Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/298092
46 ■ CGW M a r ch / A p r i l 2 014 W O R K S T A T I O N One look at the exterior case for the Slade Pro won't say much. With a sleek, black exterior, you don't immediately notice anything out of the ordinary. It's when you get close that you begin to notice just how unique this box is. Open it up and you'll dis- cover where Digital Storm's true roots lie: as a builder of high-performance gaming PCs. While Digital Storm has been in business for about 10 years, it has been growing its workstation-class business since 2007. Its goal has been to take its high-octane game rig experience and bring that to the high-end content con- sumers – bells, whistles, and the whole orchestra, if desired. In my experience with the Slade Pro, I have discovered a mid-tower beast with enormous flexibil- ity in configuration as well as top-notch performance specs and cooling that made me feel confident I had everything I needed to get the job done. The Outside Remember that sleek, black exterior that showed nothing unique from afar? Well, when you get close to the Corsair case, you begin to see the technologi- cal solutions they have come up with to keep things cool. There are panels on the top and on one side that have press- latch doors. What's more, they all come with removable magnetic filters. One additional filter I discovered later is actually on the bottom of the unit. When you pull from the bottom of the tower, you can slide this puppy off to clean it, along with the other two. The monolithic front facade of the tower does not house any components. But, when you grab the edges of the front bezel, you can pull it back to reveal a 5-in-1 card reader as well as the Asus Blu-ray player/DVD writer. Moving the system around is a bit of a chore. It's heavy and doesn't have any handles on the outside. It's like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sure, you can pick it up off the ground, but be careful, as you might acciden- tally slide out the bottom filter, like I did. That would end your fun really quickly. After a few tugs and pushes, I nudged it into place underneath my desk. The Inside Within the scope of its workstation- class line, the Slade Pro lies at the bottom of the stack with prices starting at $1,881. But, when you begin custom- izing the different CPU and hardware options, these prices can leap up to $8,822 and even higher. My unit was configured with an Intel Xeon eight-core E5-2687W v2 processor running at 3.4 ghz. It also came with an ungodly amount of RAM – 32gb worth. For storage, an ultra-fast 256gb Sam- sung SSD held court over a 4tb West- ern Digital SATA drive. The higher-cost Avernum-class workstation variants have even more tech in them to help drive up performance, including a more power- ful thermal management system that Digital Storm developed itself and flashy bright-red cable details that make you Digital Storm Slade Pro By Carey Chico r e v i e w DESKTOP 558048 (Slade Pro Chassis) $5,908 (as configured) Digital Storm www.digitalstormonline.com SOFTWARE LOADING TIMES: Maya: 7.8 seconds Softimage: 13.1 seconds Adobe Photoshop CC: 4.1 seconds Microsoft Word: Less than 2 seconds Sonar X3: 4.7 seconds