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The Cerise Circular Computer (starts at $2,899; $3,300 as tested) is an arresting black metal tube, a design that’s all the more striking when compared with the rectangular boxes you usually see on office desks. But the Circular Computer is notable for more than just its design, which efficiently channels both heat and noise from its internal components. It also boasts strong performance, which should help you conquer any work challenges. Though the Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series (3620) ($649.00 at Dell Technologies)(Opens in a new window) remains our Editors’ Choice for its superior value proposition, the Circular Computer is an ideal pick if you need a quiet business desktop PC or workstation for studio work—or if you just hate the noise high-end desktops produce under load.
Design and Features
The Circular Computer has a rectangular interior skeleton that’s surrounded by a tubular outer shell of black-painted metal. The case is about 15.5 inches tall and 12 inches in diameter, so it works equally well on top of a desktop or under it. That’s larger than the Apple Mac Pro or the MSI Vortex G65 (SLI-002)( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window), the last two similarly shaped PCs we’ve seen. Neither of those competitors has upgradable graphics, and CPU upgrades are also much simpler with the Cerise. The shell lifts off easily after you undo the latch that locks it to the frame.
Inside, you’ll find an Asus Z170i Pro Gaming Mini ITX motherboard loaded with impressive components. These include an unlocked 4GHz Intel Core i7-6700K processor with a low-profile cooler, 32GB of DDR4 memory, a Gigabyte-branded GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card, a 480GB Intel boot SSD, and a 1TB M.2 workspace SSD. Because these are all standard desktop parts, more akin to those used in traditional boxes like the Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series, the HP Z240 SFF Workstation, or the Origin Chronos VR($1,722.00 at ORIGIN PC)(Opens in a new window) than the less-upgradable Mac Pro or MSI Vortex, you can easily find replacement components. But the Cerise’s Mini ITX motherboard lacks any free DIMM slots or PCI Express (PCIe) slots, so it’s a strict one-for-one replacement if you need more memory or better graphics in the future. (You can configure the Circular Computer with up to 64GB of memory and a more powerful GTX 1080 or Quadro M4000 graphics card.) All the cords and cables inside are neatly routed and organized.
A 120mm cooling fan is mounted on the bottom of Circular Computer’s frame, pushing air up the interior of the chassis and over the CPU cooler, the graphics card, the power supply, and the SSDs. The round exterior walls channel the warm airflow naturally to keep the system cool, while the heavy-gauge metal shell keeps sounds contained. Given its large-diameter fan, which turns relatively slowly even under heavy testing, the Cerise PC put out less noise than most of the other desktops on our labs bench. This is a good workstation for use in places where sound levels are critical, such as in a recording studio or an office with an open plan.
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Because of the cooling scheme, the motherboard and graphics card are mounted so that the ports all face up. We’ve seen this orientation in gaming desktops like the Origin Genesis($1,832.00 at ORIGIN PC)(Opens in a new window) and the Falcon Northwest Mach V, but it’s fairly rare. You’ll find surround-sound audio ports, a DisplayPort connector, an Ethernet port, an HDMI jack, a PS/2 port (for connecting an old-style keyboard or mouse), a microphone jack, a headset jack, two USB 2.0 ports, six USB 3.0 ports, and two USB 3.1 (Type-A) ports on the top.
The computer’s GeForce GTX 1070 also has its own set of two DVI ports, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort connector. All of these ports are easy to get to, particularly if you have the computer on the floor next to you, though if you connect a lot of accessories, they can lead to a rat’s nest of cables coming out of the top of the PC.
Thankfully, there’s enough space between the frame and the tube so that you can route the cables around inside the shell, away from the top of the PC and out the bottom of the chassis. That’s more convenient for display cables and the power cord than a microphone lead that you’d have to unplug more often, obviously. Cerise protects the Circular Computer with a one-year warranty with lifetime technical support.
Performance
The Circular Computer’s benchmark test scores show how powerful it is. It returned a speedy score of 3,697 points on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional Test, ensuring that it quickly completes tasks like office document creation, web browsing (including e-commerce), and video conferencing. Any time under 1 minute is excellent on the HandBrake test; this system took just 51 seconds to complete it.
Granted, the Digital Storm Slade Pro, the Falcon Northwest Tiki Workstation, and the Origin Chronos Pro($9,620.00 Tested Configuration at ORIGIN PC)(Opens in a new window) were even faster in testing, but all three workstations cost at least twice as much as the Circular Computer. The Circular Computer also returned excellent results on the CineBench (881 points) and Photoshop CS6 (2:29) tests, beating more reasonably priced workstations like the HP Z240 SFF Workstation.
See How We Test Desktops
Its GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card helps the Circular Computer with Photoshop editing, 3D rendering, and other GPU-intensive tasks. A consumer-level card like the GeForce GTX 1070 is an excellent GPU for digital content creation using programs like those in Adobe Creative Cloud (Premiere, Photoshop, and so on), and will save you some money over a pro-level card like a Quadro M4000. You can and should order one of those (for an additional $650), however, for tasks like creating 3D models in a CAD/CAM program at an automobile design studio or an architecture firm.
Befitting its gaming-enthusiast design, the GeForce GTX 1070 returned much higher test scores on the 3DMark Cloud Gate and Fire Strike Extreme tests than workstations with low-end and midrange Quadro graphics cards, such as the HP Z240( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series. Likewise, the Circular Computer returned butter-smooth frame rates on the Heaven (108 frames per second, or fps) and Valley (113fps) tests at full HD resolution with the graphics quality set to Ultra. When bumped up to 4K, the frame rates dropped, but they still hovered around 30fps (Valley was just above, Heaven was just below). This means that you should be able to play recent games at higher resolutions. The Circular Computer is as capable of smoothly rendering 3D for business purposes as it is playing the occasional 3D game when you’re off the clock.
Totally Tubular
The Cerise Circular Computer is a compact business computer/workstation that stays quiet while giving you excellent performance, and it’s well suited for digital content creation or game development. It’s not as upgradable as a full-size tower, but some power users will gladly give that up for a PC that doesn’t look like a big, corporate box. The Dell Precision Tower 3000 Series (3620) holds on to its Editors’ Choice for single-processor workstations because it is less expensive, has more internal expandability, is more IT friendly, and works better in an office if you’re supporting multiple departments. That said, the Circular Computer is high-powered alternative in creative environments like an art or audio recording studio.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/cerise-circular-computer