Pros & Cons
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- Priced less than the competition.
- Fast performance in testing.
- 10-core Intel Xeon processor.
- 32GB of memory.
- Easy-access case with plenty of room to expand.
- Lifetime customer support.
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- Large tower.
- Lacks Wi-Fi.
Digital Storm Slade Pro Specs
| All-in-One Screen Type | 0 |
| Graphics Card | Nvidia Quadro M4000 |
| Operating System | Windows 10 |
| Optical Drive | Blu-Ray Disc |
| Processor | Intel Xeon E5-2687W |
| Processor Speed | 3.1 |
| RAM (as Tested) | 32 |
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.
View All 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.
Final Thoughts
Digital Storm Slade Pro
The Digital Storm Slade Pro is a fast, powerful, and expandable workstation that matches the speeds of more expensive systems.