DigitalStorm Slade Pro Workstation PC Review
by Dustin Sklavos on April 23, 2014 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- desktops
- Xeon
- Quadro
- DigitalStorm
- Workstation
- Octalcore
When it comes to performance, the DigitalStorm Slade Pro is definitely a strong contender. The octalcore Ivy Bridge-EP CPU is one of the best workstation chips you can buy, and the NVIDIA Quadro K4000 is an efficient and capable partner for professional rendering tasks. If performance is your primary deciding factor in looking at a workstation, then DigitalStorm certainly has you covered here.
As far as pricing, we're still in the ballpark, but it's a little hazier. Dell will charge you $5,527 for a similarly configured Precision T5610 system, ~$300 less than this one, but theirs includes a dual socket workstation board and ECC memory and comes with a three year professional level warranty complete with on site service. HP wants nearly $3,000 more for a comparable system, pricing them out of competition. Even with their 20% coupon code, you're still looking at ~$1,500 more. And Lenovo wants a hilarious $3,500 premium just for a $2,000 CPU. Ultimately, Dell continues to be the one to beat.
And that's kind of the issue that DigitalStorm ultimately faces. There are things you can get from DigitalStorm that you can't get from Dell: the 4TB hard drive, the blu-ray reader, the liquid cooling. But these are comparatively small potatoes. As long as Dell is this hungry in the enterprise space, system integrators are going to have an extremely hard time producing a value proposition to compete with them. Dell's cheaper, their service is more capable, their warranties are longer, and the parts are workstation class across the board.
Compared to other system integrators, DigitalStorm makes a solid argument for their Slade Pro. The performance is there, it's quiet, it's efficient, and the components are generally quality. But the elephant in the room for SIs is going to continue to be Dell for the foreseeable future. They win on price, arguably win on service, and on value adds. The Slade Pro is the finest system I've tested yet from DigitalStorm, and for small businesses who just need one or two solid workstations it's a fine alternative to ordering from the evil empire. But for everyone else, I'd still strongly recommend sticking with Dell.
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Antronman - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
No PCIe storage?What kind of WS is this?
otherwise - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
The way this machine is speced is utterly baffling. Xeon without ECC? Really? It's not like they're saving that much money going with the Sabertooth over a solid Supermicro board.FlyBri - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
Yea, Dell's warranty is longer and more capable "on paper", but that doesn't necessarily translate into good real world support. I had a HORRENDOUS time dealing with Dell for months when they refused to service a system still under warranty (and the issue was covered under the warranty terms). Worst experience with any company I have ever dealt with. So, for me, even if the the competition is much more expensive, I'd rather take my chances with them over Dell any day.otherwise - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
Was it a workstation? Your support gets routed in different ways depending on exactly what product you're dealing with. Their consumer level support is horrible but I've had great luck dealing with their server support guys who are located in Canada.SodaAnt - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
I've actually had a pretty good experience with Dell with their mobile workstation line and support. I had a few issues, from a bum GPU to a display issue, and each time they sent a tech out with the parts the next day and fixed every single issue.irusun - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
A couple points...Yes, the pricing is kind of crazy, similar to Boxx, but for certain markets, a couple thousand extra dollars is a drop in the bucket - think big content creation market where budgets are often in the millions.
Not specific to DigitalStorm (or its pricing), but on the opposite end...
Anandtech is really behind the curve on "workstation" hardware thinking... Quadros and ECC memory are often completely useless and a waste of money. I use high-end CAD software (a lot of which uses DX) and often works better/faster on a top end i7 and a GTX then a Xeon and Quadro, while saving a lot of money. The tech industry has a motive and agenda to keep an artificial separation between the professional market and the consumer market, and for the most part it doesn't exist in reality. There's a very limited application space where something like a Quadro makes a difference (mostly high-end OpenGL performance), and even less for Xeons and even less for ECC memory (which in practice is only necessary for uninterrupted 24x7 applications). And yes, I know all about "certified" drivers, etc., which again, in practice generally means squat.
There are obviously usage scenarios where such hardware is needed, but tech sites (and their followers) need to stop feeding into the "professional workstation = Xeon/Quadro/ECC" conventional wisdom. I've seen countless dollars wasted on such hardware where inexpensive "consumer" hardware will run circles around it.
ggathagan - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
Speed, while obviously very important, isn't the sole factor when looking at workstations.The "Xeon/Quadro/ECC wisdom" that you scoff at is tied to stability and 24x7 stability is the bread and butter for the workstation market.
What good is a faster workstation if it's not reliable?
Downtime translates into lost revenue, and in arenas where workstations are used, it's rare that a company or contractor are given a 2nd chance if they miss a deadline.
Antronman - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
More speed on a workstation can often result in more stability under higher loads.ECC is useful, but not when you're getting buttloads of data. It's good for debugging, and also testing programs. But as far as the actual development portion goes, speed is the first factor you look at. But ECC is still incredibly handy, and for the sake of redundancy, a standard feature.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
On one hand you say pricing nearly doesn't matter here, on the other you lament the pricing of professional class hardware. Derp.Quadros are very specialized and not needed for every professional, yes. But ECC is a must have with anything that is running for more than a day, because if you let something calculate the whole night, come back the next day and see a calculation error because of your RAM you just spent half a day of your time and the companies money for nothing. That time wasted probably would have paid for the ECC RAM. If you don't need the stability of these components, then you don't need a workstation. You need to understand that doing work on a PC does not transform that PC into a workstation. Otherwise my mothers Netbook is a workstation.
wetwareinterface - Wednesday, April 23, 2014 - link
another thing to consider against the mentality that "pro's don't really need..."these systems are usually bought for an operation by a reseller, the less time spent by said reseller supporting said installation the more moeny in the reseller's pocket.
and again if you are rendering out something on a workstation even if you don't need a quadro ecc is a life saver. not to mention good luck getting more ram in a system than 64 GB without ecc or a workstation class motherboard.