Tri CAD/CAM PowerStation FX

Tri CAD/CAM Systems

4.5 stars out of 5
The PowerStation FX is a sleek, matte-black, solidly built midsized system. Its attractive quick-access case includes a swing-away door to cover the drive bay, and apparently some acoustic dampening qualities—the system proved to be moderately quiet during the course of the benchmarks.

Inside the PowerStation FX system is an Intel motherboard that incorporates dual 3.06GHz Intel Xeon microprocessors. These are supported by the Intel E7505 chipset. As requested, the review system contained 2GB of PC2700 RAM, with support for 8GB of on-board RAM

Tri CAD/ CAM System’s PowerStation FX successfully incorporates dual 3.06GHz Intel Xeon processors.

Input devices include a Logitech USB Elite keyboard and a Logitech Mx500 mouse. System noise was moderate. The PowerStation FX included a Sony 52×/24×/52× CD-R/W drive as well as a Toshiba DVD drive and a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live card.

The system board design incorporates an AGP 8X slot that was filled with a PNY NVIDIA FX 3000 graphics card—a popular and fast graphics card, though on the expensive side. The FX 3000 incorporates 256MB of integrated RAM. An NMB 460W power supply provides adequate power for the nine drive bays offered in the system. Though the three-year warranty offered by Tri CAD/CAM is good, it tends to be a little complicated. For details, go to www.tricadcam.com.

Despite the speedy NVIDIA graphics card, performance was a touch low overall for the PowerStation FX system, which resulted in an A2 grade for performance. The system did achieve A grades for its pricing, warranty coverage, and expandability.