The Digital Storm Slade Pro ($6,163 as tested) is a powerful desktop workstation with an easily accessible case. It performed very well in benchmark tests, keeping pace with much more expensive systems, thanks to its 10-core Intel Xeon processor, discrete Quadro graphics, and 32GB of memory. And the Slade Pro is built well with room to grow. It shares the same CPU as the Dell Precision Tower 5810, another top pick, yet the latter has a $17,321 list price and does not offer a discernible performance improvement over the Slade Pro, considering the massive gulf in cost. All this is more than enough to name the Digital Storm Slade Pro our new Editors' Choice for single-processor workstations.

Design and Features
The Slade Pro is housed in an all-black tower, with plastic side and top panels and a brushed-aluminum front face. The case measures 19.75 by 8.5 by 21 inches (HWD). This is a bit larger than the Dell Precision Tower 5810 (16.5 by 7 by 18.5 inches) and much bigger than the small-form-factor (SFF) Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation (14 by 4 by 13.75 inches) and the Origin Chronos Pro (15 by 4.25 by 14 inches). The Slade Pro is definitely not one you'll want to move around often, as it's heavy and cumbersome.

The workstation is vented front to back with twin fans that pull cool air through the system, and there is room on the top panel for two more fans. A cutout on the left side panel pops off, giving you extra ventilation or space for another fan. The vents are all covered with removable, magnetically attached filters that catch dust and other particles to keep the interior clean. Digital Storm's 120mm Vortex CPU cooler also keeps the processor from getting too hot.

A button on the back panel opens the side of the system for full access to the interior, which is roomy and organized, as well as easily accessible for repair or upgrades. You can open the front panel on either side—though the hinges are a bit small and flimsy—or remove it altogether. Each panel of the case is lined with sound-dampening foam to keep the system running quietly.

Our review unit came with a single 2TB, 7,2000rpm hard drive, with five more drive bays and an SSD PCIe card slot free for future upgrades. This is more storage than the Precision Tower 5810 we tested, which packs four 400GB solid-state drives (SSDs) in a RAID 0 array for a total of 1.6TB. Those SSDs are quiet and fast, but Dell charges a staggering $2,100 for each one, quickly raising the overall cost of the system, with near the same amount of storage as the Slade Pro. The Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation, meanwhile, includes a 1.2TB SSD and a 6TB network attached storage (NAS)-level hard drive, while the Origin Chronos Pro offers a 512GB SSD plus a 6TB hard drive.

On the front panel are two USB 3.0 ports and a headphone jack next to the Power button. If you open or remove the front panel, you'll find a media card reader with SDHC, Compact Flash type-I/II, Memory Stick, Secure Digital, Multi Media Card, Smart Media, MicroSD compatibility. The Blu-ray drive can also be accessed with the panel open. There are 10 USB 3.0 ports on the rear, along with audio jacks and two Ethernet ports. There are four DisplayPorts and one VGA port on the back of the tower (it comes with a short DisplayPort-to-DVI adapter). You'll need a third-party adapter to connect an HDMI display to the system. Digital Storm offers lifetime tech support and customer service, and a three-year limited warranty.

Performance
Our review unit was configured with a 10-core, 3.1GHz Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3 processor, an 8GB Nvidia Quadro M4000 graphics card, and four 8GB sticks of DDR4 memory (four DIMM slots are free) for 32GB total. Multitasking and completing intensive media projects are no sweat for this system. As such, the Slade Pro scored 3,760 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional productivity test, beating the Origin Chronos Pro (3,453), the Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation (3,263) and the Dell 5810 (3,608), all three of which are significantly more expensive.

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The workstation made quick work of the multimedia tests as well, coming very close to the other systems on each one. It finished the Photoshop and Handbrake tests in 3 minutes 5 seconds and 0:36, respectively. The Dell 5810 finished Photoshop and Handbrake in 3:11 and 0:36, while the Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation (2:56 and 0:31) and the Origin Chronos Pro (2:00 and 0:33) were a bit faster. The Slade Pro scored 1,571 points on Cinebench, which is on par with the Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation (1,582), but behind the Dell 5810 (2,510) and the Origin Chronos Pro (2,494).

It did not fare quite as well on 3D and gaming tests, although the results were still strong. The Slade Pro's tally of 30,384 on the 3DMark Cloud Gate test and 3,590 on the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme test was a bit lower than the Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation (37,320 and 8,039) and the Dell 5810 (33,357 and 4,581). On the Heaven and Valley gaming tests at Medium-quality settings, the Slade Pro scored 124 frames per second (fps) and 107fps, respectively, which is way more than is needed for smooth gameplay. On the same game tests at Ultra-quality settings, it still posted playable numbers (44fps and 50fps), although the Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation (104fps and 101fps), the Origin Chronos Pro (68fps and 73fps), and the Dell 5810 (57fps and 68fps) did better. The system is certainly capable of 3D animation in real time for CAD/CAM and CGI visualization tasks.

Conclusion
The Digital Storm Slade Pro is a powerful single-CPU workstation, with impressive performance, and plenty of room to expand. Though value is not always the main concern for businesses buying powerhouse workstations, the Slade Pro shows similar performance to much more expensive systems, particularly the Dell Precision Tower 5810, which is almost three times the price. True, it's not quite as IT-friendly as the Dell workstation, but the Slade Pro runs cool and quiet and is easily upgradeable with plenty of open expansion slots and hard drive bays. It's an excellent choice for a small business or sole proprietorship that doesn't have to worry about IT protocols and centralized management. As such, the Digital Storm Slade Pro is our Editors' Choice for single-processor workstations.