Velocity Micro Edge Z55

Attractive, fairly powerful Core i7 PC



VELOCITY MICRO'S dedication to clean, top-quality builds continues with its Edge Z55 ($2,374 in our test configuration), now outfitted with processors from Intel's Core i7 family that help compensate for a slightly lower level of performance than that of similarly equipped PCs we've recently seen.

The Edge ZSS's unpainted-aluminum GX2-W case is as attractive as it is sturdy and spacious. It's loaded with two DVD±RW drives and one multiformat card reader on the front panel, one FireWire jack, two USB ports, and headphone and mic jacks on the system's front-right edge. You also get a single 750GB hard drive, and there are four free bays for adding more. For card-based expansion, it has one PCI Express (PCIe) x4 slot free, two PCIe x1 slots, and a single regular PCI; the remaining two PCIe x16 slots are occupied by two ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards in a CrossFireX configuration.

Those cards are a bit underpowered for gaming and not at the level of other Core i7 systems we've seen. The iBuypower Gamer Paladin F870-SB we recently reviewed, for example, costs $2,499 and was powered by a much more powerful (and single-slot) ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, which gave it better scores at the highest resolutions, particularly when rendering using DirectX 10. With the Edge ZSS, your gaming expectations will need to be slightly more modest.



The system is well equipped, though, with 6GB of DDR3 RAM, the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium, and the 2.66GHz Core i7-920 CPU (overciocked to 2.93GHz). You don't, however, get a monitor with the Velocity Micro system, as you do with the iBuypower. But the Edge Z55's beauty and interior expandability are still nice to have.—Matthew Murray

Computer Shopper March 2009