Intel's Latest Engineering Workstation Benchmark: A Breakthrough in Form Factor Innovation

When Intel first showed off their new engineering workstation at CES, we were left with high expectations for this upcoming product. Now that it's finally here, we can say that our expectations have been far exceeded. The Zeon machine, as it's come to be known, is a powerhouse of performance and features, packed into a compact form factor that's sure to turn heads in the business world.

Spec Keeper from Ish Marks was spot on with his predictions, stating that this machine would deliver impressive performance for its size. And he wasn't alone – our own expectations were also met, with the Zeon machine proving itself to be a force to be reckoned with in any engineering software. Whether it's 3D Studio Max, Maia, or Creo, this machine can handle it all.

But what really sets the Zeon apart is its expandability. With eight cores and the ability to add in PCIe expansion slots, users have access to a world of possibilities. Want to upgrade your CPU? No problem – just swap out the motherboard. Add more memory, peripherals, or even a graphics card like the Quadro PE 2200 from P&Y. The options are endless, making this machine an attractive choice for businesses that want flexibility and customization.

One of the things that struck us most about the Zeon was its value proposition. While it's certainly possible to build a faster machine at a lower cost using DIY or overclocking techniques, we can't help but think that Intel has done something special here. For business users who don't have the time or expertise to handle these tasks themselves, this machine offers a convenient and hassle-free solution. And with Intel taking on the responsibility of manufacturing and support, it's clear that they're committed to delivering high-quality results.

But what about Linux? Our team put the Zeon through its paces on various distributions, including Red Hat and Debian, and were pleased to find that it performed flawlessly. The full suite of FIrONyx benchmarks was completed with ease, and our expectations for performance in a variety of workloads were met.

Of course, one of the things we're most excited about is the potential for future expansion. Intel has hinted at plans for new add-in cards in the future, which would allow users to upgrade their machine without having to purchase a completely new system. This could be a game-changer for businesses that want to stay up-to-date with the latest technology but don't have the budget or resources to do so.

In terms of raw performance, the Zeon has proven itself to be a beast in its class. With seven out of eight benches on the FIrONyx test suite, and performance that's rivaled only by some of the highest-end workstations on the market, it's clear that Intel has done something special here.

The Zeon also comes with a number of other features that make it an attractive choice for businesses. For one, there's the built-in 80+ Gold certified power supply, which eliminates the need for an external power brick. This not only makes the system more convenient to use but also reduces the risk of damage or loss due to a faulty power supply.

In short, Intel's new engineering workstation is a breakthrough in form factor innovation that's sure to turn heads in the business world. With its impressive performance, expandability, and value proposition, it's clear that this machine has something for everyone. Whether you're working with engineering software or need a reliable platform for your business, the Zeon is definitely worth considering.

Big thanks to Intel for sending us the Zeon machine to test, as well as P&Y for providing the Quadro PE 2200 graphics card, which made testing this system a lot easier. We'd also like to thank our readers who checked out our benchmarks and results on the Level One Forum and website – we're always happy to share our findings with you.

