Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 (2018) - Review 2022

The Raptor Z55 (starts at $1,599; $three,399 as tested) is one of the latest gaming desktop offerings from boutique manufacturer Velocity Micro, congenital to order by the custom-PC veteran. Yous tin can configure the system with myriad component choices when ordering to fit your needs and upkeep; ours is a high-finish loadout with premium parts and performance to match. Its seldom-seen Intel Core i7-8086K Limited Edition CPU and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti video card lead the way to a capable 4K gaming car, and the case is easy to piece of work in, if tame given the price. The Origin PC Neuron remains our Editors' Choice for its pinnacle mix of substance and style, only it ultimately boils downwards to aesthetic preference. Along with the Neuron, the Maingear F131, and a few others, this Raptor is worth a look if yous're considering a deluxe custom build.

A Window With a View

The Raptor Z55 is congenital into Velocity Micro'due south all-new GX5 chassis, though information technology should look very familiar if you've seen other Velocity Micro systems. Information technology's the newest evolution of Velocity Micro's ATX belfry, like the GX4 I worked with for my 2022 review of the Velocity Micro Raptor Z95. The GX5 is prissy and slim, with a minimal desk footprint for a full-size tower. (You can too social club the Raptor Z55 in MicroATX form in Velocity Micro's MX3 chassis.) Information technology has the aforementioned night, brushed-metal stop and clean, minimal confront as the GX4, but some structural differences.

The GX4 had only a small cutout for two fans to prove through, just the GX5 has a tempered-glass window that takes upwards most three-quarters of the left panel. The windowed console pulls abroad very easily by hand, with no tools required, but it all the same snaps securely back into place. Instead of the radiator fans showing out the side window, they now bear witness out through a grate on the top of the chassis.

The rear is home to most of the ports, including ii USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.one port (all of the preceding being Type-A), as well as a USB Type-C port, Ethernet, and non-used DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs. The top panel houses two USB 3.0 ports, along with headset and mic jacks. The front confront is flush except for the power button and a DVD drive.

The larger window actually lets you see the costly components that tend to be in these loftier-cease machines, and the Z55 is definitely clean and organized inside. It is a little spare inside, though—there but isn't very much to expect at inside this machine.

Velocity Micro text and a logo are imposed on the window, which I'm not crazy virtually. An EVGA CLC 240 liquid cooler pumps away at the CPU, its EVGA logo glowing blue by default simply customizable. (The Intel Core i7-8086K is overclocked to allow for upward to a 5.3GHz boost clock.) The EVGA-brand Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti doesn't have the traditional lime-greenish illuminated block writing of the carte'south proper name on its side, only smaller text glowing in white. The 16GB of Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer RGB RAM is the flashiest attribute, glowing a lite-blueish color by default but likewise customizable and synchronizable with example lighting.

Other than that, information technology's a scrap sterile inside. The Asus Prime number Z370-A motherboard (a nice, gaming-centric model with support for dual M.2 drives, USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3, and Intel Optane Retentiveness) has a big white cover over about of the heatsink, but information technology isn't much to look at otherwise. The interior itself is shiny silver metal, and a shroud covering the ability supply (a 650-watt EVGA SuperNova Gold unit of measurement) and cabling comes up to the bottom border of the window, minimizing open up space.

A gear up of blue lights underneath the motherboard shines out to the correct, which provides a very low-central glow. Y'all tin can also see a metal grate on the correct-hand side blocking off the chassis' bulldoze bays, but underneath that is just open space and a case fan. The overall pattern but feels a bit empty and underwhelming. Equally opposed to the Origin Neuron, the Acer Predator Orion 9000, the Origin PC Genesis, and the (admittedly much pricier) Maingear F131, the Raptor Z55 doesn't trade in flashy design. That, withal, that may be a boon depending on your tastes, and its restrained await can come in handy if you are in an uncommon professional person niche where you need both a capable 3D machine and a solid gaming rig. It won't stick out in an environs where it needs to look sober.

Rounding out the components are two forms of storage. This Z55 configuration offers both a 4TB difficult drive and a 512GB Samsung SSD Pro 970 NVMe SSD. That's enough of storage capacity, clearly, and a very speedy boot drive. The huge hard drive can fit more game installs than you lot'll likely e'er need at once, and y'all can keep the Bone and essential programs on the SSD.

Once more, this lineup is for the specific configuration we were sent for review, but it'south pointless to listing all your alternatives. A boutique manufacturer similar Velocity Micro offers nearly every possible component combination you could ask for, from storage capacities to graphics cards upwardly and down the hierarchy, so I can't cover each possible permutation. If you like the case and the support that Velocity Micro offers, caput over to the configuration page and see what components you can put together for your budget.

