Armari Magnetar M16E-AW1200-GPU Workstation Review

Rating: 8.5.

The workstation market is a bit like a parallel universe compared to mainstream desktop computing. But technological developments work both ways. Armari's Magnetar M16E-AW1200-GPU is the first system we have seen with AMD's new FirePro W8100, based on the Hawaii PRO GPU. The Hawaii PRO first saw the light of day in November 2013 as the Radeon R9 290 consumer card – although the FirePro W8100 has many enhancements for professional users. Additionally the Armari has a number of other tricks up its sleeve for the 3D content professional.

Next in line for attention is the superlative 10-core Intel Xeon E5-2690 v2 processor, which may not have the headline clock speed of a frequency-enhanced Core i7, but rendering loves cores, so this is likely to provide render-farm-in-a-box performance.

There's 32GB of RAM and fast Solid State storage, plus the whole package is delivered in a chassis custom-designed by Armari. Overall, this is a powerhouse workstation, although the Xeon is expensive, so this isn't a cheap system either.

Armari Magnetar M16E-AW1200-GPU Specifications:

• Intel Xeon E5-2690v2 @ 3GHz
• 32GB ECC DDR3 SDRAM @ 1600MHz
• ASUS P9X79-E WS Motherboard
• 240GB Intel SSD 530 SATA III 6Gb/s SSD
• LiteOn DS-6E2SH Blu-ray reader DVD-RW
• 8GB GDDR5 AMD FirePro W8100 Graphics
• Armari custom water cooling
• Intel 1,200W PSU
• Armari M-Series chassis
• Windows 7 64bit
• 3 Year on-site Warranty

Price: £5508.75 inc VAT & Delivery

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