Velocity Micro Raptor Z55a (Ryzen 9 3950X) Review

Various editions of the Velocity Micro Raptor gaming desktop have passed through PC Labs, and this new model ($3,599 as tested) is home to AMD's latest high-end processor.

The build is very familiar—a no-fuss case with a simple exterior and a clean interior—but the potency of the 16-core, 3.5GHz (boost 4.7GHz) Ryzen 9 3950X may be enough to turn some heads.

Besides providing plenty of power for games, the CPU excels at most media tasks, making it good for content creators as well.

The Raptor Z55a doesn't earn our top recommendation—some similarly priced high-end desktops, like the Alienware Aurora R10, offer better graphics cards or flashier designs for a similar price—but it's a solid machine with few real flaws.

The Maingear Vybe remains our Editors' Choice for a similar feature set and performance at a lower price, but it's worth a look for power hounds seeking maximum cores and threads without venturing into Intel Core X, AMD Threadripper, or workstation CPU land.

A Clean Design With a Touch of Flair

We've come to know this chassis very well at Daxdi, having seen it in many Raptor builds over the years.

It's reliable and easy to use, though, so that's hardly a negative.

The style is restrained—maybe too tame for some, but a good fit for those who prefer a minimal design and even better for a professional setting.

There are some blue LEDs, including two on the top fans, but that's about as flashy as it gets.

The case is tall and skinny, measuring 17.5 by 7.25 by 20.5 inches, so it won't take up a ton of desk space.

Unlike some past editions, this version of the case has a left-panel side window.

It's not full size, but rather a cutout within the larger panel door.

Being able to see inside to the high-end parts (and some LED lighting) adds some needed flair to the design.

An enclosed black box, while fine for professional settings, can feel a bit humdrum at this price.

This Raptor represents a nice middle ground that lets the system show off its power while still looking at home in an office.

The door comes off easily with a tug along the bottom, so no tools are required.

To put it back on, you just line up the pegs and snap it back into place.

The interior is ultra-clean, with no excess wires or mess.

Part of what you're paying for is professional assembly, and for many, that may be worth it.

With this class of desktop, it's all about the components inside.

Components, Configs, and Ports

As you could have guessed from the price, my test configuration comes well equipped with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 2080 Super graphics card, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB NVMe solid-state drive plus a huge 4TB hard drive in addition to the mighty Ryzen processor.

There's also a 240mm liquid cooler on the CPU, a 750-watt EVGA power supply, and an Asus X570-Pro AM4 motherboard.

With these parts, this desktop is equipped for demanding CPU-intensive tasks and 3D operations including high-fidelity gaming.

We'll see exactly how it fares in the performance section later.

Sometimes, big manufacturers roll out a few pre-selected models to physical and online retailers, so your component choices are limited.

Boutique vendors, however, are often building to order, so there are plenty of options beyond the configuration here.

It would take forever to list all of the possible Raptor permutations, but you're covered on virtually all fronts.

You can start with an AMD or Intel build, picking among the full stack of current chips for either, while the same goes for Nvidia and AMD graphics card options.

You can choose between smaller and massive SSDs and hard drives as well as combinations of both.

As for ports, the chassis has plenty of them, but none on the front panel.

Instead, they're up top and on the rear, with the former set including two USB 3.1 Type-A ports and two audio jacks.

Around back, you'll find seven more USB 3.1 Type-A ports, a USB Type-C port, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, and an Ethernet jack.

There's also the USB-C port, HDMI port, and dual DisplayPorts on the graphics card.

Performance Testing: Speed for All Your Needs

To provide useful context for the Velocity Micro's performance, I gathered a batch of similar machines.

The relatively recent stream of high-end component releases means there are plenty of comparable desktops for the job, as you can see in this cheat sheet:

The abovementioned Alienware Aurora R10 Ryzen Edition is the other desktop in this batch with AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X processor, making it a good inclusion here.

It does boast a superior graphics card and more memory, though, which lets you see the effects of each combined with the same CPU.

Joining these two desktops are three with Intel's comparable high-end CPU, the Core i9-9900K.

At $3,629.99, the Alienware is the most expensive of the quintet, followed closely by the HP Omen Obelisk at $3,613, the Ryzen Raptor, the previous Intel-based Raptor ($2,999), and finally the Maingear Vybe at $2,499.

It's important not to directly equate prices to the performance numbers to follow, as extra features like storage capacity and design strongly influence the price too.

Productivity and Storage Tests

PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark).

The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows.

We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing.

PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of each desktop's boot drive.

Both benchmarks yield proprietary numeric scores; higher numbers are better.

These gaming desktops are on roughly even footing here, with no one running away from the pack.

With such a high tier of CPUs overall, this isn't surprising, especially since PCMark 10 doesn't push over-the-top silicon like this to its limits.

We can still gather that the Raptor Z55a and its peers are more than capable of handling any home or office tasks you can throw their way without noticeable slowdown.

Their SSDs are also all plenty quick, meaning quick Windows boot and game load times.

Media Processing and Creation Tests

Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads.

Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image.

The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.

Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads.

In it, we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file.

It's a timed test, and lower results are better.

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark.

Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image.

We time each operation and add up the total; lower times are better here.

This test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics cards may see a boost.

The Raptor Z55a fared far better in Cinebench and Handbrake than it did in Photoshop.

It posted both an unmatched Cinebench score and the fastest Handbrake time in this group, showing some serious CPU power.

These results are a bit below the top professional grade—look to a workstation if your job involves crunching huge datasets or massive amounts of media—but still very strong.

Those with only moderately demanding workloads will get by just fine.

The two Ryzen systems were the least effective in Photoshop, though not by much, so that seems to be a facet of the chip.

Synthetic Graphics Tests

UL's 3DMark test suite measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting.

We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike.

Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end gaming rigs to strut their stuff.

The results are proprietary scores.

Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp.

Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes.

In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark for a second opinion on the PC's graphical prowess.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Super is clearly a strong performer—maybe not tops among the very high-end GPUs in this batch, but the baseline here is extremely high.

The Raptor Z55a posted the second-best Fire Strike result, though it finished at the back of the pack in the 1080p Superposition test.

Again, workstation professionals will pick an Nvidia Quadro rather than GeForce card, but everyone else who benefits from graphics hardware acceleration will make out well here.

Real-World Gaming Tests

The synthetic tests above are helpful for measuring general 3D aptitude, but it's hard to beat full retail video games for judging gaming performance.

Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern, high-fidelity titles with built-in benchmarks that illustrate how a system handles real-world gaming at various resolution and quality settings.

With its premium graphics card, the Raptor Z55a was always going to do well here.

Gaming at 4K is a huge ask, and the system did average just over 60 frames per second in each title at maximum settings.

That proves its mettle, even if most gamers will not be playing at that level, though it isn't the best of the bunch.

The lower 1080p and 1440p resolutions are far more common, and the Raptor Z55a did perfectly well there, though again it wasn't the winner, which may be disappointing considering its price tag.

A Low-Fuss, Fast, Highly Configurable Rig

The Velocity Micro Raptor Z55a is much like the models that came before it, but with a nice side window and a shiny new processor.

The Ryzen 9 3950X certainly excels in most areas, and this desktop can handle pretty much anything you can give it.

In this tier, only workstations are better performers, though some competitors provide a slightly faster GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for a similar price.

Still, you can ultimately configure the Raptor however you'd like, and it's a straightforward way to get your hands on AMD's awesome chip (and have someone assemble it all cleanly for you).