Engineering Workstation Review: Very Fast Indeed

Computer Direct Business sent us its Volta Pro VP1, a well-designed workstation based on a fourth-generation Intel Haswell CPU. The system is housed in a solid black ATX tower case measuring 8.27x19.29x15.55 in. (WxDxH) made in Sweden by Fractal Design. The complete system weighed 31.5 lbs. The case features side and top vents with ample sound dampening and noise absorbing material on the side panels. A hinged door conceals two front panel 5.25-in. drive bays and a pair of fans. The top bay in our evaluation unit housed a Liteon 24X DVD+/-R/RW burner.

A round power button, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.0 port, microphone and headphone jacks are on the front top edge of the case. The rear panel provides four more USB 3.0 ports, an RJ-45 network jack, an optical S/PDIF output port and five audio jacks. The side panels are held in place with non-captive thumbscrews. In addition to the two external bays, the Fractal case provides room for up to six internal bays. Our evaluation unit included three internal drive bays, however.

Classy Components

The Volta Pro VP1 is built around the ASUS Gryphon Z97 motherboard, an excellent board based on the Intel Z97 Express chipset. The motherboard provides four DIMM (dual in-line memory module) sockets supporting a maximum of 32GB of non-ECC un-buffered memory modules of up to 1866MHz. The base Volta Pro VP1 configuration comes with 8GB of RAM using a pair of 4GB DIMMs. Our evaluation unit came with 16GB of memory, installed as a pair of 8GB Crucial Ballistix 1600MHz modules, adding $56 to the system price. The LGA1150 socket on the ASUS motherboard supports a wide range of Intel processors, and Computer Direct Business offers a choice of five different CPUs ranging from the 3GHz Core i5-4460 quad-core processor in the base Volta Pro VP1 configuration to the Core i7-4790K installed in our evaluation unit. While that Intel CPU has a standard speed of 4GHz and a maximum turbo speed of 4.4GHz, Intel designed this processor to be overclocked, and Computer Direct Business did indeed boost the CPU in our system to 4.5GHz. That faster CPU plus overclocking added another $322 to the cost of the base system.

The Computer Direct Business Volta Pro VP1 proves that a small system integrator can build a great workstation. Image courtesy of David Cohn.

Expansion options on the ASUS motherboard are limited to a pair of PCIe 3.0 x16 slots that support a single x16 board or two x8 boards, plus a PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 electrically) and one PCIe x1 slot. The base Volta Pro VP1 configuration comes with an entry-level NVIDIA Quadro K620 GPU, but one x16 slot in our evaluation unit housed a high-end NVIDIA Quadro K5200 graphics card with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and 2304 CUDA cores. The high-end NVIDIA board added $2,117 to the system price. The Quadro K5200 provides a pair of DVI ports as well as two DisplayPorts. The rear panel also has DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPorts connected to the Intel HD Graphics 4600 on the CPU.

While the base Volta Pro VP1 configuration comes with a 250GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD (solid-state drive), our unit came with a 400GB Intel 750 PCIe SSD, installed in one of the remaining PCIe x16 slots, adding $344 to the base price. It meant there was only one expansion slot remaining while the drive bays were empty. The company offers drives ranging from a 500GB 7200 rpm drive up to a 1.2TB SSD. Computer Direct Business included a Corsair Hydro Series H60 liquid cooling system. Power was provided by a Seasonic 850watt 80 Plus Bronze power supply. The system was quiet even under heavy compute loads.

Great Performance

On the SPEC Viewperf tests, the Computer Direct Business Volta Pro VP1 beat every other single-socket workstation we have tested to date, owing largely to its overclocked CPU and high-end graphics card. On the SPECapc SolidWorks benchmark, it again beat other systems equipped with a single CPU. But on the AutoCAD rendering test, the Volta Pro VP1’s quad-core CPU could not match the rendering performance of the six- and eight-core systems we’ve recently reviewed.

We also ran the SPECwpc workstation benchmark. The Volta Pro VP1 turned in great numbers on tests that relied primarily on graphics performance but dropped to the middle or bottom of the pack on elements of the test that were multi-threaded.

Computer Direct Business pre-loaded Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Windows 8.1 is also available. The company does not offer them as an option when configuring a system online. Strangely, the system comes with only a 1-year warranty on parts, yet most of the components used to build the system carry their own multi-year warranties. Computer Direct Business does offer lifetime labor and tech support, however, and will cover parts for a second or third year for an additional charge.

While it lacks ISV (independent software vendor) certification and you could essentially build the same system yourself for less, if the Volta Pro VP1 is any indication, the folks at Computer Direct Business know how to build great systems. The Volta Pro VP1 combines excellent components in a well-apportioned package offering great performance at a very attractive price.

More Info

• Computer Direct Business

Single-Socket Workstations Compared