An Overclocked Dream

That leads us to performance for this particular rig, which is nothing short of blazing fast. The processor (reminder, information technology's an Intel Core i7-8086K) is the centerpiece, a six-core, Hyper-Threading-capable, overclock-ready tiptop-end chip. Outside of this specific arrangement, the general context for this chip is it'due south a limited-edition offering with actress overclocking potential and a pocket-sized speed crash-land over the more standard Cadre i7-8700K, for a slightly higher price. There's a lot more to exist said about this processor and its value, and it is unusual to meet one in a prebuilt system when only fifty,000 of them have been fabricated, but that discussion is more suited to a separate review of the chip. (Nosotros're working on 1.)

Regardless of its head-to-head standing with the Cadre i7-8700K, information technology seared through our benchmark tests, posting one of the higher PCMark 8 Work Conventional scores of any system we've tested. It should get without maxim that information technology's more than effective for everyday multitasking, only now in that location's empirical proof.

Similarly, its scores on the multimedia tests demonstrate an effective professional-grade machine for video and photo editing. You'd probably opt for a unlike type of auto if this were strictly a professional desktop, but it tin definitely serve multiple purposes if you're someone who wants both a gaming machine and high-terminate estimator for work or a serious hobby. Some of the competitors charted here were still on "Kaby Lake" seventh-generation chips when tested them, and so the Raptor Z55 isn't exactly a fair fight, only this limited-edition chip all the same cleaned upwards on these tests. To their credit, the AMD chips made but as good or better showings on Cinebench and Handbrake just struggled on Photoshop past comparison. (The Threadripper 1950X chip in the Alienware machine is a 16-core monster with its ain special set of considerations.)

See How We Test Desktops

Our direct comparisons of 3D-graphics performance to other gaming systems here need to be taken in context. The other comparable high-end desktops in our charts, barring one, boast dual graphics cards (either two GeForce GTX 1080 or two GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards) to the Raptor Z55's single bill of fare. And they are priced appropriately: The Raptor Z55 is the least expensive amongst them, while the MSI Aegis Ti3 and the Origin Neuron ring upwardly just under $four,000, and the others are many thousands more. I've likewise included a single-menu GeForce GTX 1080-based organisation, the CyberPower Gamer Principal Ultra, for a comparison that factors in taking a step downwards the graphics ladder.

All of that said, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is as capable as ever in this motorcar. This EVGA model is particularly effective, churning out more than frames on the Sky and Valley simulated-gaming tests at Ultra quality settings in full Hard disk than y'all'll ever need, at 169fps and 177fps, respectively. On these tests, 60fps at 4K proved to be an, ahem, SLI bridge likewise far for a unmarried card, just its 45fps and 54fps scores were respectable.

How About Some Games?

Those tests only guess gaming, and then I too rolled out a couple of demanding, recent real ones. Rising of the Tomb Raider proved less strenuous: The Raptor Z55 posted 66fps on its in-game benchmark test at maximum settings and 4K resolution. The organisation was slightly less successful with Far Cry 5 in the same scenario, coming in at 54fps. But if you lot knock down a couple settings from the maximum levels, 60fps at 4K is hands attainable.

That's a solid endorsement of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti from modern, visually demanding games, and the EVGA version with its enhanced cooling and clocking spits out a few more frames than the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, to boot. Information technology's worth noting, however, that following the reveal of Nvidia's new generation of GeForce RTX graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti won't exist at the superlative of the heap come tardily September. At this writing, however, neither PC Labs nor any other outlet had the opportunity yet to benchmark those cards, and then there'southward no telling what sort of performance increase yous tin expect at this time. Velocity Micro has already added the GeForce RTX 2080 and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti as options to the Raptor Z55. That means the Raptor will remain relevant afterward this year in one case those cards curlicue out, if you're looking into buying one of these machines and so. So yous don't have to disregard the build or its other components; yous'll just have some pricier top-end graphics options to consider.

Build to Your Budget

In some ways, it's difficult to review a desktop with so many configuration options. Our tester unit is configured at a very loftier level, but virtually consumers tin't afford its $3,000-plus price. For those that can, though, you'd be getting a very fast and no-fuss machine that tips you into the borderlands of high-frame-rate 4K gaming. Other than that, I tin merely speak to the case and build quality. The GX5 is on the minimalist side, to be sure, and that fact either will or won't appeal to you on an aesthetic level. I personally like the style, simply I would also understand if a heir-apparent wanted something a fiddling more centre-catching for $iii,399.

The instance is easy to work in, though, and Velocity Micro gets everything running in top shape, presented with make clean cablevision management. As with many of these boutique machines, you lot are paying a premium on the parts for assembly and support. Which model you choose and which vendor you frequent comes down what pleases your eye and your budget; most offer a similar panoply of core components.

Our bottom line? The Raptor Z55 is a worthy custom gaming-PC candidate, along with other acme picks from Falcon Northwest, Maingear, and Origin, and it gets some bonus points for incorporating the unique express-edition Intel chip. If y'all want the bragging-rights cachet that the 8086K processor carries in enthusiast-PC circles, yous'll desire to snag one—or a system congenital around i and optimized to cool it—while you tin can.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/desktops/29053/velocity-micro-raptor-z55-2018

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