Workstation Review: Digital Storm Slade PRO

Digital Storm recently sent us a new version of its Slade PRO workstation, an updated version of its custom-built workstation that we previously reviewed. The Fremont, CA-based company originally focused on producing fast gaming computers but has been selling custom-built workstations to engineering professionals for several years.

While the Slade PRO is Digital Storm’s entry-level workstation—with a starting price of $1,592—it is available in multiple configurations ranging from a single Intel Core i7 CPU to systems with dual Xeon CPUs and multiple NVIDIA GPUs (graphics processing units). Other Digital Storm models offer similar wide ranges of options, but are based on larger cases.

Like its predecessor, our new Slade PRO came enclosed in some rather unique packaging with a foam block inside the case to help prevent components from being dislodged during transit. In spite of this, when we opened the case to remove the foam, we noted that the hard drive was partially dislodged from its cage. But unlike the evaluation unit we received last year, the drive was still connected and everything worked properly. It was a simple matter to reseat the drive. Although this was the result of careless handling by the shipping company, it is something seen repeatedly by both DE and Digital Storm customers.

Digital Storm is not really a manufacturer—it is a system integrator, assembling computers from an assortment of readily available components. For example, the Slade PRO comes housed in a large, black aluminum and steel ATX mid-tower case measuring 8.7x20.9x19.5 in. (WxDxH). However, that case is actually an Obsidian Series 550D manufactured by Corsair, available online for $143. What Digital Storm adds is skilled assembly, extensive testing and a single point for support and service should it be needed.

This is the same case we saw when we reviewed last-year’s version of the Slade PRO. As such, it provides excellent noise reduction and sound isolation, thanks to front and side panels lined with sound-damping material and front air intakes angled away from the front of the case. But as noted last year, the case is a bit quirky, with two front-mounted intake fans and one rear exhaust fan. There are also removable plastic panels on the top and left side that can accommodate two additional fans each, but adding fans in these locations would likely increase the sound level. Removable magnetic dust filters protect the top, front, and side air intakes. There is also a slot-mounted filter on the bottom of the case that often slid out when we moved the system. Although the entire system weighed just 35.25 lbs., moving it was hampered by a lack of any type of handle or other grip point.

Digital Storm Has Lots and Lots of Options

The front of the case presents a monolithic appearance. Initially, all that is visible is a brushed aluminum panel housing headphone and microphone jacks, a small reset button, a large round power button, and a pair of USB 3.0 ports. This panel is a cutout in a large door that can swing open from either side or be removed. This door concealed four 5.25-in. drive bays. The top bay contained an ASUS Blu-ray player/DVD writer combo drive (a $77 option) while the bottom bay housed a media card reader with five slots plus a USB 2.0 port (adding $19).

Removing the left side panel revealed a spacious and well-organized interior. In addition to the front panel drive bays, the Corsair case provides six internal tool-free drive bays that can accommodate either 3.5- or 2.5-in. drives. This time around, our Slade PRO came with a 400GB Intel 750 Series PCIe card-based solid-state drive (SSD) as the boot drive, installed in one of the available expansion slots, and a 2TB Western Digital Black Edition 7200 rpm data drive in one of the internal drive bays. Although a 2TB hard drive comes standard in the base configuration (which also includes a cage-mounted 250GB Samsung SSD) the storage drive in our system was a $66 upgrade while the 400GB card-based SSD added another $348. Other, larger capacity SSD and standard hard drives are available.

As we learned last year, the Slade PRO is actually available in multiple configurations—now a total of eight variations—that can then be customized by choosing from an array of options. For example, the $1,592 entry-level system comes with a 4-core CPU, 16GB of memory, an NVIDIA Quadro K620 GPU, a 250GB SSD and 2TB hard drive. Other systems start with 6-core, 8-core, or 12-core Xeon processors at $2,571, $3,932, or $5,334, respectively—or you can configure systems based on dual Core i7 or Xeon CPUs. And while all Slade PRO systems start out with the same case, you can choose different cases and spend hundreds of dollars for exotic paint jobs.

