higher 1,530MHz boost. There is only 8GB of HBM2 memory, however, half that of the WX 9100, but here again it runs a little faster at 1,000MHz rather than 945MHz. This may seem slow compared to GDDR5 memory, but an extremely wide 2,048-bit bus means that the bandwidth is actually a whopping 512GB/sec.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 review: Storage

Armari has been relatively frugal in the number of storage devices supplied, providing only a M.2 NVMe SSD. However, it's a quick and capacious one in the shape of a Samsung PM981. According to CrystalDiskMark 6, this SSD is capable of 3,302.3MB/sec reading and 2,390.8MB/sec writing. Although no HDDs are included with this system, there is a caddy that slides out for a couple of 3.5in drives, and a plate behind the motherboard for a third drive. However, the huge radiator at the top of the chassis, and associated pipework, means that the other drive cage options afforded by the chassis won't be available.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 review: Chassis Design

The difference between Armari's Magnetar and Gravistar ranges is that the former uses the company's bespoke custom chassis designs whilst the latter takes something more generic off the shelf. In the case of this system, it's a BeQuiet! Silent Base 601 case, which is still a nicely designed piece of kit. One of the main benefits of this chassis, however, is that it has room for the aforementioned triple-fan Enermax cooling. As we have already noted, this has imposed a limitation on internal expansion potential, but the spacious interior makes for excellent airflow.

You get three USB ports on the front top edge of the case, alongside the power button, audio minijacks, and a fan control switch. There are no 5.25in bays on the front - BeQuiet! obviously doesn't see the need for these anymore. You get two 3.5in bays in the bottom, alongside the 850W EVGA SuperNOVA G3 GOLD power supply.

The ASRock motherboard supplies rear connectivity, including eight USB 3.0 ports and USB 3.1 Gen 2 in both Type A and Type C formats. There are lots of networking options, with two Gigabit LAN ports plus two connectors for 802.11ac WiFi antennas. You also get the usual7.1-channel analog surround sound outputs, microphone input, and a S/PDIF digital connection.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 review: Processor Performance

Since the processor is the newest component here, we were most interested in how it performed. Strangely, it was actually slightly slower overall in our Media Benchmarks than the 16-core 2950X, managing 425, although this is still a hugely quick result. It managed an identical 170 in image editing, a slightly slower 398 in video encoding, but faster 528 in multi-tasking, as you might expect with the extra cores. The results of 4,432 single-core and 37,510 multi-core in GeekBench 4 are also very impressive.

However, the real benefits are most likely to be found in tasks that can take full advantage of the 24 cores. The result of 4,651 in Maxon Cinebench R15's CPU render is 41% faster than the 2950X, so you are getting most of the benefit of the extra cores, whilst the 32-core 2990WX is 23% quicker still.

Nevertheless, the Cinebench render doesn't take very long, meaning PBO won't be having a significant effect, so we also tried the much more gruelling Blender Gooseberry render test. This took 899.89 seconds, compared to 793.32 on the 2990WX, and 1773.46 on a 1950X (we didn't have a 2950X to hand for this test). In other words, you get 12% less performance for 25% few cores than the 2990WX, so you are hitting a sweet spot for performance over an extended multi-core render.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 review: Graphics Performance

AMD has obviously tweaked the drivers on the Radeon Pro WX 8200 since we last tested it, because there were some clear graphics performance improvements. In SPECviewperf 13, the 3dsmax-06 result has jumped from 117.57 to 141.97, which would place it on par or ahead of a NVIDIA Quadro P4000 or P5000. The maya-05 score remains an excellent 248.59, which is again ahead of the P4000 and P5000. The catia-05 score of 241.01 is ahead of a P4000, although the creo-02 score of 181.36 and snx-03 result of 276.9 are a little behind. Nevertheless, with 145.36 in sw-04 this is still a very capable card for engineering and product design. But its clear forte is 3D animation with 3ds Max and Maya.

In GFX Bench 4, the WX 8200 achieved 5,947.9 onscreen and 1,3044.3 off screen in Car Chase, alongside 6,626.47 onscreen and 10,509 offscreen in Manhattan. There's lots of OpenCL power available, too, with 4,767 in LuxMark 3.1, which bodes well for GPGPU rendering via ProRender, although the 8GB of frame buffer will prove a limitation for some scenes. This is not enough to run the Blender Gooseberry render on the GPU, for example.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A 24c TR4 review: Verdict

Overall, this is another very promising AMD package from Armari. The 24-core Threadripper 2970WX, with adequate cooling, still provides amazing multi-threaded performance whilst shaving around 450 off the price of the 32-core 2990WX. If you want a great balance of content creation and rendering capability, the Armari Gravistar BR-850 24c TR4 provides the best of both worlds.

Verdict

A supremely well-proportioned system, combining great modelling ability with potent multi-threaded rendering that’s not too far behind a 32-core AMD Threadripper workstation.

The Apple MacBook Pro's stylish line of professional-grade notebooks has long been the port of call for anyone looking for solid performance delivered in red carpet style (barring some slight hiccups with the 2017 model's keyboard). For years models have come and gone and every time they've impressed, offering unrivalled power and beautiful, contemporary design.

2018's model is delivered with a modest amount of new additions, all hardware, all of them interesting, and each of them just as significant as the last making this the most tantalising model yet. Read on to see what we make of Apple's bigger, badder 15-inch model to see if all the new additions are worth writing home about.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Design

The timeless MacBook design has gone unchanged from the previous iteration, not that it needed to. Still sexy and sleek, it sports the 2017 model's chassis and if it followed in the iPhone's naming evolution, it would be the MacBook Pro 4S.

The design is truly minimalist with clean-cut lines and with a total absence of the unnecessary. But even though the design is simple and wastes no space, it still strikes you as something took a great deal of time to perfect and it's unquestionably the most aesthetically pleasing laptop we've ever tested.

It may be 1.6cm thick and 1.8kg heavy, but it's still perfectly portable and fits easily in any reasonably sized bag without being too overbearing. It's not quite as portable as the LG Gram but it's much more slender than other 15in laptops including the Surface Book 2 and Dell XPS 15. On the plus side, Apple's signature aluminium unibody chassis maintains its feeling of high-quality, sturdy reliability.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Keyboard and Trackpad

One of the comparatively few changes Apple has made to the most recent iteration of the MacBook Pro is a new keyboard, which now features a membrane underlay between the keycaps and the butterfly switches. This is supposedly to make the keys quieter (because heaven knows the previous model was all but deafening) but is in actuality designed to prevent dust and other particulate matter gumming up the keyboard - an issue which has caused widespread hardware failures.

While we didn't think there was much of a difference at first, it's immediately apparent when you compare it side-by-side with the previous model that it is noticeably quieter. Unfortunately, it has made the feedback a little bit less defined, but it's still a total joy to use and is firmly in our top three keyboards ever. The addition of this protective measure should also ensure that the newer MacBook Pros have a longer lifespan than their predecessors, which is definitely good news.

The trackpad also remains unchanged - it's still huge and expansive, with great feedback and excellent gesture support. Other manufacturers, take note: this is how all trackpads should be.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Display

Aside from higher overall specifications, the main reason to pick up the 15in MacBook Pro over its 13in cousin is the extra screen real-estate that comes with an increased footprint. Sure enough, the 15.6in panel feels vast, with plenty of room for multiple windows and the 2,880 x 1,800 Retina IPS panel ensures that everything looks smooth and crisp.

Apple has finally incorporated its True Tone display technology into the MacBook Pro. First seen on the iPad Pro, this technology uses a number of sensors to measure the ambient lighting conditions in your surroundings and automatically adjust the white balance of the MacBook Pro's screen to ease eye-strain from staring at the screen. However, if you're a photo editor or graphic designer, you'll want to turn this off pretty sharpish, as it'll play havoc with the colour accuracy of the display.

With True Tone disabled, the screen is predictably outstanding from a technical standpoint. Out of the box, the screen is set to a custom colour space, which Apple refers to as simply 'Colour LCD' in the display settings but seems to map almost identically to the DCI-P3 colour space. It's virtually perfect, too - it covered 99% of the DCI-P3 colour space according to our tests, and the rich, vivid colours are a sight to behold. A scorching brightness of 445cd/m2 and superb 1,409:1 contrast ratio is simply the icing on the cake.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Specs and hardware

All of these changes are interesting, but the really cool updates that Apple has made to the MacBook Pro are under the hood. Jony Ive and co have been hard at work ensuring that this year's model is the fastest MacBook ever built and to put it bluntly, they've knocked it out of the park.

Before we dive into the specifics of how it did in our tests, let's take a minute to look at Apple's typically byzantine configuration options. There are two base specifications available, the details of which you'll find in the table below.

There are various upgrade options available too, the most notable of which is the ability to bump the processor up to a hexa-core Core i9 beast, with a base clock speed of 2.9GHz. You can also upgrade the storage allocation to a maximum of 4TB and increase the memory to 32GB. If you opt for the cheaper base configuration, you can also upgrade the GPU to the more powerful Radeon Pro 560X.

Our review unit is the top-end model, which includes the aforementioned 2.9GHz hexa-core Intel Core i9-8950HK, along with 32GB of RAM, a whopping 4TB SSD and an AMD Radeon Pro 560X with 4BG of GDDR5 RAM. This monster configuration carries an equally monstrous price, though; 5,174, to be precise - and that's excluding VAT.