And finally, a huge shout-out to Windell for his level-headed commentary on the Zeon machine during our testing process. Your input was invaluable in helping us understand what this system has to offer, and we're grateful for your participation in our Level One community.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe new more modular Intel nook definitely not your grandfather's fig Naugle so this is the Intel 2286 M a 2.4 gigahertz Intel you know Xeon processor 2.4 gigahertz base clock but up to 5 gigahertz boost clock you know memories up to ddr4 2666 up to 64 gigabytes and this tiny tiny little package okay what we're looking at is the Intel nook this is the entire computer it is a lunchbox sized workstation these even got the power supply in the bottom Ozzie on 8 cores Chuck right here in this thing this is sort of nuts let's take a closer look at the connections on this thing externally at the front we have a three-and-a-half millimeter audio jack now there's a four conductor combo so you can use a headphone and microphone like what you would use at the phone three-and-a-half millimeter Jack headphones worked fine it's also dual USB 3 and an SDXC card slot so memory ingestion media things like that it's also a large power button with a power LED behind it but there's no hard drive activity LED which I mean I guess that's fine in an nvme aah but I sure would like to have a hard drive activity LED also at the back we've got an external regular power connector it's a self-contained power supply there's no external power brick yay we've also got four full-size DisplayPort interfaces thanks to the Quadro P 2200 GPU that's from PNY thanks P&Y I'll segue for a second and say the P 2200 is a great workstation GPU that's qualified for applications like SolidWorks and Venter 3d studio and the Adobe suite these are put through a lot more software qualification than other GPUs so it's nice to see a nook that actually has PCIe slots that you can shove graphics cards into at least up to 8 inches long and yes we do actually have external PCIe power input even though the 2200 doesn't require it the way these new knucks work is that everything is basically self-contained on one card so the Nook is actually this here but it provides an external PCIe interface so that lets you have peripherals so our expansion options terrific we can use that other X for GP you can add in a PCIe obtained device or a PCIe video capture card and still have that one slot GPU or I can use a combination of the inbuilt GPU plus an add-in GPU if you are gonna add in a GPU know that the limitation is 225 watts and 8 inches and as a 6-pin plus an 8-pin PCIe power so that can supply the power supply and this can supply up to 225 watts to that add in GPU which is really awesome so while everything's on this one add-in looking card this is actually the nook the CPU bracket is there you can see and the rear i/o here is just like you would have on the standard motherboard so it's just sort of everything soldered together and then of course you get the CPU hit key sink here on the top exhausting everything but at the rear we've got four USB three this is the five gigabit variety of USB we've got two Intel one gig mix HDMI and then dual a thunderbolt yes dual Thunderbolt oh and that one lone three-and-a-half millimeter jack yeah that's got an optical Toslink built in so if you've got an optical connection you want to use that's gonna work just fine now a lot of people on the level 1 forum are chasing the ultimate you know sort of audio mastering workstation and they need the reliable Thunderbolt interface but they want you know a relatively small machine this seems like it's gonna be the perfect form factor when the physical size of this thing is 238 millimeters by 216 millimeters by 96 millimeters about the size of a lunch box it's literally a lunchbox computer internally it has 3 m2 slots including 2 that are up to 110 millimeters and 2m to go through the chipset and one is directly through the CPU in terms of memory expansion capabilities and has dual so-dimms so it's a it's a dual channel configuration that will support up to 64 gigabytes of ddr4 memory it's 2666 it will use LR like that LR LP with a new notebook standard but that's limited to 2133 as opposed to 2666 but yeah 64 gigabytes and disassemble this is the heart of our nook it looks like a PCI expansion carpets not really this is our xeon cpu underneath the copper call plate we've got our - you know sodium slots it's notebook style memory we've got our connections for our intel Wi-Fi 6 on top here now the intent y56 module is soldered seems to be right onto the board it doesn't seem to be like a MDOT two upgradeable module which is unfortunate but you do have got two modules here both of the MDOT two connections here are through the south bridge there through the chipset connection there not a direct CPU interface from what I can tell however this interface is PCI Express by sixteen and this breaks out to your nut to chassis and here in the bottom you can see we've got our other m2 slot so by default with our quad repeat 2200 oh crap with our Quadra 2200 from P&Y we've got a PCI Express by 16 connection but if we add an MDOT two or a PCI Express by for physical PCIe card then this interface will drop two by eight but this is a nice layout