by What is the performance price? In the case of the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 gaming PC, that price is around $6,000 depending on your exact configuration, which we’ll detail in a second.
It would take a very skilled DIYer to come up with something similar to the Raptor Z55’s perfectly executed cable management.
If it’s a mountain of money, well, there’s no avoiding it these days. Obviously, there is the current cost of graphics cards. At a minimum, you’re looking at $1,599 for an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (opens in a new tab) GPU, plus for most add-in cards as opposed to Nvidia’s Founders Edition card.
In the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55, that no-reference RTX 4090 is the PNY GeForce RTX 4090 24GB XLR8 Gaming Verto EPIC-X RGB. It’s a monster. Add an Intel Core i9 13900K processor (opens in a new tab), that’s another $500 plus change. You may have heard that motherboards don’t come cheap, so throw in an extra $500 for a premium Asus ROG card.
Then you’ll need a quality case, cooling, DDR5 memory, SSD storage, and power supply. Of course, in the case of a pre-built rig like this, you also have to pay someone who knows what they’re doing to put everything together, neatly manage the cables, install the software, and validate that everything is good to go.
Raptor Z55 (2023) Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i9 13900K
Cooling: Velocity Micro LiquiCool 8 AIO Liquid Cooler
Motherboard chipset: Z690
Memory: 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000
Chart: PNY GeForce RTX 4090 24GB XLR8 Gaming VERTO EPIC-X RGB
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
Power: EVGA 1000W 80 Plus Gold
Guarantee: 1 year (3 years available)
Price: $5,700
In short, everything is linked together quite quickly. Does that match the roughly $5,700 price of this PC as configured? It’s debatable. But hold that thought. First, let’s cover the rest of the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55’s main gears and power supplies.
Both the CPU and GPU are plugged into an Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard, which is a pretty nifty item, even though at the street price of $549, it’s not that close to the top of the spec tree. Asus motherboard. The company will gladly sell you a motherboard for $1,000 or more these days.
You also get 32GB of fast Kingston Fury Beast Black XMP DDR5 RAM running at 6000 MT/s and a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro. (opens in a new tab) SSD. The latter lags a bit behind the fastest PCIe Gen 4 SSDs these days, which is arguably a little disappointing at this price and considering the relatively marginal cost of inserting something really before – guardian. But in terms of experience, it’s a pretty academic distinction. You won’t really feel the difference compared to, say, an SK Hynix P41 Platinum (opens in a new tab).
For cooling, there’s Velocity Micro’s own LiquiCool 8 closed-loop water cooler with a 360mm radiator and three 120mm fans. Power comes from a 1000W EVGA SuperNova 80Plus Gold with 90% efficiency and it’s all wrapped up, again, in Velocity Micro’s internal GX6+ ATX case.
The GX6+ is a brushed aluminum affair with fairly bland styling and reasonable build quality. Let’s put it this way, you’re not happy with the engineering of the case, which is a shame at this price point. But you’d be hard-pressed to argue against it functionally.
Of course, there is plenty of space inside. This space undoubtedly helps with cable management, which is very well executed. But it would still take a very skilled handyman to deliver something similar.
The case also sports a clip-on window side panel for easy access. More than just requiring no tools to access the innards, you don’t even have to turn the thumbscrews. The side panel simply detaches. But he does so while then returning cleanly and safely.
If you’re the kind of PC enthusiast who finds himself leaving the side panel off because you just can’t bother turning a screw, this type of clip-on solution is a real godsend. You would have no more excuses, that’s for sure.
Either way, as configured and built, the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 performs just fine. In terms of noise, it is pretty much silent unless placed under very heavy loads. Throw something really heavy at the CPU and the water cooler fans become audible. But just. Noise is simply not a problem.
Neither do temporary workers. Even under maximum load, we only recorded 68 degrees Celsius for the Core i9 13900K CPU and 65°C for the RTX 4090 GPU, the latter indicating that the heatsink inside the chassis is well managed.
As far as performance goes, well, it’s about as good as current desktop PC hardware, with one minor exception. The interesting comparison, perhaps, is with an immediately previous generation rig running an Intel Core i9 12900K processor. (opens in a new tab) and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 (opens in a new tab)like the Alienware Aurora 13.