That's an alarmingly large number, but put down the torch and pitchfork - it's not as bad as it looks. Almost 3,000 of that figure is the 4TB SSD. Go for the entry-level 512GB drive, and the price comes down to a much more reasonable 2,774 (excluding VAT). That's still not small change but bear in mind that it does buy you some seriously impressive performance.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Performance

This is amply demonstrated by its scores in our benchmark tests. Our demanding 4K benchmarks saw it rack up an absolutely bonkers score of 173 - considerably ahead of its predecessor's score of 138, and way ahead of even Dell's superb XPS 15 2-in-1. This is a seriously quick machine, and Apple's not kidding when it says it's the fastest MacBook ever.

It's not here to play, either; this is a workhorse through and through, and it proves it in our workstation benchmarks. It beat out the Dell Precision 5820 - a professional desktop workstation that costs more than 2,500 - in the CineBench CPU rendering test, and also scored well in the GeekBench tests, beating the mighty iMac Pro in single core operations.

It can't quite rival top-end desktop workstations like the Scan 3XS WI6000 Viz or the Armari Magnetar S16T-RW1000G2 when it comes to GPU-based rendering, but that's hardly surprising given that the MacBook Pro is using a mobile graphics chip compared to full-sized graphics cards. The fact that it's even being considered in the same ballpark is a testament to how capable it is when it comes to enterprise workloads.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Battery life

Apple has increased that battery capacity for this year's MacBook Pro range, in an effort to maintain the same battery life as the previous generation. This was always going to be a big ask considering the power-hungry components it's using, and sadly Apple hasn't quite managed to pull it off. The 15in MacBook Pro from 2017 had a battery life of just under 9hrs, but the new version only manages 8hrs 1min.

On the other hand, this is no mean feat given that's the 2018 edition has a hexa-core i9 chip and a Radeon Pro GPU hammering away inside it; the fact that a workstation-grade laptop will do a full day of work on battery power alone is pretty damn impressive.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Ports and features

This iteration of the MacBook Pro is predominantly specs-focused, which means there isn't a huge amount of new features to talk about. Aside from the aforementioned True Tone display and the new 'quieter' keyboard, there's nothing new on show here.

The biggest feature is still the OLED Touch Bar, but it's still more luxury than necessity - while we found ourselves using it intermittently, it's not really that much more convenient than using the traditional shortcuts and navigation methods. Unlike it's smaller 13in stablemate, there's no non-Touch Bar configuration available, so if you're not a fan, you'll simply have to deal with it.

As with the previous incarnation, connectivity comes courtesy of four Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports and just like last year's model, you'll want to invest in a dock of some kind in order to get the maximum benefit from this setup. Otherwise, you'll be left faffing around with adapters and dongles any time you want to connect any peripherals.

There is one other new feature; the MacBook Pro now supports iOS-style 'Hey Siri' voice-activation. However, we're not really sure why Apple bothered to include it. Voice commands for computers were pointless when Microsoft introduced them with Cortana, and they're just as pointless here.

Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) review: Verdict

Just when you think the competition might be starting to catch up to Apple, it manages to wow us all over again. The 15in MacBook Pro is the best professional-grade notebook, bar none. It's got power in spades, and it's wrapped up in the best-looking package ever to grace a desk.

It's also not as expensive as you might think. Sure, the top-end configuration is still the best part of 3,000, but that's about what you'd pay for a top-end mobile workstation from any other manufacturer, and frankly, none of them is a patch on the MacBook Pro.

It's speedy, stunning and not as horrendously overpriced as it initially appears. In short, if you're looking for the perfect 15in workstation, you've found it.

Verdict

Apple’s latest 15in MacBook Pro is one of the best laptops we’ve ever tested, and our favourite to boot. Combining raw power with stylish portability, it’s everything you could ever want in a 15in notebook.

AMD has been busy recently. The Armari Gravistar BR-850A we're reviewing here includes not one but two brand new components from the company. First, there's the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, which is the updated version of the 1950X we first saw in the Armari Magnetar S16T0RW1000G2. But perhaps equally exciting is the AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics, which promises performance almost as good as the higher-end WX 9100 card for about half the price. The performance both these components offer for the money have allowed Armari to offer this high-end modelling and rendering workstation for well under 3,000 exc VAT, which is actually on the affordable side for a high-end professional system.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A: Processor and Memory

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X is the little brother of the 2990WX we saw in the Armari S32T-RD1000G2 ). It's the second generation of Ryzen, and essentially half of a 2990WX, with 16 cores instead of 32. This is the same quantity as the 1950X it replaces, but the tweaked hardware has provided some performance improvements, particularly in single-core clock frequencies.

Whilst the base clock speed has gone up from 3.4GHz to 3.5GHz, the top boost clock has risen from 4GHz to 4.4GHz. This is further assisted by the new version of the Ryzen Master software, which incorporates a Precision Boost Overclock option that can dynamically increase the frequency of individual cores within the detected power and temperature envelopes for optimum performance. Each core presents itself as two virtual cores, too, so you're getting 32 threads of dynamically clocked performance, which will be great for rendering.

Previous Socket TR4 motherboards aimed at the first Threadripper generation should support the new CPUs with just a BIOS update, and our Armari review system includes the same ASRock Taichi X399 motherboard we have seen used with all our Armari Threadripper review systems. In this case, Armari has populated the motherboard with four 8GB 3,000MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 DIMMs, for a total of 32GB of memory, leaving four slots free for upgrade.

Since the 2950X has the same 180W TDP as its predecessor, you don't need such meaty cooling as with the 2990WX, but Armari still uses capable Enermax Liqtech 2 water cooling to ensure CPU thermals are kept under control.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A: Graphics Acceleration

The second exciting newcomer is the AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics. This isn't exciting because it's based on radical new technology though -- this is still a Vega 10 card like the Radeon Pro Frontier Edition, SSG and WX 9100. However, where the Frontier Edition was a limited edition, and the other two premium-grade options, the WX 8200 aims much more at the content creation mainstream, with a retail price around $1,000. This places it in the same territory as NVIDIA's Quadro P4000, and in fact it's likely to be cheaper in retail.

Despite the much lower cost than the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100, the WX 8200 isn't that far behind in terms of specification. Where the WX 9100 has 4,096 Stream Processors, the WX 8200 only has 12% fewer at 3,584. The base GPU clock is the same 1,200MHz as the WX 9100, and the boost slightly faster at 1,530MHz compared to 1,500MHz. The big difference is that the WX 8200 only has 8GB of memory compared to the WX 9100's 16GB, but it runs at a slightly faster 1,000MHz compared to 945MHz. It's the same HBM2 format, so has a massively wide 2,048-bit bus, providing a whopping 512GB/sec of frame buffer bandwidth.

Another difference is that there are only four monitor outputs instead of six, but all four are Mini DisplayPort connections, so the screen can still drive up to four Full HD or 4K screens, up to three 5K screens, or one monitor at 7,680 x 4,320. Overall, considering the price, the AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 is a professional graphics card that offers a lot for the money.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A: Storage

Workstations -- and indeed many mainstream PCs as well -- now generally come with an SSD for operating system and software, plus a larger conventional hard disk for general data storage. However, as this is a workstation on a budget, it only comes with the SSD. Nevertheless, this is a super-fast 500GB Samsung EVO 970, in M.2 NVMe form for optimum performance.

The 970 manages a very impressive 3,567.2MB/sec sustained reading and 2,377.4MB/sec writing when tested with CrystalDiskMark 6. This is right at the top end of current SSD capabilities, so your operating system and apps should load as fast as they possibly can. Although no HDD is included, the BeQuiet! case has caddies for three 3.5in drives, so you will be able to add plenty of HDDs or a RAID array if you need to. These aren't quite hot or cold swap, but they do slide out easily for hassle-free drive installation. There aren't any 5.25in front bays for an optical drive, however.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A: Chassis Design

Armari usually sends us workstations in one of its custom chassis designs, which are truly excellent. They're also very expensive, however, so for this more budget-conscious offering they used a BeQuiet! Silent Base 601 case instead. This is still a great chassis, and chosen due to its support for compatibility with the Enermax Liqtech 2 water cooling radiator.

The Silent Base 601 combines serious black panelling with flashes of orange, which is just about the right balance for a professional design studio. There is good airflow provided by large, quiet fans. The front top edge houses three USB ports, the power button, headphone and microphone minijacks, and a switch to vary the fan speed levels. The front itself is completely smooth. The power supply sits along the bottom, with its own cooling fan and two of the 3.5in drive bays, with a third bay towards the top near the CPU and RAM. Armari has included a 850W EVGA SuperNOVA G3 GOLD PSU, which should be adequate for the processor and a couple of graphics cards.

The rear is home to connectivity provided by the ASRock motherboard. There are eight USB 3.0 ports, plus USB 3.1 Gen 2 in both Type A and Type C formats. Two Gigabit LAN ports are included, as well as 7.1-channel analog surround sound outputs, microphone input, and a S/PDIF digital connection. The motherboard even has built-in 802.11ac WiFi, with twin connectors for the antennas.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A: Processor Performance

Although this workstation, with 'just' 16 cores, was never going to get close to the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX, it's still hugely capable whether you're running single- or multi-threaded apps. In fact, its overall score of 427 in our Media Benchmarks is only slightly behind the 2990WX we saw from Armari. The results of 525 in multi-tasking, 409 in video editing and 170 in image editing are also phenomenal. This will be a great all-round media creation workstation.

