The compact Velocity Micro Edge Z55 ($4,299, as tested) eschews a flashy paint job and lighting scheme for stellar performance at a lower price than most systems of its ilk. An overclocked Intel Core i7 processor and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics cards helps this desktop push the boundaries in our benchmark tests, and in the process chalks up another big win for Velocity Micro. The Edge Z55 is our new Editors' Choice for high-end gaming PCs, replacing the Digital Storm Coridium.

Design and Features

The Z55 is built into an aluminum microATX (mATX) case, which is called the MX3 chassis on the company's configuration page online. The case is a smaller than the more traditional tower we've seen on previous iterations, like last years' Velocity Micro Edge Z55 (Summer 2013). Even though last year's model was larger, it only had one graphics card. The MX3 chassis is all black, including the embossed Velocity Micro logo on the optical drive door. This is a departure from the flashy styling of systems like the Digital Storm Coridium and the Maingear Epic Rush X79. The simpler white chassis of our last Editors' Choice for small form factor (SFF) gaming desktops, the Origin Chronos($1,224.00 at ORIGIN PC), is similarly minimalist.

The case door pops off with a simple tug along its lower border. It's actually attached via a set of ten pins that slot into clips built into the side of the chassis. Opening the case door takes a second, and closing it takes 4 to 5 seconds to line up the pins and push the door in. The door itself is vented for the two fans on the 240mm liquid cooler, which helps keep the CPU cool even when it's running at 4.7GHz. There's a 1,000-watt power supply, which is plenty to handle power-hungry GPUs and CPUs.

The interior of the case is somewhat packed, but it still has ample space for cooling airflow. There are three drive bays free for additional hard drives, as well as two available DIMM slots for additional DDR3 memory to supplement the included 16GB. The two massive graphics cards block any free PCIe slots on the motherboard, however, and the smaller chassis and motherboard preclude expanding beyond two graphics cards (a few massive tower PCs can handle up to three or four cards). The exterior of the case has plenty of I/O ports for your peripherals, like external drives, keyboards, and mice. On the top panel there's a headphone jack, a microphone jack, and two USB 3.0 ports. The back of the chassis has analog audio jacks, an Ethernet port, a PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, and four USB 3.0 ports. The two graphics cards have four DVI ports, two HDMI ports, and two DisplayPorts among them. There is also a DVI port, an HDMI port, and a VGA port on the motherboard, but those are superfluous.

Though you can customize the Z55 to your heart's content, the tested configuration we got from Velocity Micro included two 250GB Samsung EVO SSDs in a RAID 0 array and an additional 3TB Seagate 7,200rpm SATA hard drive for storage. This means you have 3.5TB for all your files, videos, and programs. There's also a BD-ROM/DVD burner so you can watch Blu-ray movies and load DVD games, as well as burn DVDs.

You get Windows 8.1, and there's no bloatware, which is a good thing. Velocity does add one third-party utility; Stardock's Start8, which sets the system to boot into desktop mode and gives you a Start menu that looks and acts just like the one in Windows 7. This will be reassuring for gamers who have thus far refused to buy a new PC because of the Windows 8 interface. The Edge Z55 comes with a one-year warranty.

Performance

Performance is the reason to spend almost $5,000 on a PC, so it's a good thing that the Z55 comes with a liquid-cooled Intel Core i7-4790K CPU that's overclocked from 4GHz to 4.7GHz, 16GB of DDR3-1866 system memory, and two 3GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics cards in an SLI configuration. All these components contribute to some of the highest benchmark scores we've seen on our standard suite of tests.



The system pulled an excellent 3,686 points on PCMark 8 Work Conventional, which tests office tasks, video conferencing, and Web browsing. That is faster than the MSI Gaming All-in-one AG270 2PC-006US, one of the few gaming PCs where we had a comparable score. Using a gaming system for these mundane tasks is like using a flamethrower to kill a spider, but it's still notable to state that this is one of the highest scores we've seen on the PCMark8 test. Likewise, the overclocked quad-core processor and speedy memory helped the system get top marks on our multimedia benchmark tests CineBench R15 (948 points), Handbrake (0:52), and Photoshop CS6 (2:20). The hexa-core-powered Digital Storm Coridium was faster on Handbrake and Cinebench R15, but the Edge Z55 was faster on Photoshop. The compact Cyberpower Zeus Mini was competitive, but brought up the rear on our tests, since it isn't overclocked like the others.

The gaming grid is where the Edge Z55 really shines, producing incredibly smooth animation on the Heaven (133 fps) and Valley (141 fps) tests, even with all the eye candy turned on at 1,920-by-1,080 resolution. That's the fastest frame rate we've seen on any system, and we have no doubt that this PC will be able to handle 4k-resolution gaming at full screen if you're lucky enough to have a 4k HDTV or PC display. The Edge Z55 was aced the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme test (9,214 points), which is designed to stress multi-GPU systems. Essentially, the Digital Storm Coridium may have more CPU power, but the Edge Z55 ultimately excels on GPU-heavy tests when the gaming heat is cranked up.

The Velocity Micro Edge Z55 looks almost utilitarian next to the flashy gaming PCs from other boutique manufacturers. But all the money Velocity Micro saved on flash is passed on to you. This $4,299 system is competitive in all the ways that matter with the $7,779 Digital Storm Coridium. It's faster on five of the six 3D gaming tests, and it's no slouch on any of the other tests it didn't win outright. And the case is easy to get into for future upgrades; the only drawback is that the chassis and motherboard are too small for a 3-way SLI configuration. Still, we wholeheartedly award the Edge Z55 our Editors' Choice for high-end gaming desktop PCs.

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