Our Slade PRO system contained an ASUS X99-E WS motherboard based on an Intel X99 chipset (actually a $338 upgrade from the base motherboard, and Digital Storm offers three other motherboard options). This ASUS motherboard provides eight memory sockets, supporting up to 256GB of memory using 32GB DIMMs (dual in-line memory modules). Our unit came with 32GB of DDR4 2133MHz ECC registered RAM installed using four 8GB 288-pin Samsung DIMMs, the same as the base configuration. There are also seven PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 slots. Our system came with an NVIDIA Quadro M4000 graphics board instead of the K2200 included in the base configuration, adding $451 to the base price. The M4000 is a new card recently released by NVIDIA and based on the company’s newest Maxwell 2 GPU. The M4000 includes 8GB of GDDR5 memory and 1664 CUDA (compute unified device architecture) cores and provides four DisplayPort connections. The board requires a single expansion slot, although its stereo connector uses an additional rear panel knockout and its 120-watt power consumption requires an auxiliary power connection.

While Digital Storm’s website lists systems based on 4-core, 6-core, 8-core, and 12-core CPUs, our evaluation unit came with a 10-core Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3, a processor with a 3.1GHz clock speed, 3.5GHz maximum turbo speed, and a 25MB cache. This CPU added $2,241 to the base price of the company’s 6-core Xeon system. Cooling is provided by a Digital Storm Vortex liquid cooling system (actually a branded version of the Corsair H80), but again Digital Storm offers a myriad of other options. Users can also have their systems configured with internal lighting, additional airflow controls and other modifications. The system comes with a 750-watt EVGA SuperNOVA power supply, but again, there are no fewer than 11 other options.

The rear panel offers eight USB 3.0/2.0 ports, two USB 3.1/3.0/2.0 ports, two RJ-45 network jack, two eSATA connections, one optical S/PDIF output port, five audio jacks (separate microphone and line-in jacks as well as line-out, rear, and center/sub-woofer channels), a USB BIOS flashback button, and a Q-Code Logger button, all supported by the ASUS motherboard.

Very Good Performance

With its fast 10-core CPU and powerful new graphics card, we were quite anxious to see how well the new Slade PRO would perform. On the SPEC Viewperf tests, the system held its own and outperformed its predecessor.

Although the results on the SPECapc SOLIDWORKS 2013 test proved quite disappointing, those results may be an anomaly due to the operating system used rather than the actual performance of the workstation. The Slade PRO was the first system we have tested that came with Windows 10, and although SOLIDWORKS seemed to run fine, our research indicates that only SOLIDWORKS 2014 and newer are supported on this new OS.

We also ran the SPECwpc benchmark, and here the Slade PRO turned in some of the best results we’ve recorded to date for a system equipped with a single CPU. Similarly, on the AutoCAD rendering test, a multi-threaded test on which faster systems with more CPU cores have a distinct advantage, the Slade PRO completed the rendering in just 47.33 seconds—quite fast—but nearly 10 seconds slower than last year’s Slade PRO, which still holds the record for a single-socket workstations.

As we’ve stated, Digital Storm pre-loaded Windows 10 Professional 64-bit, for which it charged a $52 premium over the Home edition. One year of McAfee AntiVirus Plus was also included. Because configuring a Digital Storm system is truly an a la carte process (and we did not request any additional options other than those already mentioned), our system came without a keyboard or mouse. Assuming that most users would likely need these, we added a Logitech Media Combo MK200 keyboard and mouse (a $24 option) when we priced the system using the company’s configuration website.

Digital Storm backs its computers with lifetime customer care and a three-year limited warranty that covers labor costs for three years and defective part replacement for one year, something that we found a bit curious because many of the components included in the system have longer warranties. Warranties of up to six years, including four-year part replacement, are also available.

Because our system priced out at more than $6,000, it qualified for a $200 discount, free ground shipping, and an extra year of warranty coverage. While that offer was only good for a limited time, other offers may become available.

