Velocity Micro Edge Z30 Mainstream Desktop PC

Feb 11 2010 - Velocity Micro makes a very solid system with the Edge Z30 desktop. Much of this comes from their use of high quality brand name components within the computer. While the quality is there, the price is another matter. It is typical to find similarly or even better equipped desktops for less than what they charge here. Sure, you pay for the quality of the parts but it would be nice to at least see some higher base level parts. Customers can customize it, but many are upgrades that increase the cost.

Feb 11 2010 - Velocity Micro's Edge Z30 is the company's latest desktop system to use the new Intel P55 chipset and socket 1156 processors. The base system uses the new Intel Core i5-750 quad core processor which is the lowest grade quad core processor among the new processors. Performance is quite good with this making it suitable for just about any type of processing task including desktop video. The only downside is that at the price for the Edge Z30, it is possible to get a Core i7 based system that offers faster performance.

The basic storage options on the Edge Z30 detail one of the key issues with the system. It comes with a 500GB hard drive that is roughly half the size of comparably priced desktop systems. There are even budget class systems that offer larger drives. The 20x dual-lay DVD burner and 8-in-1 card reader are fairly standard fare for desktops as well. Velocity Micro does offer a wide range of upgrades that even include RAID 0 arrays and Blu-ray drives. All of these will drive up the price of the system though.

Graphics on the system have the same issue as storage. The system comes with a very dated NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT graphics card that is several revisions behind. It was certainly a very capable card as NVIDIA has revised and rebadged it several times. With just 512MB of onboard graphics memory though, the card is very much limited to running games around 1680x1050. It is possible to go higher in some games but filtering effects suffer heavily because of limited memory. At least the system uses a sizable 550 watt power supply that allows for use with some of the latest graphics cards for those that wish to upgrade at purchase or aftermarket.

The real issue with the Velocity Micro Edge Z30 though is its price. At roughly $1100 to $1200 for the base configuration, the system does not offer quite as much performance, storage or graphics that are available from other companies. This means that people looking at a price to performance ratio would want to look elsewhere. What the extra cost is giving consumers is higher quality internal components than what may be found in larger brand models from the likes of Dell or HP. This may provide more peace of mind to some buyers.