The Maxon Cinebench R15 rendering score of 3,307 is quite a way behind the 2990WX, as expected, but still absolutely immense for a system at this price. When time comes to render out 3D content creation projects, there's a huge amount of grunt available. This is underlined by the results of 4,981 single-core and 38,838 multi-core in GeekBench 4.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A: Graphics Performance

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950X processor is a little bit faster than the 1950X predecessor, but nothing too major. The AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 is a more interesting proposition, due to its greatly reduced price compared to the WX 9100. Picking out some key results from SPECviewperf, it manages 117.57 in 3dsmax-06, which is only 16% behind the WX 9100, and its maya-05 result of 248.59 is actually 7% ahead. The sw-04 result of 146.29 and catia-05 score of 245 are also 10% ahead. So you're actually getting better performance in many areas, for less money. We also ran tests with the Quadro P4000 in the same system, and the WX 8200 was slightly behind in 3dsmax-06, creo-02 and snx-03 but ahead in catia-05, maya-05 and sw-04. Overall, performance is similar between the two, underlining the WX 8200's value.

The story is similar with GFX Bench 4, where the Radeon Pro WX 8200 achieved 8,125.11 onscreen and 11,407 offscreen in Car Chase, alongside 7,703.38 onscreen and 9,921.2 offscreen in Manhattan. These are all on par or slightly better than the WX 9100. The Radeon Pro WX 8200 doesn't quite have as much raw OpenCL grunt as its pricier WX 9100 sibling, however, with 4,749 in LuxMark 3.1, but that's only 4% behind. Nevertheless, it will still be extremely potent for GPU compute tasks such as ProRender in Blender or GPU-enhanced video encoding.

Armari Gravistar BR-850A: Verdict

Overall, the Radeon Pro WX 8200 adds the missing piece of the puzzle AMD needed for a total solution alongside the Ryzen Threadripper. Where the latter offers similar performance to Intel's finest Core i9 for a lot less, the WX 8200 offers similar or better performance than NVIDIA's Quadro P4000 for a bit less too. Put them together, and you have a potent value proposition. The Armari Gravistar BR-850A is just about the most powerful all-round workstation you can buy for under 3,000.

Verdict

The Armari Gravistar BR-850A’s AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 alongside the Ryzen Threadripper 2950X proves to be a potent combination

AMD's original Threadripper really put the cat amongst the pigeons when it arrived towards the end of 2017. Offering many more cores than the equivalently-priced Intel alternative, it was a true return to form for AMD and great news for the professional market. Less than a year later, AMD is cranking up the pressure to a much greater level with the second Threadripper generation, and particularly the flagship Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX.

With an almost unimaginable 32 cores, this CPU has four more cores than even the Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processors in PC Specialist's barnstorming Axiom. We got our first look at the new contender in an updated version of the Armari Magnetar S16T0RW1000G2, which shipped with the previous-generation Threadripper 1950X.

Armari S32T-RD1000G2 review: Processor and Memory

The star of the show here is obviously the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX. Amazingly, the new CPU is socket-, power- and chipset-compatible with the first Threadripper generation, so in theory you can use the same motherboard with a BIOS update. In fact, Armari's S32T-RD1000G2 uses the same ASRock Taichi X399 motherboard as the S16T-RD1000G2 we looked at a few months ago.

The first stunning piece of news about the 2990WX is its core count - 32 of them, each offering two threads for a whopping 64 virtual cores. This is going to make it fly with software that is efficiently multi-threaded, such as 3D rendering applications. Contrast this with the Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs from the PC Specialist Axiom, which only offer 56 virtual cores. On top of this, the 2990WX has a faster 3GHz base clock than the 8180's 2.5GHz, and its Boost mode is higher at 4.2GHz compared to the 8180's top Turbo mode of 3.8GHz.

The true frequencies of processors have gotten very complicated of late, and in fact the 8180 can run all its cores at 3.2GHz and 20 cores at 3.5GHz. However, with some tweaking the 2990WX can run all its 32 cores at 4GHz, although AMD now has a better option via its Ryzen Master software. This now offers a setting called Precision Boost Overclock, which looks at how well your processor is being cooled, as well as electrical and power limits, alongside details of core "quality", to dynamically overclock individual cores as much as possible to provide the best possible frequency and performance for a given task.

Despite the 2990WX offering more threads and a faster clock than the Xeon Platinum 8180, it only costs 1,600 inc VAT where the latter will set you back more like 9,000 inc VAT. In fact, the 2990WX is cheaper than the 18-core Intel Core i9 7980XE, which is a truly amazing feat from AMD.

The 2990WX is a 250W TDP processor, which will mean even cooling that was great for the Threadripper 1950X might be overstretched. For this reason, Armari has eschewed its custom own-brand liquid cooling system in favour of an Enermax Liqtech TR4, which is rated able to cool CPUs up to a 500W TDP. This will be more than enough to keep the 2990WX under control.

Armari has partnered the monster CPU with a very healthy 64GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX 3,600MHz DDR4 SDRAM in four DIMMs, leaving four slots available for upgrade. The 2990WX's memory controller only officially supports 2,933MHz memory, but Armari has been able to run the Corsair modules stably at 3,000MHz, which should give another little bump to performance.

Armari S32T-RD1000G2 review: Graphics Acceleration

Armari keeps things within the AMD camp with regards to graphics acceleration. The accelerator in question is the company's mainstream flagship: the Radeon Pro WX 9100. This is the same GPU generation as AMD's Vega gaming cards, and the quirky Frontier Edition launched last year.

The WX 9100 is based around a Vega GPU with a whopping 4,096 Stream Processors running at a very tidy 1,500MHz. AMD's latest top-end cards also use the new High-Bandwidth Memory system, where a very wide bus but lower clock is employed. In this case, the memory bus is 2,048-bit and the frequency 945MHz, providing a massive 484GB/sec of frame buffer throughput.

As with all of AMD's current high-end cards, you only get one type of interface on the back - Mini DisplayPort. But there are six of them, and you can drive up to two screens at 5K (5,120 x 2,880) and 60Hz, which will be great for high-end content creation work. If you need to add more graphics cards, there are three more PCI Express 16x slots on the motherboard, spaced adequately so that they can all fit dual-width graphics like the WX 9100.

Armari S32T-RD1000G2 review: Storage

Normally, a workstation aimed at the content creation market will opt for a storage setup involving a solid-state disk (SSD) for the operating system and applications alongside a conventional hard disk drive (HDD) for media assets. The custom Armari chassis has plenty of room for the latter, with four fast-swap 3.5in bays and two fast-swap 2.5in bays that are very easily accessed once you take off the side panel.

However, our sample didn't come with any of these bays populated. Instead, one of the three M.2 sots on the motherboard sported a 1TB Samsung PM980 NVMe SDD. This is a hugely quick drive. Using CrystalDiskMark 6, we saw a sustained read throughput of 3,296.7MB/sec and writing at 2,230.6MB/sec. Both of these are close to the fastest we have recorded.

Although 1TB will be ample for your software needs, you will want to add a slower, cheaper, higher-capacity disk or multiple disks in RAID configuration for your media. Fortunately, there's ample space for this. Armari's chassis also includes a slimline DVD rewriter should you need to read or write optical discs. There are no front-accessible 5.25in bays, however.

Armari S32T-RD1000G2 review: Chassis Design

Although Armari is a local UK 'small specialist' PC manufacturer, it still designs its own chassis, and the one supplied with this system is a peach. It's very heavy and robustly constructed of steel, but that's more of a reassurance than a hindrance unless you regularly need to move it around the office.

Cable management is brilliant in this chassis, with all the wires you might need like SATA and extra power routed to the right place ready for when they're needed. The fast-swap drive bays are extremely convenient, easily sliding out, although you do have to screw the drives into these rather than use clips as found with some chassis designs.

Another novel feature of the Armari chassis is the bracket that sits over the PCI Express slots. This has to be unscrewed to remove or add cards, which is a little involved. However, it also ensures that the adapters won't move around in transit. The water-cooling radiator sits above this with side-venting fans positioned where a grille is located on the chassis panel.

Armari has included a 1000W EVGA SuperNOVA G3 GOLD Modular PSU, which will have plenty of grunt for the hungry CPU and a full complement of graphics cards if you install them. There's even a slide-out filter near the front that keeps dust out of the interior and can be easily removed for cleaning.

The power and reset buttons are on top of the chassis, which is sensible as this large case is likely to sit on the floor. There are four USB ports on the front, with headphone and microphone minijacks in between. Round the back, the ASRock motherboard provides comprehensive connectivity. There are eight USB 3.0 ports, plus USB 3.1 Gen 2 in both Type A and Type C formats. Two Gigabit LAN ports are included, as well as 7.1-channel analog surround outputs, microphone input, and a S/PDIF digital connection. The motherboard even has built-in 802.11ac WiFi, with twin connectors for the antennas.

Armari S32T-RD1000G2 review: Processor Performance

Finally, we reach the point where we reveal the most important thing about this workstation - exactly how fast is that new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX processor? Well, the answer is that it's amazing. It managed 5,885 in the CPU test from Maxon Cinebench R15, which is an absolutely phenomenal result. To put this in perspective, the PC Specialist Axiom only managed a 22% faster score of 7,170 - and that's with two Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 processors providing 56 cores.

Further hammering this home, the 2990WX achieved 4,856 single-core and 33,692 multi-core in GeekBench 4, both of which are actually faster than the Axiom. The IT Pro media benchmark results were almost as impressive, with an excellent overall score of 430, which is only ten per cent behind the Axiom. This broke down into an excellent 160 in imaging, 411 for video editing, and 532 for multi-tasking.

This CPU's forte is performing tasks like 3D rendering, but it's brilliant in every other area too.

Armari S32T-RD1000G2 review: Graphics Performance

Although AMD's processors are clearly giving Intel something to think about, its professional graphics haven't been such a great match for Nvidia's over the last few years. The WX 9100 managed a respectable 130.9 in the OpenGL portion of Maxon Cinebench R15, but that's behind what the Quadro P4000 or P5000 can produce.