Like its predecessor, the new Digital Storm Slade PRO performed flawlessly throughout our review process, and generally outperformed last year’s version. But there is nothing “bleeding edge” about the Slade PRO and you could build the same system yourself for less. Its lack of ISV (independent software vendor) certification makes us wonder whether it is appropriate for mission-critical engineering applications. That said, the Digital Storm Slade PRO remains a well-built system based on excellent components that offers a lot of bang for the buck.

More Info

• Digital Storm

Single-Socket Workstations Compared

		Digital Storm Slade PROone 3.1GHz Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3 10-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro M4000, 32GB RAM	Computer Direct Volta Proone 4.0GHz Intel Core i7-4790K quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro K5200, 16GB RAM	BOXX APEXX 2 2401one 4.0GHz Intel Core i7-4790K 4-core CPU over-clocked to 4.5GHz, NVIDIA Quadro K5200, 16GB RAM	Xi MTower PCIeone 3.7GHz Intel Core i7-5930K 6-core CPU over-clocked to 4.32GHz, NVIDIA Quadro K5200, 16GB RAM	Lenovo P300one 3.6GHz Intel Xeon E3-1276 v3 quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro K4000, 8GB RAM	HP Z1 G2one 3.6GHz Intel Xeon E3-1280 v3 quad-core CPU, NVIDIA Quadro K4100M, 16GB RAM
Price as tested		$6,187	$4,441	$5,111	$4,985	$2,072	$5,918
Date tested		10/18/15	7/12/15	2/4/15	12/13/14	11/9/14	5/3/14
Operating System		Windows 10	Windows 7	Windows 7	Windows 8.1	Windows 7	Windows 8.1
SPECviewperf 12	higher
catia-04		78.54	103.66	100.40	98.53	38.19	42.23
creo-01		65.60	91.62	77.69	86.66	34.31	30.28
energy-01		6.31	3.73	3.61	3.49	0.65	1.74
maya-04		63.79	75.92	74.68	72.18	32.31	33.79
medical-01		25.99	31.33	30.01	28.84	12.38	10.34
showcase-01		42.26	49.76	49.76	48.98	22.64	21.12
snx-02		74.62	152.32	83.03	150.42	36.79	40.37
sw-03		110.74	134.67	130.28	126.08	69.37	38.66
SPECviewperf 11	higher
catia-03		76.76	134.82	131.40	99.71	67.84	63.80
ensight-04		113.47	145.75	152.22	148.83	48.80	61.56
lightwave-01		71.75	109.59	107.01	100.99	88.54	82.76
maya-03		162.38	131.43	245.35	99.44	132.59	128.09
proe-05		13.98	28.51	27.19	18.19	21.34	17.18
sw-02		64.18	97.48	96.35	88.99	72.05	67.75
tcvis-02		59.98	108.24	106.96	78.64	55.66	58.99
snx-01		113.28	135.41	137.53	134.51	53.24	65.58
SPECapc SolidWorks 2013	higher
Graphics Composite		2.16*	11.24	10.27	8.82	6.29	5.67
RealView Graphics Composite		2.77*	13.32	12.08	10.03	6.88	6.16
Shadows Composite		2.80*	13.37	12.12	10.05	6.89	6.13
Ambient Occlusion Composite		6.44*	28.08	24.55	17.58	9.65	8.48
Shaded Mode Composite		2.10*	11.25	10.25	8.95	6.17	5.55
Shaded with Edges Mode Composite		2.21*	11.22	10.30	8.69	6.41	5.79
RealView Disabled Composite		0.80*	5.69	5.37	5.28	4.39	4.08
CPU Composite		3.39*	4.87	4.87	4.50	4.18	3.12
Autodesk Render	lower
Time	seconds	47.33	50.83	41.88	42.33	64.08	45.00

Numbers in blue indicate best recorded results. Numbers in red indicate worst recorded results.

* Results may be an anomaly due to the operating system and application software versions used.