ZDNet recently got to test our Boston Venom 2501-0P workstation, here's what they thought...
Workstation vendors generally follow Intel's lead and refresh their products every time a new processor gets launched. An example is Boston's new Venom workstation, the 2501-0P, which sports the latest Xeon E5-2600 v4 processors along with faster 2,400MHz DDR4 RAM. But that's not its only claim to fame, and there's a lot more under the hood to make workstation buyers sit up and take notice of what the 2501-0P has to offer.
Thinking inside the box
Often given scant attention by prospective purchasers, the chassis housing this particular Venom is surprisingly compact for a workstation - particularly a dual-socket one. More than that, a good deal of thought has gone into the design to make it both look the part and take best advantage of what the new Xeon processors have to offer, especially through the use of liquid cooling technology.
Clocked at up to 3GHz and with a TDP as high as 160 watts per processor, the v4 Xeons can get really hot, so instead of passive heatsinks, closed-loop CoolIT ECO III technology is employed with a radiator and a pair of large-diameter fans to push unwanted heat out of the top of the chassis. This, in turn, features a magnetically attached mesh cover for ease of cleaning, with another pop-out filter grill at the front of the tower servicing the needs of two more fans positioned to direct cooling airflow through the storage bays.
There's lots of room here, with bays for six 3.5-inch and four 2.5-inch drives plus a couple of external bays, one of which holds a Blu-Ray rewriter. You get a 1000-Watt power supply to cope with all this, complete with modular cabling to help keep it neat and tidy. The end result is a well-configured workstation that keeps its cool without being unduly noisy, generating little more than an industrious 'hum' most of the time.
Performance to go
Based around a stock Supermicro motherboard and Intel C612 chipset, any of the new v4 Xeons can be specified. Our review system featured a couple of E5-2690 v4 chips. Sporting 14 cores (28 threads) each, this 2.6-3.5GHz processor has a TDP of 135W and is a good choice for both demanding analytic and graphical workloads. Buyers on a budget can save money by opting for one of the more modest SKUs, while those after the ultimate in performance can splash out to get more cores and threads with 22/44 available on the 2.2-3.6GHz E5-2699 v4, for example.
Another option would be a higher clock speed by opting for the 3.0-3.5GHz E5-2687W v4, although this only has 12 cores and can hit 160W and, on balance, may not deliver the same level of performance of slower-clocked alternatives.
Read the full review here.