InterPro IPW-CL review

InterPro has chosen one of the most popular combinations for workstations for its IPW-CL - an Intel Core i7-8700K and Nvidia Quadro P4000 graphics. But there are a few areas where this system singles itself out from the crowd.

InterPro has set its six-core 8700K to 4.7GHz, which is a handy boost over the 3.7GHz nominal clock, but conservative compared to some more heavily overclocked machines. The 32GB of 3,000MHz DDR4 memory supplied with the IPW-CL comes as two 16GB sticks, leaving two DIMM slots free for upgrade.

Nvidia Quadro P4000 graphics are a common inclusion among workstations. That's because the 1,792 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR5 memory it provides for under a grand are the best balance of price and power for professional 3D currently on the market.

InterPro has been more generous than most when it comes to storage. The Samsung 960 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD is almost as common to see as the Quadro P4000, and we're happy with both its 500GB of capacity and its rapid 2.8GB/sec reading and 1.8GB/sec writing. The most generous inclusion is the 6TB Western Digital Gold 7,200rpm SATA hard disk. This also proved to be among the fastest hard disks we've tested in a recent workstation, offering 225MB/sec reading and 220MB/sec writing.

Amongst its 8700K-based peers, the IPW-CL is reasonably good for rendering. Although 1,596 in Maxon Cinebench R15's CPU test isn't very impressive, the Blender render only took 2,234 seconds, which is the quickest we've seen in a while for this CPU. Similarly, the IPW-CL was fastest with the Adobe Media Encoder test of 8700K-based systems. Its IT Pro benchmarks score of 281 was blazing in this category too.

When 3D modelling, the Maxon Cinebench R15 OpenGL score of 241 is quicker than most other workstations we've seen recently, and the SPECviewperf 12.1 results are very credible. The score of 190 in SolidWorks and 145 in Catia were the fastest we've seen for a while, and elsewhere results were as expected for Quadro P4000 graphics.

The InterPro IPW-CL is a capable workstation, with some clear strengths, particularly for 3D modelling. The main downside is the price. You do get more secondary hard disk storage than most other systems, as well as a Blu-ray writer. But at over 500 more than other Intel Core i7-8700K-based workstations, and only a return-to-base warranty, the IPW-CL falls behind on value.

Verdict

The InterPro IPW-CL is a capable workstation, with some clear strengths, particularly for 3D modelling. The main downside is the price. You do get more secondary hard disk storage than most other systems, as well as a Blu-ray writer. But at over £500 more than other Intel Core i7-8700K-based workstations, and only a return-to-base warranty, the IPW-CL falls behind on value.