It's more of a mixed bag with SPECviewperf 12.1, with results that are comparable but in some cases better than a Quadro P5000, and in other cases worse. For 3D content creation, the story is quite positive, with 138.23 in 3dsmax-05 and 112.16 in maya-04. However, the catia-04 result of 150.49 and SolidWorks sw-03 score of 134.89 are behind a P5000, which is similarly priced to the WX 9100.

The GFXBench 4 results are considerably better, though, with 7,849.32 onscreen and 11,029.32 offscreen in Car Chase, alongside 7,766.62 onscreen and 9,646.91 offscreen in Manhattan. This is also a powerful accelerator for OpenCL, offering 4,961 with LuxMark 3.1. In other words, this will be a great GPU for renderers that harness OpenCL, such as Blender.

Armari S32T-RD1000G2 review: Verdict

Overall, considering that this workstation is a quarter of the price of the PC Specialist Axiom, and not much slower in any area, you're getting an incredible amount for your money with Armari's S32T-RD1000G2. Particularly if you have multi-threaded tasks like 3D rendering to perform, there really isn't anything that Intel currently produces to touch AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX in terms of 'bang for buck'. Move over Intel - there's a new workstation processor champion in town.

Verdict

AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX is the fastest single-socket workstation processor currently available, and Armari’s S32T-RD1000G2 showcases its abilities extraordinarily well.

When AMD released the Ryzen in the first quarter of 2017, it took many by surprise - including Intel. Although AMD had a few previous times in the sun, notably with the Athlon FX and Opteron, its CPUs hadn't been putting up much of a fight for years. Then the Ryzen 7 arrived, followed by the Threadripper, forcing Intel to rush out new products early to keep ahead. Now we have Ryzen 2, just a year later, and it promises to keep the pressure on. Our first look comes from Armari, in its dinky V25R-RA750G2 system.

Armari V25R-RA750G2: Processor and Memory

Our Armari sample came with the new top-end Ryzen 7, the 2700X, which replaces the 1800X. Like the latter, this is still an eight-core processor. The base clock has raised slightly to 3.7GHz from 3.6GHz, but the Turbo mode is improved quite a bit more to 4.35GHz from 4.1GHz, although the TDP is now 105W instead of 90W.

Armari has taken full advantage of the higher frequency ceiling by clocking the V25R's CPU permanently to 4.35GHz across all cores. Despite its small size, the V25R chassis has capable custom water cooling built in, so can cope with the temperature, and even supports the Ryzen Threadripper. Like the original Ryzen 7, the 2700X has a virtual threading system, so you get 16 threads from your eight cores, too.

Where the original Ryzen 7 officially supported 2,666MHz DDR4 memory, the second iteration ups the ante to 2,933MHz. However, Armari includes 3,200MHz memory clocked at this speed and fully tested. Armari has supplied two 16GB modules for a 32GB total, which take up both the slots on the ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard, although this is the maximum memory possible anyway.

Armari V25R-RA750G2: Graphics Acceleration

The V25R is a workstation aimed specifically at VR content creation. Amazingly, considering the case size, there's room for two 16x PCI Express slots at the top, using a riser from the board's single slot. The top section is three slots wide, so can support either two single-width cards (both running at 8x speed), or a single dual-width card running at 16x.

Although you could fit a professional graphics card in this system, the VR focus means that Armari has instead opted for a Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Blower. VR content creators prefer the consumer-grade graphics as this allows previewing of content more smoothly as it is being created. The V25R chassis also has an optional breakout box for the HTC Vive, to cater for this kind of user.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is a very powerful graphics card, boasting 3,584 CUDA cores running at a base 1,480MHz but with a 1,582MHz Boost mode. There's 11GB of GDDR5X memory running at 11GHz on a 352-bit bus, providing 484GB/sec of bandwidth. All these figures are well beyond even a NVIDIA Quadro P5000, but of course as a consumer-grade card the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is not supported by ISVs. Nevertheless, it will work just fine with most (but not all) applications, and has loads of GPGPU grunt on offer.

There are three DisplayPort 1.4 connections, plus a single HDMI 2.0b. The DisplayPorts can drive a screen at up to 7,680 x 4,320 at 60Hz. However, all this GPU capability does come with one drawback - this is a 250W card, so will consume a fair bit of power when running at full pelt.

Armari V25R-RA750G2: Storage

The V25R chassis has room for up to three 2.5in drives, with a caddy for one of them in the swing-out door. The door also hosts the custom water cooling radiator, and there are two more 2.5in bays directly behind where the radiator sits when in place. However, our sample only came with a single M.2 NVMe SSD, located in the slot on the rear of the motherboard. Although this side of the chassis can't be removed, there is a little panel to access the M.2 slot. In the early sample we were sent, which uses a case for the previous Ryzen, the panel didn't quite align, but production chassis will have a larger panel that will allow full access to the M.2 slot.

The NVMe SSD supplied will also be different in the production version of the V25R. Our sample came with a 1TB Samsung PM961, but this will be replaced by the just-released PM981. The PM961 promises 3,000MB/sec reading and 1,700MB/sec writing, but we found that CrystalDiskMark 6 actually registered better performance than this, with 3,282MB/sec reading and 1,775MB/sec writing. This is already one of the fastest NVMe SSDs we've seen, and the PM981 should be faster still.

Armari V25R-RA750G2: Chassis Design

We have already mentioned a few details of the V25R's chassis configuration in passing. This is a custom design by Armari specifically intended to pack as much desktop capability into a system that is both light and easy to transport, for tasks like VR demonstrations or on-site content creation. Every morsel of space is utilised, with the clever positioning of the three 2.5in drive spaces just the beginning.

The top of the chassis primarily contains the graphics card riser, with the cards sitting upright rather than horizontally. This area is not entirely straightforward to get into, however. You need to unscrew the door with the water cooling radiator and 2.5in drive caddy so that it can fold open, then unscrew the whole riser assembly to slide it out. But it is still quite incredible that a card as powerful as the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti will even fit in a case this small.

The processor, RAM and drive caddies are quite easy to get to, however, once the water cooling panel has swung open. The 750W power supply also slides out from the back easily, and is a server-grade unit. You can replace the PSU in a matter of seconds.

Armari V25R-RA750G2: Processor Performance

When the original Ryzen 7 was launched, it put the cat amongst the pigeons by providing an eight-core processor for the price of Intel's quad-cores (at the time). Although Intel has subsequently beefed up its equivalent range to six-core with the 4.7GHz Core i7-8700K, the 2700X still offers an advantage in multi-threaded tasks.

This is clear from the Maxon Cinebench R15 rendering result of 1,791, which beats the 8700K and comes close to what a more expensive eight-core Intel Core i7-7820X can muster. Similarly, the overall IT Pro media benchmarks result of 300 is ahead of any 8700K-based system we've seen, and comparable to the 7820X. Although the Ryzen 2700X's image editing result of 160 is behind the 8700K, thanks to the latter's clock speed advantage, it matches the 7820X, and the video encoding result of 298 is ahead of both, whilst the multi-tasking score of 348 beats the 8700K and is only slightly behind the 7820X.

The GeekBench 4 CPU scores tell a similar story. The single-core result of 5,016 is slightly behind the Dell Precision 5820 (https://www.itpro.com/hardware/30704/dell-precision-5820-review-a-solid-all-rounder-but-it-s-not-cheap), but the multi-core result or 26,706 is quite a way ahead.

Armari V25R-RA750G2: Graphics Performance

The V25R has very powerful graphics, but not optimised for professional applications. This is obvious from the rather varied SPECviewperf 12.1 results. The score of 128.09 in 3dsmax-05 is very similar to a Quadro P4000, and 170.59 in maya-04 is one of the highest we've seen with this viewset. But 56.85 in creo-01 and 69.58 in sw-03 are much more pedestrian, and 10.08 in snx-02 shows that this is not a great card for engineering visualisation or product design.

The score of 145.26 in the OpenGL portion of Cinebench R15 is decent, but we've seen a lot better from professional-grade graphics. However, with GFXBench 4, the scores of 2950.7 on screen and 23,422.6 offscreen with Car Chase plus 3,097.1 onscreen and 31,764 offscreen with Manhattan are the best we've seen. The GTX 1080 Ti is also a monster for GPGPU work, producing a whopping 5,688 in the OpenCL-based LuxMark 3.1, and 191.93 in CUDA-powered OctaneBench, showing that this card has at least 50 per cent more raw processing power than the professional-grade Quadro P5000.

Armari V25R-RA750G2: Verdict

The Amari V25R-RA750G2 brings out the best in the Ryzen 2700X. AMD is clearly continuing to keep the pressure on Intel, offering more multi-core capability for your money. The V25R isn't exactly cheap at 2,575 plus VAT, but it's a great feat of engineering, packing a huge amount into a tiny, well designed chassis. Small form factor workstations are supposed to be less powerful than full towers, but this one is just as capable.

Verdict

The Armari V25R-RA750G2 shows that the second AMD Ryzen generation has lots to offer the workstation market, and it’s an amazingly compact chassis design too.

PC Specialist has been making professional workstations for a few years now, but the company recently added a dual-socket option based around the latest Intel Xeon processors called the Axiom. We asked them to send us the most top-end specification available. What we ended up receiving could well be the most powerful workstation we will review all year, and probably for a few years to come.

PC Specialist Axiom: Processor and Memory

The component that pushes this system into the performance stratosphere, or components (as there are two of them), is the processor. This workstation sports twin Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs, which are currently the most potent workstation processors you can buy. Each has 28 cores, with Hyper-Threading, for a total of 56 threads. So this system can process 112 threads at the same time, which will make it an absolute monster for highly parallelised tasks like rendering.

