Velocity Micro Edge Z55: Core i7-940 with CrossFire 4870
by Matt Campbell on December 12, 2008 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Overclocking
One big upside to the problems we encountered is that we spent a long time tinkering in the BIOS and, therefore, we spent quite a while testing the limits of the system. Particularly since it was my first experience with Core i7, I wanted to see how far the Edge Z55 would go.
We easily hit 3.8GHz with the Core i7-940, at a BCLK of 190MHz. The huge limiting factor was not the motherboard or CPU but the Intel heatsink, as temperatures would quickly shoot to 100°C (the thermal throttling point) under load.
Keeping QPI close to stock is important for stability; anything above around 6.8 GT/s (or 3400MHz in CPU-Z) and stability was compromised. We did boot and idle at desktop at almost 7.9 GT/s, but any load situation would crash.
Heat prevented us from doing much testing at 3.8GHz, but we did run through the CINEBENCH CPU tests.
Pricing and Warranty
As configured, the Edge Z55 retails for around $3600. The Core i7-940 alone retails for around $570 right now, and the Intel motherboard around $260 - already we're over the $800 mark. Accounting for a quality aluminum case from Silverstone, drives, fans, etc., the cost rolls up to around $2400. This is a quite a large premium, even accounting for items like the "free" games, but a 40% margin is fairly typical for high-end system manufacturers and they are close to this mark. It does include some intangibles for the customer, like the customization steps Velocity Micro takes in the case to make their product stand apart, and the time spent in testing and customizing the operating system.
When it comes to product warranty support, Velocity Micro has an advantage here as their technical support personnel are the actual system builders. Any problem with a system is referred back to the person who constructed and tested it, by hand, in the Virginia office. This is impressive for a company of their size. 24/7 Technical Support is not standard but available as an upgrade, and provides an on-call technician for "emergency" problems only such as no-boot situations. Though we had our share of problems with our system, the people we talked to were very knowledgeable, burned each system in with custom scripts of blended small/large runs in Prime95 and had a good understanding of BIOS tweaks. One gripe that we have is that the standard warranty offered is a 1-year depot service only. On higher end gaming systems such as this, the level of investment is deserving of a 3-year warranty. This is an available option and costs an additional $169 including on-site support, but we hope this is a point that Velocity Micro tries to convey as an important choice to the more uninformed buyers.
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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.