because potentially here we can have PCI Express by eight plus by four for the nvme to the CPU plus by four to a peripheral which i think is a reasonable sacrifice given the platform limitations of using a mobile CPU so even though this is a Zenon CPU that doesn't you know confer any extra PCIe lines overall if you get the chipset lanes and the CPU has the dedicated DMI interface to the chipset and then you got sixteen PCI Express lanes it's just up to you how you want to divvy up those PCI Express lanes in terms of peripherals now because of the specific configuration of this and because we're using obtain there was not really a performance penalty on this platform using obtain through the Southbridge chipset if you had a really high speed Thunderbolt peripheral like an external GPU dock for example then that might not be the case I might be tempted to move this this h10 PCI Express nvme card over to the nvme in the bottom of the case and for upgraders like if you're gonna build a hundred of these and DIY your Ram installation or changing your m2 it does take a little while to turn out in the system there's a bunch of connections over on the side it's delicate it's a little tedious oh and yeah eight core Xeon M CPU it's a 45 watt CPU but as you can see from our hardware monitor recordings it does peak up 115 Watts although 105 watts is a little more typical just two screws hold the top on and that's where you'll find the dual exhaust fans in the top with a standard four pin connection so if anything bad happens with the fans this is a standard component with a standard four pin header if the little pogo pins to make maintenance easy but this is really cool now one sort of odd thing out of the box when we got our unit from Intel we booted it up and it's like that's kind of strange our unit was configured with the new H 10 intel SSD that's qlc 9 + 32 gigabytes of obtain but the octane was not configured at all so it's a little bit of a headache right now to set up octane so I had some trouble setting it up that's because things are changing with octane you needed a driver and control software and the old way of doing it was you would go to intel's website and download like obtain setup.exe or the Intel Rapid Storage Technology stuff that's not really a thing anymore the way that you're supposed to do it is Windows Update is supposed to get the driver for obtain like the physical driver and then you go to the Windows Store the Microsoft Store and download intel's octane control program and then that sets it up so I did a Windows Store step first except it didn't detect the octane so then I downloaded the driver which also installed an octane utility but when you run that octane utility it says hey this isn't supported anymore support is going away soon you need the one from the Windows Store but then the one from the Windows Store doesn't want to install if you have the other one I mean it will install but then you run it and weird stuff happens and so got that straight now so the way that you want to do this is you want to go to device manager and have Windows Update you find the driver in my case it didn't but that's what you want to do and then you want to go to the Microsoft Store you don't even want to bother with Intel downloads yeah so and then you can set up obtain as a cache it's a 32 gigabyte cache on that one terabyte SSD on the qlc and that improves performance quite a bit so with that 32 gigabyte octane set up as a cache for my one terabyte qlc SSD which by the way all of that the octane and the qlc is on one nvme so my other envy me slots are open there's one in the bottom here on this PCIe card and then the other two are our sort of right here on the actual like nook module itself that thirty few gigs of obtained it's really gonna help with responsiveness I could score over one hundred and thirty five megabytes per second in queue depth one in crystal disk mark which is actually quite fast I mean the really high-end PCIe for SSDs a lot of those can't clear thirty thirty five megabytes per second curiously though in the Intel software is showed as having 64 gigabytes of memory and it took me a second but it's combining 32 gigabytes of system memory plus 32 gigs of octane Intel don't don't refer to it that's just gonna muddy the water even more like I know the messaging is not consistent don't do it that way I don't know what you call off name because it is it's halfway between NAND flash speed and storage speed and it really does help with queue depth one and machine responsiveness but I don't think you should call it 64 gigs of memory and just sort of I don't think you should I don't think the software should do that that just is gonna confuse people now that everything fully set up what's the performance like well it actually was very impressive for such a diminutive little machine I mean PC mark 10 scores are very respectable 97 95 82 16 on productivity 72 92 on digital content creation the fire scratch scores were also not bad although strictly speaking with this Quadro this is not a gaming machine cpu-z back the envelope tests three point four six gigahertz was sustained even though we were hovering around 76 degrees C with a peak temperature and you know grueling those grueling you know probably 95 torture tests 88 C peak maximum but again that