Reviews
June 2008
Cerise Quad-Core Workstation
Targeting Hard-Core Multimedia enthusiasts and content editors, the $3,493 Cerise Quad-Core Workstation is built to spec using top-shelf components, a boatload of hard drive storage, and a RAID configuration that delivers both performance and data protection.
At the system's heart is a Core 2 Quad Q6700 processor running at its native speed of 2.66GHz. The system comes with a single 500GB main drive for the OS and applications; three 500GB drives in a RAID Level 5 configuration deliver a whopping 1TB of fast-access storage and data redundancy.
Two external bays are occupied by a multiformat card reader/floppy combo drive and a double-layer DVD burner, and two traditional PCI slots and one PCI Express (PCIe) x16 slot are available for future expansion. A 512MB nVidia GeForce 8500 GT graphics processing unit (GPU) and a 3ware RAID controller fill the other two PCIe slots. Still, there's plenty of room in the Silverstone TJ10 case should you want to upgrade to a more powerful GPU, add a dedicated audio controller, or install a Blu-ray optical drive.
A panel on the case's top conceals two USB ports, a FireWire port, and headphone and microphone jacks. Rear-accessible interfaces include four USB ports, a FireWire port, six-channel audio jacks (including two digital line-out jacks), a Gigabit Ethernet connection, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, and legacy serial and parallel ports. (Cerise tells us that one external Serial ATA port will soon be added.)
The processor, paired with 3GB of RAM, produced some respectable scores on our multimedia tests, though serious garners will require far more 3D muscle than the system in this configuration has to offer. But if multimedia production is your thing, this system will not disappoint.
–J.R.D.