Velocity Micro ProMagix HD180 Max

The Velocity Micro ProMagix HD180 Max ($6,995 direct) is a professional-class workstation built for speed. In this incarnation, it's a niche product, made for video editors and other video pros. With other components, it can be tuned for CAD, math, and 3D rendering as well. The HD180 Max comes with a six-core Intel Core i7 processor, lots of speedy DDR3 memory, SSDs, an Nvidia Quadro graphics card, and an Nvidia Tesla GPU coprocessor card. All of it together will make Premiere Pro fans happy.

Design and Features
The ProMagix HD180 Max is built into one of Velocity Micro's larger chassis. As such, it has the room inside for the Intel Core i7-3930k processor (and huge air cooled heat sink), 32GB of DDR3 memory (and room for more), two 120GB SSDs, 2TB hard drive, Nvidia Quadro 4000 graphics card, Nvidia Tesla C2075 GPU coprocessor card, Blu-ray burner, and the 1,200W power supply. The case door is windowed, so you can see into the system and show off the extra Nvidia Tesla coprocessor card. Aside from the window, the rest of the system looks every bit the professional workstation.

The visible Quadro graphics card and Tesla GPU coprocessor cards are your visual cues that the system means business. Inside the chassis, there's a bunch of room left over for up to two more Tesla cards, as well as another graphics card (at least physically). The system can accommodate two more hard drives and two more optical drives, and thankfully there are four free SATA ports on the motherboard. Outside, the system can be connected to quite a few peripherals with the eight USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and a FireWire 400 port. You can add a PCIe card for more USB 3.0 ports, but it would've been nice to have more than two. Thunderbolt is notably missing, but the motherboards with built-in Thunderbolt ports are somewhat scarce, as are add-on cards. This particular configuration is appealing for the same type of users that will welcome the added speedy external storage found in a Thunderbolt drive, i.e. video editors and mastering folk.

The desktop came free of any bloatware, as is usual for Velocity Micro's custom built PCs. You really don't want to have to deal with uninstalling extraneous software when all you want to do is work on editing and transcoding your Citizen Kane. The system we reviewed came with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, the Nvidia drivers for the GPUs, and that's about it. The system comes with a 1-year standard warranty, which is a bit short for such an expensive system. You can purchase an extended warranty at added cost, but workstations from the competition like the single-processor workstation Editors' Choice Dell Precision T1600 ($2,185 direct, 4.5 stars) come with a three-year warranty standard.

Performance
The reason you buy a workstation is for performance and reliability. The reliability is covered by the 1,200W power supply and the professional-grade Nvidia cards. The Nvidia cards also provide a performance boost, particularly on tasks that take advantage of GPU optimization like the Mercury Playback Engine (MPE) built into Adobe Premiere CS5.5 and CS6. MPE uses the system's RAM, the GPUs in the Quadro and Tesla cards, and Nvidia's CUDA programming language to speed tasks that would otherwise be time consuming. For example, using the PPBM CS5.5 benchmark test run in Premiere Pro CS6, the ProMagix took only 5 seconds to complete the standard MPE-optimized test. The high-end Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 ($4,999 direct, 3.5 stars) without a Tesla co-processor, which took a much longer 43 seconds. This task is a huge argument for adding the Tesla co-processor to an (relatively) inexpensive non-Xeon processor. The test file was only minutes in length, so imagine the difference if you were mastering a multi-hour-long documentary.

The HD180 Max was quite fast on our regular multimedia benchmark tests as well. The system took a scant 1:06 to complete our Handbrake video transcode test and 2:49 to complete the Photoshop CS5 test. This is faster than the dual Xeon processor-equipped Lenovo ThinkStation D20 ($9,344 direct, 4 stars) (1:19 in Handbrake, 3:09 in Photoshop) as well as the current Editors' Choice Dell Precision T1600 (1:13 in Handbrake, 2:57 in Photoshop). It's no slouch on day to day tasks either, as the HD180 Max's 5,474 point score on PCMark7 was one of the highest we've recorded for any PC. In fact, the HD180 Max won most of the benchmark tests when compared with other professional-grade workstations.

The Velocity Micro ProMagix HD180 Max is an excellent professional workstation for video editors in particular, and graphics arts professionals in general. It comes highly recommended for the type of user that will take advantage of the GPU processing power, like users in the indie film scene working to meet a release date. However, for more enterprise-based users in mainstream Hollywood, we still recommend the high-end workstation Editors' Choice Lenovo ThinkStation C20 ($4,618 direct, 4.0 stars), ThinkStation D20, and their ThinkStation cousins for their enterprise-friendly serviceability, ISV certifications, and IT connections.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
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jason wu