Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 (Intel Core i7-3930K)

Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 (Intel Core i7-3930K). If you're in the market for a gaming rig, chances are you're either going in with a budget in mind or looking for the best, most tricked-out system money can buy. The Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 (Intel Core i7-3930K) fits the latter category and is not a gaming desktop for the miserly; it features Intel's latest Sandy Bridge-E series processor, which alone has a market price of $555, and two Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards. In addition to its potent internal components, the Velocity Micro throws in such wireless features as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth—rare in custom gaming rigs.

Money burning a hole in your pocket? The Velocity Micro Raptor Z90 (Intel Core i7-3930K) will fix that quickly and make sure your desktop gaming needs are covered for the next few years. Blu-ray is read/write. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth onboard. Great overall performance. No bloatware. Nice aluminum chassis.

Design and Features
The Raptor Z90 isn't small, but won't leave a Jolly Green Giant-sized footprint like the Falcon Northwest Mach V (Core i7-3960X). It's a full silver aluminum tower with a little more heft than a standard tower PC.

Looking inside the chassis through the clear side panel, the interior is lit up by several blue LEDs. It's spacious and clean, with enough room to fit two extra optical drives; two hard drives (two SATA ports for SSD caching are open on the motherboard); perhaps another graphics card in the extra PCIe x16 slot (though between the two Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards it's a tight squeeze); and four more DIMM slots for RAM.

The unit has two 120GB solid-state drives and a 2TB spinning 7,200-rpm hard drive, built for speed and storage space. The Polywell Ignition X7900i-3960 comes out ahead here, boasting two 120GB SSDs plus a 3TB spinning hard drive. There's a 1,200-watt power supply installed to help power all these components.

The Raptor Z90 comes with a total of 16GB of RAM, but once again the Polywell X7900i-3960 trumps it with a total of 32GB of RAM. The Raptor Z90 does, however, come equipped with more creature comforts, like 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (via a USB receiver), and a Blu-ray burner, whereas the Ignition X7900i-3960 has only a Blu-ray player.

There's no shortage of connectivity options. Behind a swinging aluminum door is a media-card reader supporting microSD, SD/MMC, xD, M2, CF/MD, and MS formats, as well as a solitary USB 2.0 port. The back has a USB BIOS Flashback port, six USB 2.0 ports (one occupied by the Bluetooth receiver), four USB 3.0 ports, two powered eSATA ports, a Gigabit Ethernet connection, two mini HDMI and four DVI-I video outputs, and S/PDIF and a multitude of audio jacks to hook up to a surround-sound system.

Posted in: Desktop