seems to be targeting a thermal temperature of about 75 degrees C which is great because those laptops that target like 92 degrees C I worry about the longevity of those terms of like okay it's getting hot how loud to the fans get small fans are loud this thing was whisper quiet even when it was running full tilt which was nice you could definitely hear the fans ramping but it still never got louder than a whisper which is very welcome in a business environment especially if you're in the cube farm and you're packed in like the like a veal fattening pan your you know there's gonna be 50 high performance CAD workstations in there it's gonna get loud unless you got one of these it wouldn't be engineering workstation benchmarks without spec V per benchmarks so spec keeper from ish marks were also right in line with what I would expect from an eight-core Zeon machine you know Katya creo Maia 3d studio max the performance was really really impressive for this form factor I mean Intel first showed this off at CES you know here we are just a quarter later and this is a fully realized product that you can pick up today it's really impressive that they were able to cram that much package and also expand ability and something this small but overall what's the value here well this machine is for business users and it's from Intel can you build a faster machine cheaper absolutely you can absolutely build a faster machine cheaper than this but a DIY solution do you really want to do that in a business scenario this is a machine for business users if you are a DIY or you can build a faster machine yes and the faster machine will actually be cheaper you use a different CPU probably different configs probably gonna be a lot bigger but if your business you don't really DIY things you don't even really overclock you rely on a system builder or an OEM or system integrator to build a system for you and they take responsibility hello I would like to buy a bunch of machines will my autocad work on that yes okay sounds good it's somebody else's responsibility that's what business's wants I like that intel is putting more work into this form factor to address you know what some users want because the nook was a great home you know machine initially and there are versions of this with overclockable CPUs like the i7 CPU and you get some expansion and there are enthusiasts that want those features but businesses want these EU features to I mean look at look at the awesomeness of this an apple take note this could be the Mac Mini Pro because you get the expansion and you got Thunderbolt you got a lot of stuff that people want it's basically a Mac Mini plus expansion slots so with the right combination of features this could be great and Intel also seems to be paying attention to you know things like the PCIe layout because one of the em twos is wired directly to the CPU and the other ones go through the chipset so you get a the right mix of performance if you need it you can have those PCIe lanes that go to the CPU for maximum performance as well as the chipset lanes so you can pack in a lot of peripherals I mean 3m2 slaw and a chassis like this is great now we did a little benchmarking on windows but what about Linux okay we did all the benchmarking windows intimated about a hackintosh Inge wink-wink nudge-nudge but what about Linux well yes intel has also qualified this Hardware for Linux so if you want to run red hat or CentOS or Debian or anything with a relatively recent kernel this is going to run fine on this machine we get the full suite of fir onyx benchmarks the fir onyx benchmarks are right in line with what I would expect from this machine I mean even the center bench performance mean seven benches windows but even the SENNEBOGEN performance is right in line with what I would expect of a an eight core machine that's running in about the three three-and-a-half gigahertz range for sent a bench type workloads maybe upwards of four gigahertz so overall this is basically exactly what Intel promises in a new form factor with some expandability you know theoretically and the in the future Intel could offer a new add-in card so you don't have to get the full nook chassis you could just swap out the motherboard CPU and all that at the same time if ddr4 is still the standard you could bring in your same memory you're saying MDOT to peripherals your same GPU you that you've added into the device and not have to pay for the full nook the power supplies in FSP group 80 plus certified power supply it is nice that it's built in and you don't have an external power brick like I mentioned before there's a lot to like about machines in this form factor and I like the fact that it's qualified as an actual workstation for engineering software that's a big deal in business I'm Windell this is level one if you want to check out those four onyx benchmarks there's a link below there's also a link to our other results on the level one forum and the level one website should check it out I'm signing out and i'll see you in the level 1 forums oh and big thanks to Intel for sending this over and P&Y for the Quadro PE 2200 graphics card it made testing this a lot easier and this is a this is this really is an interesting form factor especially for the business use case alright I'm signing out see you later you\n"