DigitalArts recently got to try our Boston Venom 2401-7T, here's what they had to say...
Intel has taken the wraps off its new Xeon E5 2600 V2 series processors, which means new lines of workstations that offer them from vendors both big and small. We've seen new ranges from the likes of Dell and HP - though no new Mac Pro from Apple - but the first we've got our hands on for review in Boston's Venom 2401-7T.
As you'd expect from a showcase machine, the Venom 2401-7T is not exactly what you'd call affordable unless you're in a part of the creative industries where performance is much more important than price - in which case you're going to love this ten grand beast. What your money would be going on is two 3.4GHz 8-core Xeon E5 2687W V2 processors, a Supermicro X9DAI motherboard, 64GB of 1,866MHz RAM, two mirrored 120GB SSDs for Windows and your apps, and two striped 2TB 7,200rpm hard drives for your projects.
For graphics there's a Nvidia Quadro K5000 gcard with 4GB of its own RAM, backed up with a Tesla K20 with 5GB of RAM, which massively accelerates rendering in supported applications (though currently none of our standard set of test applications including After Effects, Cinema 4D or Maya support this). You also get a SilverStone Fortress chassis that's imposingly Brutalist in design, but which has a front that gracefully slides open to reveal two very large white fan structures that are more like something from one of Zaha Hadid's buildings.
Conclusion
The most powerful workstation we've ever seen!
Read the full review here.