In the past, the Intel Xeon processors with the most cores generally had a downside: they ran at very conservative clock rates. However, whilst the 8180 has a nominal frequency of a fairly pedestrian 2.5GHz, the top 3.8GHz Turbo mode for up to two cores is more competitive, and four cores can run at 3.4GHz. It can operate all 28 cores at up to 3.2GHz, and 20 cores at 3.5GHz. So the 8180 will be very capable at virtually any kind of task, whether single- or multi-threaded.

You do pay an enormous premium for the Xeon Platinum, however. Just one of these processors on its own will set you back around 9,000 including VAT, so the two we have here are responsible for the lion's share of the price of this system. The Xeon Platinum 8180, although seen here in dual-socket form, can be fitted in systems with up to eight sockets. That would provide 224 cores and 448 threads, but you're only likely to see this many in a server - and an exceedingly big one, at that.

Processors of this capability, with so many cores, need plenty of RAM to keep them fed with data to process, and PC Specialist has supplied a huge 256GB of 2,666MHz ECC Registered DDR4 memory. This is configured as eight 32GB DIMMs. Amazingly, this army of RAM doesn't take up all the slots on the ASUS WS C621E SAGE motherboard, which has 12 DIMM sockets and supports a colossal maximum of up to 768GB of memory.

PC Specialist Axiom: Graphics Acceleration

The Axiom doesn't go quite so all out where the graphics are concerned. The 5,000 NVIDIA Quadro P6000 is the current pinnacle of professional graphics acceleration, but it's a very specialised tool, aimed at simulations where its 24GB of frame buffer are essential. Instead, our Axiom includes the much more mainstream P5000. But this is still an extremely capable professional graphics accelerator, and a sensible choice for a workstation.

The NVIDIA Quadro P5000 uses the Pascal GPU generation and offers a very significant 2,560 CUDA cores. It sports a 256-bit memory interface to its 16GB of GDDR5 memory, offering 288GB/sec of bandwidth. This will allow it to handle huge texture sets. There are also four DisplayPort 1.4 connections plus Dual-Link DVI-D, and a bracket for stereo headset synchronisation.

This card supports a maximum single DisplayPort resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 at 30Hz with 30-bit colour and HDR, but 5K at 60Hz with 30-bit colour and HDR. With the huge amount of 3D acceleration available here, and support for massive texture sets, this is a great graphics acceleration choice for modelling high-resolution content on a large monitor.

If you need to add further graphics cards, there are two more full x16 speed x16 PCI Express slots on the motherboard, two more than can run with one at x16 or two at x8, and a further pair that run at x8 only. So you really can add a huge graphics array or a powerful GPGPU coprocessor configuration.

PC Specialist Axiom: Storage

The storage allocation continues the high-end specification, whilst following the usual configuration of an SSD for operating system and applications, alongside a conventional hard disk for general capacity. The SSD is a 500GB Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 model, whilst the HDD is an absolutely enormous 12TB Seagate Barracuda Pro 7,200rpm SATA unit, which is currently the largest capacity available from a mechanical drive.

The Samsung SSD promises 3,200MB/sec reading and 1,900MB/sec writing. We only saw 2,825MB/sec reading and 1,813MB/sec writing using CrystalDiskMark 6, but that's still very impressive and the writing speed is close to the maximum for NVMe. The Seagate HDD is the fastest 7,200rpm drive we've seen in a workstation, registering 250MB/sec reading and 246MB/sec writing with CrystalDiskMark 6.

Just in case you need to install software from a DVD or burn a data disc, there's a 24x dual-layer DVD writer included as well. The hard disk cage has space for five more 3.5in drives, and there are caddies for three 2.5in drives behind this too. So there is plenty of room for storage upgrade.

PC Specialist Axiom: Chassis Design

Befitting the huge specification, the PC Specialist system comes in an absolutely enormous Corsair Graphite Series 780T full tower chassis. This is not your average black workstation obelisk, either. Instead, the primary hue is white, with easily unclipped panels on both sides. The main one is windowed, revealing the spacious layout, despite the plethora of components within.

Removing this panel provides easy access to all the main components. The 3.5in drive bays all use quick-release caddies, with a full complement included in our sample, although these are not hot swap, so you will need to gain access from the other side to hook up power and SATA cables. Fortunately, gaining access to this side is easy too. The non-windowed panel also provides access to the 2.5in drive caddies.

The top of the chassis sports two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.1 ports, plus headphone and microphone minijacks. The back panel provides a PS/2 keyboard or mouse combo port, two Gigabit LAN, two USB 3.1 Gen 2 (one Type-A, one Type-C), four USB 3.1 Gen 1, four USB 2.0, eight-channel analog audio plus S/PDIF, and a button to restore the previous BIOS should an update fail or new settings rendering the system unable to POST.

PC Specialist Axiom: Processor Performance

The CPUs are the star of the show in this system, and benchmark results bear this out. The headline result is in Cinebench R15 rendering, with an absolutely gobsmacking 7,170. This figure is almost twice as much as any other workstation we've tested, including 16-core models running at considerably faster clock speeds.

The IT Pro media benchmarks are equally impressive, with an overall score of 471.The imaging result of 163 shows that this system still offers great single-core abilities, but with 499 in video encoding and 554 in multi-tasking, anything requiring multi-core grunt will absolutely fly. These abilities continue in GeekBench 4, with a capable 4,536 single-core result but outstanding 29,221 multi-core score.

PC Specialist Axiom: Graphics Performance

The NVIDIA Quadro P5000 graphics are a step up from the P4000 in Dell's Precision 5820 (https://www.itpro.com/hardware/30704/dell-precision-5820-review-a-solid-all-rounder-but-it-s-not-cheap) that we reviewed recently. This GPU provides top-end acceleration for every type of 3D content creation software.

The score of 215.47 in Maxon Cinebench R15 is beaten by systems with faster processor clock speeds, as this test is very sensitive to CPU frequency, but is still a great result. With 141.36 in SPECviewer 12.1's 3dsmax-05 and 106.94 in maya-04, you're getting great 3D animation abilities across the range of applications. The result of 190.02 in sw-03 shows excellent engineering and product design too. However, GFXBench 4 achieves 2,952.35 onscreen and 18,221.2 offscreen in Car Chase, plus 3,097.75 onscreen and 23,082.7 offscreen in Manhattan, which are good but not outstanding.

There's plenty of GPGPU grunt available here, however, with 2,560 CUDA cores on tap. The P5000 achieves a considerable 3,490 in LuxMark 3.1, and 127.51 in OctaneBench 3. In other words, OpenCL- and CUDA-accelerated software will gain considerable benefit.

PC Specialist Axiom: Verdict

There really isn't a weak area for the PC Specialist Axiom, which is what you would hope for from a system costing over 20,000 plus VAT. Of course, you can create much more sane and affordable specifications, but this Axiom is the most powerful workstation we have ever tested for CPU-intensive tasks like rendering, and it's very handy for 3D modelling as well. It really showcases what the Intel Platinum 8180 processor is capable of, assuming you have the cavernously deep pockets required to afford it.

Verdict

The PC Specialist Axiom costs a fortune, but we’re unlikely to see a faster workstation for some years to come

SPECviewperf 12.1 Results

Chillblast's Fusion Render OC Lite follows the standard configuration we'd expect for systems in the 2,500 inc VAT category. Intel's top-of-the-range, six-core Core i7-8700K in place? Check. Nvidia Quadro P4000 graphics? Check.

Chillblast set its Core i7-8700K to run at 4.7GHz, quite a bit over the chip's nominal 3.7GHz specification. This is backed by 32GB of 2,400MHz DDR4 memory, supplied as two DIMMs, which leaves two more memory slots free for future upgrade. With 1,792 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR5 memory, those Quadro P4000 graphics make for a very capable professional accelerator too.

Storage takes the standard form of a solid-state disk and hard disk. Chillblast is a little stingy with the SSD, providing only 250GB, although this is still a fast Samsung 960 Evo M.2 NVMe model, offering 3.2GB/sec reading and 1.6GB/sec writing. The hard disk is a generous 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 7,200rpm unit, with 193MB/sec reading and 191MB/sec writing. What you lose in capacity on the SSD you more than gain on the hard disk, but we would have preferred more SSD space for installing applications; you could find yourself running out with just 250GB on the primary drive.

In IT Pro's benchmarks, the Chillblast was superb at image editing, but disappointingly slow with video encoding and multitasking, giving it an underwhelming overall score. Maxon Cinebench R15 rendering was better, with a creditable score of 1,599. However, the Blender render took 2,527 seconds, which wasn't nearly as impressive. The Quadro P4000 doesn't have enough memory to complete this render via GPU, although 2,832 in the LuxMark 3.1 GPU test shows it has decent capabilities.

The Adobe Media Encoder test took 351 seconds with CUDA and 622 seconds without, which is once again sluggish. Modelling performance is also a little behind similarly specified systems. The Maxon Cinebench R15 OpenGL score of 174 is good on an absolute scale, but many rivals are quicker. SPECviewperf 12.1 results are mostly par for the course for a P4000-equipped workstation.

Overall, while there's nothing particularly weak about the Chillblast Fusion Render OC Lite, it's eclipsed by other, better-equipped rivals that can produce more impressive results. A workmanlike but underwhelming workstation.

Verdict

While there's nothing particularly weak about the Chillblast Fusion Render OC Lite, it's eclipsed by other, better-equipped rivals that can produce more impressive results. A workmanlike but underwhelming workstation.

Scan recently scored our top accolade for one of its more expensive models, and while it can't repeat that success with its lower-priced entry it epitomises the specification you would expect for around 2,500 inc VAT. Naturally, at this price, Scan opts for the more consumer-oriented Intel Core i7, but still includes the pinnacle of the recently released eighth generation, the 8700K.

