Overclockers RENDA PW-E7F Workstation Review

RENDA's selection of core components can't be faulted. The Intel Core i7-5960X is a highly capable inclusion, with only Xeons offering more cores. In fact, it's still currently top of the Core i7 range despite the arrival of some six-generation 14nm Core i7 processors, while the 5960X is on 22nm.

The 5960X has a nominal 3GHz frequency and 3.5GHz Turbo mode, but Overclockers has used its expertise to set the CPU to 4.2GHz permanently, which is kept in check by EK-WB water cooling. With Hyper-Threading on hand as well, there are 16 threads for multi-tasking and parallel processing tasks. This workstation should be capable across the gamut of 3D content creation tasks.

Overclockers keeps the CPU temperatures under control in its overclocked state with a hefty-looking EK-Supremacy EVO and EK-D5 pump water cooling system. The 5960X is also backed with a very healthy 32GB complement of DDR4 SDRAM running at 2,667MHz.

This is supplied as four 8GB DIMMs, taking up half the slots on the ASUS X99-E WS motherboard. So there is room to upgrade to the motherboard's 128GB maximum, but you probably won't need to during the lifetime of the system.

The graphics card is a slightly unusual choice, considering that NVIDIA has such a huge share of the professional market. But the AMD FirePro W8100 is a capable performer, and currently the most impressive price-performance combination in AMD's FirePro range.

The W8100 sports 2,560 Stream Processors, and a 824MHz core frequency. Most significantly, it incorporates a 8GB GDDR5 frame buffer on a 1,250MHz, 512-bit bus, providing a huge 320GB/sec bandwidth. This makes it noticeably better endowed than the NVIDIA Quadro K4200 with which it competes that only sports 4GB of GDDR5, with the Quadro K5200 costing around twice as much. Performance is competitive, and the 8GB of frame buffer could be particularly useful as texture maps increase in detail and size.

The motherboard sports eight 6Gb/sec SATA ports, plus SATA Express offering up to two more. There's also a M.2 x4 connection, but Overclockers hasn't taken advantage of this for main storage, using a SATA-connected 256GB Samsung 850 Pro for operating system and applications. This is a surprise, given the price of the system and the greater performance of M.2 drives.

But there is also a secondary SATA storage device in the shape of a 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7,200rpm conventional hard disk, which will provide plenty of capacity for audiovisual data and 3D assets. There's no optical drive, however, or media reader.

There are a couple of 6Gb/sec eSATA ports on the motherboard's header, alongside ten USB 3.0 ports an twin Gigabit Ethernet, plus eight-channel audio. So there is a huge range of external connectivity on the rear, plus two more USB ports beneath a pop-up panel on the front.

Become a Patron!