On the CPU side, it’s the multi-threading that really stands out. These extra efficiency cores really make a difference, boosting Cinebench R23 performance by up to 50%. That’s pretty epic for a single generation.
Inevitably, the single-threaded boost isn’t quite as impressive, but there’s still a bit of extra performance there too, so it’s not like the massive multi-threaded boost comes at a cost. The 13900K is faster everywhere.
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Gaming is what this machine is really about and it absolutely does not disappoint.
But gaming is what this machine really is and it absolutely does not disappoint. The RTX 4090 is the only one in the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series to offer a major performance boost while maintaining a similar, albeit extremely high, price. In fact, you could say the RTX 4090 is a bit cheaper now than the RTX 3090 was at launch given the inflation that followed.
If you further factor in the reality of the RTX 3090’s massively inflated prices for much of this GPU’s existence as the best option in the RTX 30 series, the RTX 4090 is even better. But whatever the value proposition, there’s no doubting the raw performance of the RTX 4090. It’s a beast.
In fact, in our 4K gaming benchmarks it’s sometimes up to twice as fast. And that’s for direct native rendering and no DLSS scaling or frame generation to complicate the comparison. It can make a huge difference.
System performance
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Take Cyberpunk 2077 running with ray tracing and all the goodies maxxed. This brought the Alienware Aurora 13 running the 12900K and RTX 3090 to its knees, registering an average frame rate of just 22. The new machine is 90% faster, clocking in at an otherwise exactly ideal playable 42 fps.
Of course, Cyberpunk with all the eye candy is kind of a worst-case scenario. At 4K with the details maxed out, you’re looking at mid-three-digit frame rates with most games. So, yes, the RTX 4090 is arguably the first GPU truly capable of high refresh 4K gaming in most titles.
To put some numbers on that, you’re looking at an average of 93fps in Metro Exodus with RTX on and 126fps without, over 200fps in Hitman 3 and 156fps in Horizon Zero Dawn. Again, these are all native render results without DLSS or frame generation. Add these features and the frame rates absolutely explode.
4K gaming performance
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The only performance area that disappoints slightly is storage. This Samsung 980 Pro SSD is not really outdone. But with 6,877MB/s read and 4,936MB/s write, there are definitely faster drives out there. That said, the drive’s 4K performance is still broadly on par with the best flash-based SSDs. Only older Intel Optane SSDs offer significantly better 4K performance.
We then return to the delicate question of value. Could you build your own rig with an Intel Core i9 13900K chip and an RTX 4090 GPU that would deliver the exact same gaming experience for a lot less money? Yes. Indeed, the gap between the cost of this Velocity Micro system and the homemade alternative is greater than you might think.
Lately, the received wisdom is that you don’t save that much by building your own PC. But that is clearly not the situation here.
Lately, the received wisdom is that you don’t save that much by building your own PC. But that is clearly not the situation here. We estimate you could easily save around $2,000, maybe even more, by going the DIY route.
But here’s the thing. You would still spend a lot of money and find yourself in the position of having made this very substantial investment in exchange for very little coverage and support. All you would have are individual component warranties and support for the PC as a whole.
You’ll have to do your own troubleshooting, book RMAs yourself, and risk being left without a working PC while you go through the process. Some experienced DIYers will be quite comfortable with this. They will have spare components that they can swap out to help isolate faults and maintain a certain level of operation.
Likewise, it’s not hard to see why paying more for a pre-built rig will make sense for anyone who doesn’t regularly throw PCs together in their spare time. This is exactly where the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 comes in. Is this peace of mind and ease of support worth a few thousand dollars? One can understand how it could have been for some. You know those popular system builders with no money to like.
As for the more specific proposition offered by Velocity Micro here, well, the chassis lacks a certain pizzazz. But it’s built extremely well, and functionally speaking, temperatures, noise levels and performance are truly excellent.
It’s a high-quality, no-frills gaming rig designed to deliver fantastic frame rates rather than a head-turning demo machine. We happen to like that a lot. But this price? It’s still a doozy.