Scan has been reasonably aggressive with the clock of its 8700K, although not as much as some rivals. This six-core processor has been set to 4.8GHz, giving a welcome boost over the 3.7GHz nominal rating. The processor is partnered with 32GB of 3,000MHz DDR4 SDRAM, supplied as two DIMMs and leaving two memory slots free for upgrades.

Graphics is standard for a 3D-oriented mid-range workstation, coming in the shape of Nvidia's Quadro P4000. With 1,792 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR5 memory offering 243GB/sec bandwidth, there's plenty of modelling acceleration power on offer.

Scan also opts for the usual combination of SSD and hard drive, with a 512GB Samsung 960 Pro NVMe M.2 unit partnered by a 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 SATA drive. The SSD is extremely nippy, offering 3.2GB/sec reading and 2GB/sec writing, but the hard disk is a slower performer, with just 186MB/sec reading and writing.

The VI4000 performs as expected. The overall score of 278 in the IT Pro benchmarks isn't as fast as more expensively-outfitted models, but still quick compared to most PCs. Likewise, the Maxon Cinebench 15 rendering score of 1,559 is excellent on a grand scale but low amongst the competition, as is the Blender render duration of 2,236 seconds. Adobe Media Encoder scores are on par with other systems using the 8700K processor.

This system's biggest strength is its modelling, with very good Maxon Cinebench 15 OpenGL and SPECviewperf 12.1 scores. The particularly impressive SolidWorks, Catia and Siemens NX results make this workstation highly suited to product and engineering design.

Overall, the Scan 3XS VI4000 Viz is a competent system for the money. It holds no major surprises, but the only weakness is the lack of USB 3.1 Gen 2 on the motherboard. Other than that, this is a solidly designed and balanced workstation.

Verdict

This system’s biggest strength is its modelling, with very good Maxon Cinebench 15 OpenGL and SPECviewperf 12.1 scores. The particularly impressive SolidWorks, Catia and Siemens NX results make this workstation highly suited to product and engineering design.

This system is a monster. Based around Intel's top Core i9 processor, the 7980XE, the Scan WI6000 Viz sports not two, not four, not eight, but a jaw-dropping 18 CPU cores with Hyper-Threading upping the number of available virtual cores to 36. This propels the workstation to some of the fastest performance scores we've ever seen, but it's not the most expensive. In fact, in terms of price, this is one of the cheaper systems in the sub-6,000 category.

The 7980E processor runs at a nominal 2.6GHz, but Scan has set the clock permanently to 4.2GHz, with Fractal Design Celsius S24 watercooling keeping the extra thermal output produced by the overclock at bay. Four 16GB modules of 3,000MHz DDR4 RAM are also included, for a total of 64GB, with an additional four unused DIMM slots for future expansion.

Since Scan is aiming the WI6000 primarily at rendering and other processor-intensive activities, the company had opted to forego Nvidia's higher-end Quadro P5000 GPU in favour of its more cost-effective sibling, the P4000, which is almost half the price. This card isn't exactly weedy, however - it's got 8GB of GDDR5 memory and 1,792 CUDA cores, so it's still going to handle 3D modelling and design tasks very capably indeed.

Scan has kept the storage provision relatively sober, considering the high-end processor. It offers the usual combination of SSD and hard disk, and these are essentially the same as its lower-end VI4000 system. There's a 500GB Samsung 960 Evo NVMe SSD connected via M.2, and a 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD connected via SATA. The former provides decent 2.6GB/sec reading and 2GB/sec writing, whilst the latter is merely a reasonable performer, with 186MB/sec reading and 191MB/sec writing.

The 18-core processor meant the VI6000 achieved an amazing score in our benchmarks, with 524. Naturally, this system blazed through all CPU-based 3D rendering tasks, with 3,867 in Maxon Cinebench 15. It took just 1,094 seconds to complete the Blender render. The Quadro P4000 doesn't have enough memory to complete this render in GPU, but 3,133 in the LuxMark 3.1 OpenCL GPU shows that the graphics chip has plenty of power available. Note that the Skylake-X processors aren't currently supported by Intel's OpenCL drivers in LuxMark 3.1.

The WI6000 was equally impressive at video encoding with Adobe Media Encoder and GPU assistance, and even faster without. Although Scan hasn't gone entirely for gold with 3D modelling, the P4000 is still a solid performer in this area. It managed a top-notch result with Maxon Cinebench 15 OpenGL, but with SPECviewperf 12.1, its results didn't outpace the competition quite so much, thanks to the lower CPU clock speed compared to many competitors.

As a result, the 3dx Max result of 131 wasn't as show-stopping as other we've seen from other systems, and neither was the 153 in Catia. The SolidWorks score of 168 is good, but behind other systems using P4000 graphics thanks to their higher CPU clock speeds. Similarly, the Creo score of 117 was middling compared to some rivals, as was 156 in Siemens NX. In Maya, 102 places the WI6000 in a fairly lacklustre position. So this is merely a workmanlike system for modelling; its true strengths are in multithreaded tasks such 3D rendering and video encoding, where it reigns supreme.

The Scan 3XS WI6000 Viz shows how healthy the current competition between AMD and Intel is in the workstation processor market. Intel has had to respond firmly and quickly, and Scan showcases the end result -- an unadulterated beast of a workstation that can eat virtually any other system for breakfast when it comes to CPU-intensive tasks. The WI6000 is also terrific value, given that more than a third of this system's ticket price is made up of the CPU's cost. Add in the fact that it cuts no corners in other areas and comes with Scan's usual three-year warranty, and this system is a downright bargain.

Verdict

The Scan 3XS WI6000 Viz is an unadulterated beast of a workstation that can eat virtually any other system for breakfast when it comes to CPU-intensive tasks. It's also terrific value, given that more than a third of this system’s ticket price is made up of the CPU’s cost.

Overclockers is one of two companies recently to send us a system with consumer-grade rather than professional graphics. The argument is that professionals ask for this, particularly game developers. In the case of the Renda G3-CS, the graphics card in question is an Asus-branded Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ROG Strix OC -- one of the speediest consumer cards on the market.

Otherwise, the G3-CS fits alongside other systems costing around 2,500 inc VAT. It's based around an Intel Core i7-8700K, although in this case the company lives up to its name by overclocking this CPU up to a blistering speed of 5.1GHz. Only 16GB of DDR4 memory has been supplied, but it's fast 3,600MHz RAM and there's potential for expansion thanks to the two unoccupied DIMM slots.

The GTX 1080 Ti graphics is potent, almost as much so as the Titan Xp in Armari's system. It boasts 3,584 CUDA cores -- exactly twice as many as a Quadro P4000. There's 11GB of GDDR5X memory on a 352-bit bus, providing 484GB/sec of bandwidth. This means there's heaps of raw grunt for graphics rendering and modelling tasks, but be warned - as it's not a professional-grade card, there's no support from software providers and no specifically-optimised drivers.

The storage selection is standard workstation fare, with the OS and applications sitting on a 512GB Samsung 960 Pro Polaris NVMe SSD, while the mass storage duties are handled by a 2TB Western Digital Black 7,200rpm SATA hard disk. These are reasonable sizes in each case. The SSD provides rapid 2.9GB/sec reading and 2GB/sec writing, whilst the hard disk is also fast, with 210MB/sec reading and 215MB/sec writing.

Thanks to the high clock speed, this was lighting-quick in our benchmarks and Maxon Cinebench rendering, compared to other Core i7-8700K chips. Whilst it was quick with the Blender render, other 8700K systems were faster -- although its GPU render was almost as quick as other, more expensive systems. It was also middling with the Adobe Media Encoder test.

Despite the hefty number of CUDA cores, the 1080 Ti graphics' lack of professionally optimised drivers means that this system doesn't excel in every area of modelling. The result of 2,045 in Cinebench R15 OpenGL is good, but not the best by any means. Similarly, with SPECviewperf 12.1, whilst this system achieved excellent results in 3ds Max and Maya, it was slower with Creo and very slow indeed with Siemens NX, as well as being positively sluggish with SolidWorks.

Overall, the Overclockers Renda G3-CS would make a great 3D animation workstation. But it's not so suited to engineering and product design, and merely average for video production. If you need an all-round performer, you're better off investing in something with a professional card.

Verdict

The Overclockers Renda G3-CS would make a great 3D animation workstation. But it’s not so suited to engineering and product design, and merely average for video production. If you need an all-round performer, you’re better off investing in something with a professional card.

PC Specialist is unusual in the sub-2,500 bracket in that it hasn't gone for the excellent new six-core Coffee Lake Intel Core i7-8700K. Instead, the Apollo X02 is based around the equally brilliant eight-core Intel Core i7-7820X, so you're getting a couple of extra cores for your money.

Although the 7820X isn't as recently released as the 8700K, it's still only been around for a relatively short period. This is a Skylake-X CPU like the Core i9 processors in Scan's 3XS VI6000 Viz and Workstation Specialists' WS-X1180. Where the Core i9 has ten or more cores, the Core i7 Skylake-X tops out at eight, but the 7820X has a much higher nominal clock speed of 3.6GHz -- and PC Specialist has pumped all eight cores up to 4.6GHz.

Unusually, PC Specialist has chosen air rather than watercooling. However, the Noctua NH-U14S is one of the most capable air coolers on the market, and more than capable of keeping the temperature of the overclocked processor under control.

Backing up the processor is a capable 32GB allocation of 3,000MHz DDR4 SDRAM. This comes in the form of four 8GB sticks, and if you want to boost this to the maximum limit of 128GB, you can use the motherboard's four extra slots. Since this is a Skylake-X processor, it offers quad-channel memory for increased bandwidth, rather than the dual-channel configuration of the 8700K.

