Design: High-Quality Luxury Manufacturing
Founded in 1997 in Virginia, Velocity Micro is well-known for producing high-performance gaming desktop computers. In the past, we reviewed the AMD-powered Raptor Signature Edition, and here we take a look at the Intel-powered Raptor Z95 (starting at $2,469; $5,329 in our test). The quality of this high-end mid-tower case – which is hand-assembled and tuned – and the quiet operation is impressive, along with its premium components, including support for Wi-Fi 7. However, the outstanding performance comes from the liquid-cooled Intel Core i9-14900K processor and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card at a very high price even by luxury store building standards. Its standard warranty does not match that of Falcon Northwest Talon, and you can get similar performance from the Alienware Aurora R16 and Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 at a lower cost.
Interior: Equipped to the Max
Both side panels of the Raptor Z95 are secured with a single screw each. I appreciate that the panels are secured with clips that prevent the doors from falling when the screws are loosened. Details really matter when you spend this amount of money. Velocity Micro’s component choices leave no room for complaints; buyers can select specific brands and models upon request. The Aorus Master X board is sold for $549 and has capabilities far exceeding what you find in mainstream desktop computers, including a PCI Express Gen 5 M.2 slot. Our unit takes full advantage of that with the Crucial T700 Gen 5 SSD covered by a giant metal heatsink. The large front fans provide steady airflow with minimal noise since they don’t need to spin fast. The air comes from a 120mm rear fan and three other fans on a 360mm liquid cooling radiator mounted at the top of the Velocity Micro. The company’s logo on the CPU water block glows in RGB, as do the two Kingston Fury DDR5 memory modules running at 6,000 MHz. The noise level of this desktop was impressively low in my testing. It barely registers in my ears when idle, and there’s no difficulty using open-back earbuds while playing on the Raptor Z95 sitting a few feet away.
Micro Raptor Z95 Speed Test: This Is No Dinosaur
Just to remind you, the $5,329 Raptor Z95 comes with an Intel Core i9-14900K processor (8 performance and 16 efficient cores, up to 6.0 GHz), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card, 64 GB of DDR5 memory at 6,000 MHz, and a 2 TB PCI Express Gen 5 SSD. As mentioned in the introduction, Velocity Micro charges a hefty premium; the Raptor Z95 is priced roughly the same as the Falcon Northwest Talon, which is a more attractive case with a better standard warranty. If you are only looking for performance, the Alienware Aurora R16 and Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 are competitors at a significantly lower cost.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
We run the same general productivity tests on both laptops and desktops. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of productivity and office scenarios to measure overall system performance and also includes a basic disk storage test.
Three other tests we have focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads to evaluate how well the computer handles processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses the Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular applications ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video conversion software HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video from 4K resolution to 1080p (the lower the times, the better).
Finally,
We run the PugetBench test for Photoshop from the computer maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud 22 version of Adobe’s popular image editing software to evaluate the performance of the computer for content creation and multimedia applications. It is a mechanism that executes a variety of general Photoshop tasks that rely on CPU and GPU-accelerated processing, ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, filling gradients, and applying filters.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
For gaming desktops, we run synthetic and real-world graphics tests. The former includes simulating two games using DirectX 12 from 3DMark by UL, namely the more modest Night Raid (suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and the more demanding Time Spy (suitable for gaming desktops with discrete graphics cards). We then run two OpenGL benchmarks, displayed off-screen by the cross-platform performance test GFXBench 5, which allows for different display resolutions; the higher the frames per second (fps), the better the performance.
Our real gaming tests are those integrated into F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege, which are tested at higher resolutions and quality settings than laptops for gaming. These three represent a racing simulation, an open-world adventure, and a competitive/eSports shooter game, respectively. We run Valhalla and Siege at least twice at Ultra quality (at both 1080p and 4K), while F1 2021 is run only at 4K resolution, both with and without AMD and Nvidia features to enhance performance FSR and DLSS.
Conclusion: Fast, but we want more for the money
Velocity Micro is no stranger to our labs, and we always appreciate their high standards for build quality and performance. The Raptor Z95 delivers impressive performance with Intel’s latest Core i9-14900K processor, achieving our highest scores even against competitors using the same CPU, indicating that it is very well cooled. We were also impressed by the superb storage performance and the forward-looking inclusion of Wi-Fi 7. This system struggles with its price, being much more expensive than a similarly equipped main tower and lacking visual appeal to support it, making it difficult to recommend unless you are completely sold on the understated beauty of a desktop computer.
Pros
– Very fast performance
– High-quality build and components
– Wi-Fi 7 and PCIe Gen5 as tested
Cons
– High price in the tested configuration
– Very conservative appearance
Specifications of Micro Raptor Z95 (2023)
– Boot drive capacity (as tested): 2TB
– Boot drive type: SSD
– Desktop category: Gaming
– Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080
– Operating system: Windows 11 Home
– Processor: Intel Core i9-14900K
– Processor speed: 3.2GHz
– RAM (as tested): 64GB
Table of Contents
– Design: High-end luxury build
– Inside: Equipped with maximum spec
– Speed test of Micro Raptor Z95: This is not a dinosaur
– Productivity and content creation tests
– Graphics and gaming tests
– Conclusion: Fast, but we want more for the money
Source: https://me.pcmag.com/en/old-desktop-pcs/21212/velocity-micro-raptor-z95-2023
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