In the case of the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 gaming PC, its price, depending on the configuration, will hit the $6,000 mark.

If that's a lot of money, well, there's no getting around it these days. Most obvious is the cost of current graphics cards. At a minimum, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (opens in new tab) GPU costs $1,599, as opposed to Nvidia's stock Founders Edition boards, and more for most add-in boards.

In the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55, that non-reference RTX 4090 is the snappily named PNY GeForce RTX 4090 24GB XLR8 Gaming Verto EPIC-X RGB. It's a monster; throw in an Intel Core i9 13900K (open in new tab) and it's another $500 plus. You may have heard that motherboards aren't cheap, but a high-end board from Asus ROG can add another $500+.

Then you'll need a case, cooling system, DDR5 memory, SSD storage, and a high-quality power supply. Of course, with a pre-assembled rig like this, you also need to pay a knowledgeable person to assemble everything, manage the cables properly, install software, and make sure the whole thing works without problems.

In short, it all adds up quickly. Whether that is worth the approximately $5,700 price of this PC is debatable. But we'll hold off on that thought. First, let's cover the rest of the main speeds and feeds of the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55.

Both the CPU and GPU are connected to an Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard. The company has recently been happily selling motherboards for over $1,000.

They also feature 32GB of fast Kingston Fury Beast Black XMP DDR5 RAM running at 6000 MT/s and a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro (opens in new tab) SSD. The latter is a bit off the recent pace when compared to the fastest PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, and definitely a bit disappointing given the relatively nominal cost of something truly cutting edge at this price point. In terms of experience, however, this is quite an academic difference. Compared to the SK Hynix P41 Platinum (opens in new tab), for example, you won't really notice a difference.

Cooling is provided by Velocity Micro's proprietary LiquiCool 8 closed-loop water-cooled cooler with a 360mm radiator and three 120mm fans. The power supply is a 1000W EVGA SuperNova 80Plus Gold with 90% efficiency and is housed in Velocity Micro's GX6+ ATX case.

The GX6+ is made of brushed aluminum with bland styling and reasonable build quality. One cannot enjoy the engineering of the case, which is unfortunate at this price point. However, it would be hard to make an issue of it on a functional level.

Indeed, there is plenty of space inside. No doubt that space is useful for cable management. But it would still take a very skilled DIYer to provide something similar.

The case also features clip-in windowed side panels for easy access. Not only does it not require tools to access the interior, it does not even require turning the thumbscrews. The side panel simply pops out. But while doing so, it then returns to its original position properly and securely.

For those PC enthusiasts who leave the side panel off because they are too lazy to turn the screws, such a clip-in solution is a real boon. No more excuses.

Anyway, the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 works really well as configured and built. As for noise, it is virtually silent unless under very heavy loads; if the CPU is under any significant load, you can hear the fans of the water-cooled cooler. But it's only very slight. Noise is not an issue.

So is the temperature. Even at maximum load, only 68°C was recorded for the Core i9 13900K CPU and 65°C for the RTX 4090 GPU, the latter indicating that the heat sinks in the chassis are well managed.

As for performance, it is mostly good for current desktop PC hardware, with one minor exception. An interesting comparison would be a last-gen rig with an Intel Core i9 12900K (open in new tab) and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 (open in new tab), like the Alienware Aurora 13. These extra efficiency cores really made a difference, improving Cinebench R23 performance by as much as 50%. This is pretty spectacular for just one generation.

Inevitably, the single-threaded gains are less impressive, but there is still a little extra performance there, too, so the significant multithreading gains are not sacrificed; the 13900K is fast in every aspect.

But gaming is what this machine is all about, and it doesn't disappoint: the RTX 4090 is the only one of the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series to offer significant performance gains while maintaining a similar, if very expensive, price point. In fact, one might say that the RTX 4090 is now a bit cheaper than the RTX 3090 at launch, given the inflation in between.

The RTX 4090 looks even better when you further consider the reality that the RTX 3090's price was significantly inflated while the GPU was the top option in the RTX 30 series. But whatever value proposition one looks at, there is no doubt about the RTX 4090's raw performance. This is a beast.

In fact, in our 4K gaming benchmarks, it can be as much as twice as fast. This is for pure native rendering, without any DLSS scaling or frame generation to complicate the comparison. This is a huge difference.

System Performance

Running Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing and all features maxed out, Alienware Aurora 13 with the 12900K and RTX 3090 recorded an average frame rate of only 22, knee The new machine was 90% faster. The new machine was 90% faster and recorded a playable, if not ideal, 42 fps.

Of course, eye candy cyberpunk is like an even worse scenario. At 4K with maximum detail, the average frame rate is in the triple digits for most games. In short, the RTX 4090 is certainly the first GPU that is truly capable of high refresh 4K gaming on most titles.

With RTX enabled, "Metro Exodus" averaged 93 fps, 126 fps without it enabled, "Hitman 3" over 200 fps, and "Horizon Zero Dawn" 156 fps. Again, these are all the results of native rendering without DLSS or frame generation. Add these features and the frame rates absolutely skyrocket.

4K Gaming Performance

The one area of performance that is a bit disappointing is storage. The Samsung 980 Pro SSD is by no means excellent. However, with 6,877 MB/s read and 4,936 MB/s write, there are certainly faster drives out there. Nevertheless, the drive's 4K performance is nearly on par with the best flash-based SSDs; only Intel's now-obsolete Optane SSD has significantly better 4K performance.

Which brings us back to the vexing question of value: can you build your own rig with an Intel Core i9 13900K chip and an RTX 4090 GPU to deliver the exact same gaming experience at a much lower cost? In fact, the difference between the cost of this Velocity Micro system and the cost of a home-built rig is much greater than expected.

These days, the conventional wisdom is that building your own PC will not save you much money. But that is clearly not the case here; you could easily save around $2,000, or even more, by DIY.

But here's the problem. You will still spend a lot of money and get very little coverage or support in return for a very large investment. All you have is an individual parts warranty and support for the PC as a whole.

You have to find the faulty part yourself, book the RMA yourself, and risk having your PC stop working in the meantime. Some experienced DIYers may not mind that at all. They have spare components that they can replace to isolate the failure and keep it running to some degree.

Similarly, if you don't routinely assemble PCs in your spare time, it's not hard to understand why it makes sense to pay more for a pre-built rig; that's where the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55 comes in. Is its peace of mind and ease of support worth a few thousand dollars? System builders love it, and they don't care about money.

As for Velocity Micro's more specific offering, the chassis lacks a certain glamour. However, it is very well built, and functionally speaking, the temperature, noise level, and performance are truly impressive.

It's a high-quality, no nonsense gaming rig built to deliver great frame rates, rather than a show-off machine to make headway. In fact, we like this very much. However, the price is still high; it's a bit of a bargain at this price point.