Like most recent workstations, this model is sporting an Nvidia Quadro P4000, and with good reason; for less than 1,000, this card offers truly top-notch professional-grade 3D graphics acceleration, thanks to 8GB of GDDR5 memory and 1,792 CUDA cores.

This unit has a 2TB Seagate Barracuda Pro SATA HDD for mass storage, while the OS and applications are stored on a 500GB Samsung 960 Evo m.2 NVMe SSD - a pretty run-of-the-mill configuration. The SSD is one of the slower units commonly seen on workstations of this price bracket, with 2.3GB/sec reading and 1.8GB/sec writing, but the hard disk is one of the quicker models, reading at 211MB/sec and writing at 199MB/sec.

PC Specialist has also found space in the budget for a DVD writer. The Corsair Carbide 200R case has space for an extra three 3.5in drives too, and they're a snap to get at thanks to the handy side panel. This means you can beef up the storage capacity even more if you need, although sadly they don't support hot-swapping.

The extra two CPU cores pay dividends when the Apollo X02 is performing rendering tasks. The Maxon Cinebench R15 CPU score of 1,830 is more than 10% faster than rival 8700K-based systems, although not a patch on the scores achieved by machines sporting Core i9s or AMD Threadripper chips. Similarly, the Blender render duration of 2,039 seconds is 10% quicker than other 2,500 workstations when using the CPU; like all but many workstations, the graphics accelerator doesn't have enough memory to render in GPU.

Turning to the IT Pro benchmarks, the Apollo X02 was comparatively slow for image editing, but its video encoding was 6% faster than its direct competitors, and 12% faster for multitasking, giving it a 7% speed advantage overall. With Adobe Media Encoder, the Apollo X02 can't compete with more expensive systems, but it's at least 9% quicker than other machines in its price category.

The 3D modelling abilities aren't so dominant, however, due to the clock speed disadvantage compared to 8700K-based systems. The Maxon Cinebench R15 result of 170 wasn't overly impressive, and SPECviewperf 12.1 results were a mixed bag. The 3ds Max score of 123 was a little disappointing, as was the Maya result of 99, Creo result of 109 and 150 in Catia. However, with other viewsets the Apollo X02 fared better, sitting in the middle of the pack with SolidWorks for example.

In other words, the PC Specialist Apollo X02 isn't the perfect pure 3D modelling workstation. What it gains in CPU-intensive tasks it loses in frequency-intensive ones. But its modelling abilities are still very good, and hardly going to hold back your workflow, whereas there are obvious time savings to be made when rendering your 3D or encoding video. This gives the PC Specialist Apollo X02 the edge amongst other 2,500 workstations.

Verdict

The PC Specialist Apollo X02 isn’t the perfect pure 3D modelling workstation. What it gains in CPU-intensive tasks it loses in frequency-intensive ones. But its modelling abilities are still very good, and hardly going to hold back your workflow, whereas there are obvious time savings to be made when rendering your 3D or encoding video. This gives the PC Specialist Apollo X02 the edge amongst other £2,500 workstations.

This Armari workstation is unusual for a number of reasons. The primary one is that the Magnetar is one of the few workstations currently available that's based around the AMD Ryzen Threadripper processor rather than anything from Intel's increasingly confusing range. Second, Nvidia supplies the graphics power, but not through a Quadro. And third, this is our first taste of Intel's much-discussed Optane memory.

The Magnetar includes the top-end AMD Threadripper 1950X, which has a nominal 3.4GHz clock speed, 16 cores and 32 threads. Armari has permanently set the processor to 4GHz across all cores, with an Enermax watercooling system to keep temperatures down. The CPU is partnered by 64GB of DDR4 SDRAM, which is running at 3,333MHz.

Instead of Nvidia Quadro graphics, Armari opts for a GeForce GTX chip. However, this isn't such an outlandish choice, particularly for games designers. The GeForce GTX in question is the Titan Xp, which is the most recent spin on Nvidia's superlative gaming chip. Crucially, back in August 2017 Nvidia released drivers for the Titan that include optimisation for professional applications.

This doesn't make the Titan Xp a supported card, but it will mean that the GPU's huge performance can be made available. This is considerable, because the Titan Xp has a massive 3,840 CUDA cores and 12GB of GDDR5X memory with a class-leading 547.7GB/sec of bandwidth, so it has plenty to offer GPU-based rendering as well.

Another star of the show is the Intel Optane NVMe solid state disk, supplied for operating system and application duties. This is the 900P model, with a 480GB capacity. Optane is Intel's branding for 3D Xpoint Flash memory, which works in a different way to NAND or NOR types. The NAND type is the dominant one in most SSDs, but it suffers from significantly slower write speeds when writing, and has a limited number of read-write cycles. The design of Optane means it's almost as fast for writing as it is for reading, and has a much longer lifespan rating.

Looking at the performance scores, the Intel Optane doesn't offer the very fastest speeds for reading data, but it is very quick. For writing, however, it's leagues ahead of most of its competition - by a clear 500MB/sec in some cases. However, Intel Optane memory is still quite a bit more expensive than a regular SSD, so Armari still includes a 4TB conventional 7,200rpm hard disk for general storage. That's a generous capacity, but the Western Digital Gold Datacenter is a merely average performer compared to more impressive rivals. The final storage ingredient is a slimline DVD writer.

The Armari's 16 cores and 32 threads running at 4GHz make it a rendering powerhouse. Its score of 3,449 in the Maxon Cinebench R15 CPU test is incredibly good, and not far off the best of the bunch. Similarly, the Blender render duration of 1,406 seconds puts it among the top performers, as does a score of 500 in our own benchmarks. However, although the GeForce GTX Titan Xp was the clear leader for raw OpenCL grunt in LuxMark 3.1, it fell behind the AMD Radeon Pro WX9100 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti with the Blender render, taking a long time to initialise the scene. Still, this remains an impressive card for CUDA- or OpenCL-accelerated rendering in general.

The Armari also proved itself very capable with the Adobe Media Encoder, taking 202 seconds with GPU support and 297 seconds without. Modelling performance is a mixed bag, however, with a low result in Maxon Cinebench R15 OpenGL and SPECviewperf 12.1's SolidWorks, but the fastest with Siemens NX and the showcase-01 viewset. The score with 3ds Max was second fastest, whilst Catia, medical-01 and energy-01 were top.

Overall, the Armari Magnetar S16T-RW1000G2 is a capable all-rounder; just note its 3D modelling abilities depend on the software you are running. You'll have to shell out a fair amount to get your hands on it, but your investment will be rewarded with some serious hardware power.

Verdict

The Armari Magnetar S16T-RW1000G2 is a capable all-rounder; just note its 3D modelling abilities depend on the software you are running. You'll have to shell out a fair amount to get your hands on it, but your investment will be rewarded with some serious hardware power.

Business laptops never look this good, but the Razer Blade Pro is a unique machine. This machine is dark and svelte, with a 17.3in screen, and it's built to address the dual demands of work and play.

Razer has taken some bold decisions with its keyboard and trackpad on this machine, changing their positions to reflect how people use PCs - and it's packed the Blade Pro with powerful components, too.

Razer Blade Pro review: Design

There's no denying how attractive this machine is. The body is built from black machined aluminium, and it's finished with Razer's familiar green touches. The perfectly balanced lid eases open to reveal no unsightly logos - just a small, smart power button and Razer's interesting ergonomic choices.

The Blade Pro is a 17.3in machine, so it occupies plenty of space, but it's relatively slim and light compared to most other 17.3in machines - its body is just 23mm thin, and it weighs just over 3kg. Dell's larger Precision laptops are almost half a kilo heavier and about a centimetre wider, for instance, and HP's 17.3in ZBook systems weigh around 3kg but are 30mm thick.

The Razer's machined aluminium means build quality is exceptional - although we'd still use a sleeve to protect the metal from scuffs and scrapes.

The aluminium brings to mind the MacBook Pro - which is a comparable business-class machine and a superb device in its own right - despite the Blade's larger screen. Both offer comparable design and strength, although the MacBook is slimmer and lighter.

The Razer serves up a HDMI and a Thunderbolt 3 port alongside three USB 3.1 Type-A connectors, a card reader and one audio jack. That's significantly more versatile than the Macbook, which only has Thunderbolt ports.

Razer Blade Pro review: Keyboard & Trackpad

We're used to laptops with a trackpad below the keyboard, but the Blade Pro goes in a different direction - horizontally.

The keyboard still occupies most of the Blade's width, but the trackpad sits on the right-hand side. It's a large pad ringed with RGB LED illumination, and a scroll-wheel above is flanked by media buttons.

At first, it's undeniably strange. We kept dragging our fingers to the more traditional trackpad location below the keyboard, and the keyboard itself is shifted to the left - so we kept missing those buttons, too.

Spend time with the Blade, though, and the layout becomes familiar. The trackpad's position mirrors how most people use a mouse at a desk. The pad is also larger than most trackpads, and the presence of a scroll-wheel makes it easier to work, too.

The keyboard's buttons are still large enough for rapid typing. They have impressive speed, a solid base and enough travel - all attributes that make the Blade's keyboard a boon for productivity.

It's certainly different from the latest MacBook keyboard, which has hardly any travel and requires a light touch. If you want a more traditional feel beneath the finger for hammering out long documents, then the Razer's unit will deliver more satisfaction.

Razer Blade Pro review: Display

The Full HD screen is an IPS panel with a matte finish. It's got a 120Hz refresh rate which can be used to deliver smoother scrolling and slicker UX navigation.

The screen delivered solid benchmarks in most tests. Its brightness measurement of 372cd/m2 is good, and that's paired with a black level of 0.24cd/m2 - a good result that creates dark areas that look suitably inky and distinct.

