Velocity Micro Edge Z55: Core i7-940 with CrossFire 4870
by Matt Campbell on December 12, 2008 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Introduction
We've looked at a number of systems here at AnandTech, and Velocity Micro has always been on our "to-do" list based on their popularity and prevalence in the market. The guys from Virginia sent one of their new Edge Z55 systems our way with a Core i7-940 to put through our review cycle. How does it hold up? As this is our first time looking at Velocity Micro, we'll look at the company themselves, and then try to answer that question. Worth note is that this is also our first Core i7 system review, so we may see some teething problems with the brand new technology.
Velocity Micro - Company Overview
Velocity Micro has seen tremendous growth in the past few years. Their introduction into Best Buy stores in 2005 was a huge step, as was their acquisition of Overdrive PC in 2007. Below is their summary from their webpage:
"Velocity Micro, Inc. is the premier high-performance personal computer provider in North America. Founded in 1992, Richmond, Va.-based Velocity Micro custom builds award winning gaming, mobile, multimedia, home office, small business, pro workstation, and visual supercomputer solutions. Velocity Micro consumer systems are available at Best Buy, MicroCenter, Circuit City, and select Staples retail stores nationwide, as well as online vendors Amazon.com, Newegg.com, TigerDirect.com, CompUSA.com, and many others."
On their "Why VM" webpage as well as their video, they further detail what they believe sets them apart, including in particular "care and craftsmanship". We will keep both of these claims in mind throughout the review.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
27 Comments
View All Comments
leexgx - Saturday, December 13, 2008 - link
it utterly destroys hard disk performance when it gets stuck doing an shadow copy for 1hr until it give up and stopson my d: drive it has an tendansy to read my 3dmark vantage setup file 4 times as i can see it doing it in resource monitor repeatably reading the same files
but i must admit system restore on vista does work alot better when useing it and tends to brake less things when ran
UNHchabo - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
I looked at some of their machines, and they do offer Norton Suite pre-installed as an optional extra.One small request: jpegs make sense for posting gaming screenshots or photos, but could you please switch to .png files when posting screenshots of regular windows programs? The lack of artifacting makes it easier to read things like the System Information window.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Grap...">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Grap...
leexgx - Saturday, December 13, 2008 - link
is there any way to make MSpaint on vista allways pick PNGi can see why web sites do not use PNG still but realy users should be useing Opera (still works on win95 and up)/Firefox 3 with 2-3 plugins for exploits/ IE7 (maybe not IE with lots of 0day problems at this time but should be installed and fully up to date)
PNG should be used nowadays or very uncompressed JEPG (do not use msPant as it has no compression settings)
Voldenuit - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
Intel stock cooler? And wait, what is this I'm hearing... *chipset fan*???Blegh.
Cuhulainn - Saturday, December 13, 2008 - link
This is just unbelievable to me.Spending that kind of scratch on a system with the latest greatest Intel processor (which is known to run hot!) and not getting an aftermarket cooling solution?!
It's like buying a fine wine and drinking it out of a dixie cup.. or something.
mmntech - Sunday, December 14, 2008 - link
It certainly is chintzy. If you're spending $2100 on something like that, I would expect at least high end air.UNHchabo - Monday, December 15, 2008 - link
At Core i7's launch there were only two LGA1366 aftermarket coolers on Newegg, and both had reviews saying that the stock cooler actually did a BETTER job of cooling the CPU.strikeback03 - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
That is the stock Intel cooler on an Intel board, and it looks like it overhangs the first DIMM slot?Matt Campbell - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
Good eye - yes, it does.afkrotch - Friday, December 12, 2008 - link
I read Anandtech a few times during the week and noticed this review. One thing I feel is lacking is the Customer Service portion. I like the way HardOCP deals with it. They call customer service with an issue to see how it gets resolved. They act like a regular customer with a regular problem and rate it based on their experience.