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Synthetic And Productivity Benchmarks
The Digital Storm Velox is unlike any of our other recently reviewed desktop systems, with a brand-new Intel Core i7-7700K overclocked to 5.0GHz, a premium Z270 motherboard, a Samsung 960 Pro SSD and a manually overclocked GTX 1080 SLI configuration. Because the Velox looks to be the most powerful system we’ve tested in recent memory, we threw the most powerful of our recently tested gaming desktops at it to see if anything could hang tough with Digital Storm’s $4,737 monster.
The CyberpowerPC Syber M Xtreme 400 will show us what an entry-level (and still relevant) X99 platform with a six-core Intel Core i7-6800K processor, 16GB of quad-channel DDR4-3000, and a single factory-overclocked EVGA GTX 1080 can do against the Velox’s 7th generation (Kaby Lake) CPU clocked to the limit and its manually-overclocked EVGA GPU setup. The Syber M will also provide an excellent contrast to the Velox in games or apps that favor CPU core count over clock rate.
The AVADirect Avatar will give us an idea of how the previous generation’s CPU and platform will hold up against the Velox’s newest components, with an Intel Core i7-6700K overclocked to 4.7GHz and 16GB of DDR4-2400 attached to an Asus Maximus XIII Gene (Z170) motherboard with a Founder’s Edition GTX 1080.
We weren’t able to assemble our Z270 test bench in time for this review (don’t worry, we have one coming), but we did include the data from our previous Z170 reference system with an Intel Core i7-6700K, 16GB of DDR4-2133, and a Founder’s Edition GTX 1080, all set to default speeds.
Comparison Products
Test System Configuration
3DMark
Not surprisingly, the Digital Storm Velox dominates the 3DMark benchmarks, yielding only to the CyberpowerPC Syber M Xtreme 400 in the Physics portion of the test due to the latter's increased CPU core count. However, the Velox scores over 1,000 points higher than the next quad-core Intel offering clocked at 4.7GHz (the Avatar) in the processor-intensive portion of the benchmarks. Graphics scores for the Velox are over double than the single-GPU GTX 1080 desktops in the field in the Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme tests. Digital Storm's beast also comes close to twice the performance of the other systems in Time Spy and Fire Strike Ultra tests, and the results are as expected, considering the overclocked dual-GPU setup.
Cinebench R15
The Digital Storm Velox crushes the Single CPU Rendering test in Cinebench R15, thanks entirely to the i7-7700K's beefy 5.0GHz overclock. However, the Syber M again surpasses the Velox in the multiple CPU Rendering benchmark, which favors core count over clock speed. However, Digital Storm's offering retakes the lead in the OpenGL Shading test, achieving 191.21 FPS and leaving the Z170 systems in the dust.
CompuBench
CompuBench performs a variety of workloads on the system, but we cherry-picked the Bitcoin and Video Processing results to get a snapshot of its CPU and GPU productivity performance. The Velox scores higher than the other systems in the field in the Video Processing portion of the test due to its CPU clock rate (5.0GHz), but because the Bitcoin test doesn't support multi-GPU setups, the CyberpowerPC Syber M again takes the lead with its factory-overclocked GPU and two more CPU cores.
Storage Test
The Velox's 512GB Samsung 960 Pro outclasses the competition's SATA-based SSDs, and even the Syber M's 512GB Intel 600p NVMe SSD. It doesn't achieve the high 4K random or 128k sequential performance threshold Samsung advertises, but to get the drive running anywhere near that fast you'd have to disable C-States and Intel SpeedStep to start. However, the performance of the Velox's primary storage significantly outpaces every other desktop we've reviewed so far.
PCMark 8
As expected, the Digital Storm Velox finishes the productivity portion of our benchmarks on top, besting both the overclocked AVADirect Avatar and six-core CPU-equipped CyberpowerPC Syber M Xtreme 400. The Creative Test performance of the Velox is helped by its dual GPU setup, in addition to the highly overclocked CPU, which improves the results in both the Creative and Office portions of the PCMark8 benchmark.