The Razer's contrast ratio of 1,550:1 is fantastic. Images pop off the panel, and there's plenty of vibrancy at every part of the scale. It's easy to pick apart subtly different shades, too.

The screen's colour temperature of 6,763K is good, and the screen's Gamma measurement of 2.12 is fine.

The Razer's panel only faltered in a couple of areas. Its average Delta E of 4.7 is just that - average - while it could only display 86.2% of the sRGB colour gamut.

Those issues mean the Razer isn't quite up to the most sensitive photo and design tasks, but it'll handle almost all work applications - including most photo and video editing - with ease.

It's undoubtedly a good display, but the latest MacBook Pro goes one better. The 15in model has a 2,880 x 1,800 resolution that offers more sharpness than the Blade Pro. It also has better colours and a better bright point, and it's arguably more useful for professional users as it adheres to the DCI-P3 colour gamut.

Razer Blade Pro review: Hardware & Performance

The stellar design and good screen are paired with familiar, capable components. The Core i7-7700HQ is now a last-generation processor, but it remains powerful: it's got four Hyper-Threaded cores, and its 2.8GHz stock speed reaches 3.8GHz with Turbo boost. It's paired with 16GB of DDR4 memory, a Samsung SSD and a 2TB hard disk.

The Core i7 chip delivered a blazing score of 126 in our benchmarks, with consistent results across image editing and multi-tasking - proof that this chip is adept with single-threaded software and multi-threaded tools. It's well ahead of every other laptop we've tested in terms of performance.

The Razer's Geekbench single- and multi-core results of 4,147 and 13,269 further bolster its work credentials. The only way you're getting much more CPU performance from a laptop is by using a machine with an overclocked or a desktop processor - and those rigs are more expensive and much heavier than the Blade.

Take, for instance, the MacBook Pro. The more affordable of Apple's two 15in models still costs 2,349 and has the same i7-7700HQ as the Razer. If you pay 2,699 for the pricier machine you get an i7-7820HQ, but that chip is only 100MHz faster.

The Razer does fall a little behind in SSD speeds. Its results of 1,573MB/sec and 978MB/sec are good - but the Apple's PCIe storage is faster.

Graphical grunt comes from an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. It's a mid-range chipset that has enough power for graphically intensive work applications and after-hours gaming. Razer has deployed the version with 6GB of memory, rather than 3GB, which we're pleased about - but this chip doesn't have the professional certifications that you'll find on a Quadro or Radeon Pro part.

Nevertheless, it's potent. It blitzed through Dirt Showdown with an average of 102fps, and ran modern games like Witcher 3 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at 40fps and 38fps.

That doesn't just bode well for playing games - it means that this chip will handle photo and video work too, alongside other graphically intensive applications.

The GTX 1060 will also outpace the latest MacBook Pro in graphical benchmarks. The MacBook Pro 15 can be configured with an AMD Radeon Pro 560 with less memory and lower speeds than the Nvidia card.

The Blade performed well in thermal tests despite the slim construction and powerful components. It was silent when running less intensive tasks, and it was only a little louder when its CPU and GPU were subjected to a system-wide stress-test. It's quieter than many powerful laptops, and easy enough to drown out with a headset or speakers.

There weren't any temperature issues. The CPU's peak temperature of 92C is a little high, but not dangerous, and the GPU peaked at a fine 76C. The metal above the keyboard and on the rear of the base panel got a little warm, but it was never uncomfortably hot - and that's not a problem if this machine will be used on a desk.

The battery, though, is more akin to gaming laptops. The Razer lasted for just short of three hours in our video test - not even half as long as the latest MacBooks. You won't even get half a day away from the mains with this machine, which will prove restrictive in a business environment - long meetings may not be possible without plugging in, for example. It's definitely a machine designed to be stuck on a desk and left in place.

Razer Blade Pro review: Verdict

This isn't a hard-nosed work machine, but the Blade Pro remains an excellent laptop that has the performance and quality to handle most work tasks.

The Core i7 processor and GTX 1060 graphics have ample power, and the SSD, memory and storage are all fine. The screen is good, the keyboard is consistent, and the revised trackpad position works well. It undoubtedly looks the part, with its dark metal and slim build.

While the Blade Pro is good, though, the MacBook Pro is still better in some departments. It has a superior screen, faster storage and better battery life. You may also prefer its keyboard. Of course, the MacBook does lose ground with its smaller size, poorer GPU and lack of port versatility.

The more expensive MacBook remains one of the best laptops we've ever used. But if you want a larger alternative with more graphical grunt and a lower price - and if you don't mind blurring the lines between business and gaming - the Razer Blade Pro is a stellar alternative.

Verdict

The Razer Blade Pro is a large and slim laptop that does a good job at delivering for work and play. The components have ample power for most tasks, and the screen offers solid quality and great contrast. The MacBook is still our favourite, but the Blade Pro is a solid alternative if you’re after something more affordable and with a bigger screen.

It's been a few weeks since I unleashed the power of the HP Z2 mini workstation and let me tell you it's still proving itself to be a beast of a machine!

I've had a multitude of issues over the years when dealing with large batches of data. Most common is the dreaded running out of RAM scenario I ultimately want to store as much of what I'm doing in memory, rather than having to switch it out to the far slower hard drive storage. Metaphorically speaking it's like having a beer fridge in the living room, which is really quick to get to or, walking all the way to the kitchen to fetch a cold brew. Both end in the same result but one is a far quicker route to satisfaction.

PCs I've used in the past have had 4GB or 8GB of RAM, enough to get by on if you're not an application power hungry data junkie, but that's exactly what I am and the 16GB that's packed into the Z2 mini is a Godsend. That for me is like a brewery in the living room next to my Lazyboy - there is just no reason to get up. Anyone who tells you less is more clearly isn't talking about system memory!

While having more RAM will mean that I can switch between applications quicker, or grab frequently used data in a flash, the raw speed of the Z2 mini is driven by the CPU. The metaphorical brain inside this machine, which does all the number crunching and complex computation, has the kind of cerebral power that could give Einstein a run for his money.

The Z2 option I have comes with a 7th generation Intel Core i7 processor with four physical cores, making multitasking an absolute breeze. But being an i7 chip it also has Intel's hyper-threading technology baked into it, which essentially throws four more virtual cores into the mix. It's like having a mini team of geniuses at your fingertips, each one of them performing a small part of a bigger task making processing times extremely speedy.

In this day and age a good CPU can't go without a GPU to enhance the brain's performance. The NVIDIA Quadro M620 means that the Z2 mini is just as adept at graphics heavy applications I may not be a designer, but I'm pretty sure if I was, this is the kind of workstation I'd want. But if you know anything about GPU technology, you'll be well aware that Nvidia's CUDA platform allows the power of the GPU to be harnessed for parallel computational tasks, making it the Quadro GPU an ideal partner for that Inetel CPU.

All those high-end components really show their metal in terms of sheer speed - when I have huge data sets which are far too big for excel I load them into R. You're only limited by the power of your machine with this approach. I tested loading 35 million rows of data, which took around 5-seconds to complete, To say I was impressed is an understatement. However, I really wanted to see how it would manage analysing the data and once again even when dealing with 35 million rows of data the Z2 produced results all under a minute. The CPU and GPU combination has definitely opened my eyes to the importance of using a GPU if analysing data natively on a workstation.

The Z2 really has done wonders for me, it's like going on an amazing beach holiday and never wanting it to end. Where to next for the Z2 and I?

Is your business ready for the future?

As a data analyst the power of my desktop computer is paramount; especially if I want to get through the day without having to restart my computer ten times. I only have a finite number of hours in a day and so much data to process that sometimes my machine just can't keep up. That means having to close applications just to get that little bit more memory in order to perform a single task. Not ideal when you have multiple requests flying at you constantly.

I also relocate around the office quite often to work with different teams, so lugging a big tower around brings on a bit of a sweat. I've tried moving to a laptop but with the amount of spreadsheets, dashboards and various other applications I rely on it just becomes a struggle. It also creates the issue of moving different application windows from a larger screen to a small one, then having to resize the application window to fit properly. I personally find it much better having two big screens that are the same size when working through vast amounts of data.

I'm now working with an HP Z2 Mini workstation and my first thought was...where's the rest of it? It's so small, looks sleek and is unbelievably quiet. I must say though I was a bit sceptical at first on whether this tiny box would be able to handle my day to day tasks. A press of the power button and I'm instantly on the windows login screen. Enter my password and all the applications I need boot up and I'm good to go - the speed of this thing is simply unbelievable, despite its diminutive dimensions. I used to have time to make a quick coffee before my old machine was up and running, I'd have to be The Flash to do that now!

To complement the Z2 Mini workstation I've also been using two HP S240uj monitors. The high screen resolution provided by these displays makes it simple to navigate huge spreadsheets, or flick between multiple application windows. I also like the fact that I can use my headphones to listen to music through the display, rather than having to plug into the back of the workstation itself. That means regardless of where I put the Z2 Mini, l now don't need headphone cables metres long to reach it.

The monitors also have Bang & Olufsen speakers built in, great when you need a bit of music to get you through analysing millions of numbers. I can't forget to mention the monitors have integrated wireless charging too! No need to run around the office looking for a spare phone charger, just place it on base of the monitor and let the charging commence.

Overall, working with the HP Z2 Mini workstation and the S240uj monitors has been great. I still haven't pushed the devices to their limits, but I'll be gearing up to do just that. In the next few weeks I'll be processing a number of very large data sets using various applications, which should provide a bigger challenge for this tiny powerhouse - I'll report back on how I get on in my next blog.

Is your business ready for the future?