Review: Fujitsu Celsius W530

Introduction and performance

Desktop workstations can be both big and expensive, but not so the Fujitsu Celsius W530, a compact and affordable entry-level workstation designed to bridge the gap between high-end PCs and much more expensive professional models.

Okay, so it's only got one processor, but that's reflected in the £1,430 recommended price (around $2,160, AU$2,680), and we found it selling for a lot less than that online. Moreover, with a more than capable Nvidia Quadro graphics card as standard, the Celsius comes equipped to handle not just CAD/CAM but advanced video editing, basic animation work and a lot more besides.

Compact and well-designed

About the same size as the average desk-side PC (6.9 x 16.5 x 15.6-inches, or 175 x 419 x 395mm), the Celsius chassis doesn't quite match the build quality of Dell's Precision range, but is nonetheless nicely laid out and well put together. Access is good, as well, with a fully removable side panel and lots of room inside, not least because of the diminutive Micro-ATX motherboard, which takes up hardly any space at all.

Power comes from a standard 300 Watt supply with cooling handled by the fan in the PSU plus another fan mounted low down at the front of the casing. Most of the airflow from this goes across the motherboard, but there's also a metal baffle to direct some of it down to the storage bays in the bottom of the chassis. The graphics card also has a fan but, despite a tally of three altogether, the Celsius proved remarkably quiet even when pushed hard. Fujitsu calls it "whisper quiet" and, at around 16dB, we tend to agree.

There's just the one processor socket on the motherboard able to accommodate either an Intel Core i7 or Xeon E3-1200 v3 processor. Fujitsu can equip the W530 with either, the review system shipping with a 3.6GHz Xeon E3-1271 v3 which is based on the latest Haswell architecture, offering up four processing cores or eight threads using Intel's Hyper-Threading technology. With an 80 Watt TDP the E3-1271 v3 is a good fit in this entry-level workstation, enabling it to a score a very respectable 14,412 using the latest GeekBench 3 benchmark.

Of course, you also need memory and to support the Xeon processor up to 32GB can be fitted in four DIMM slots, ours coming with a decent enough 8GB on just two sticks. That RAM, however, is 1600MHz DDR3, as support for the faster and more energy-efficient DDR4 memory is only available on systems equipped with the latest Xeon E5 v3 processors. Still, for the kind of applications this workstation is aimed at that shouldn't be too much of an issue, and it certainly didn't seem to have much of an impact in our tests.

In terms of storage you can fit two 3.5-inch and a single 2.5-inch drive in the base of the chassis, the review system shipping with a 2.5-inch 128GB Toshiba SSD as a boot disk plus a 1TB Seagate hard disk for data storage. A good setup to begin with, there's room for another disk in the external drive bays at the top of the case and six SATA ports altogether to handle this plus the DVD writer and multi SD Card reader provided.

Networking comes via an on-board Gigabit Ethernet interface and there are 13 USB ports with four at the front (two are USB 3.0), six at the back (again, two are USB 3.0) and three inside.

Graphics performance

Order the W530 with a Core i7 processor and it will use the on-board Intel controller to manage the graphics output. With the Xeon E3-1271 v3 fitted inside ours, however, a plug-in card is required, the review system sporting a shiny Nvidia Quadro K2200 able to send graphics output to three high resolution monitors through a pair of on-board Displayport sockets plus a single DVI-I connector.

Equipped with 4GB of video memory and 640 CUDA processing cores, the K2200 is fairly low down in the Quadro hierarchy but is, nonetheless, a good choice for the kind of applications this workstation is likely to be used for. Moreover, it enabled the W530 to post some pretty good scores when tested using the Maxon Cinebench R15 benchmark. Particularly in the OpenGL test which mostly stresses the graphics card, where it managed a creditable 122.01 fps.

The W530 isn't quite as quick as the Dell Precision Tower 5810, but it's surprisingly good for this very affordable single-socket workstation.

Verdict

Unlikely ever to be found being used in the Pixar studios, an entry-level workstation like the Celsius W530 has its place in less demanding environments and we were impressed by what it was able to deliver given its (relatively) low price. Faster, more capable workstations are available, but you'll have to pay a lot more to get one and for a lot of buyers the Celsius W530 will be more than adequate.

We liked

Despite the single socket and DDR3 memory, the Celsius workstation manages to deliver an impressive level of performance with its Quadro K2200 more than keeping pace with the Xeon processor on the graphics front. The decision to go with an SSD as a boot disk further helps here and although a 1TB data disk is far from generous there's room to upgrade and add more if needed.

Other things we liked were the built-in card reader and a good quality keyboard and mouse which, although not wireless, were a lot better than the very basic peripherals that came with the Dell Precision workstation.

We disliked

Overall build quality is a little down on Dell standards, but that's to be expected given the price, and it is a tool-free design which makes it very easy to maintain.

We were disappointed by the very poor sound capabilities (just one very small speaker buried deep inside the case), but otherwise, the only real niggle was on the software front. Windows 7 and 8 are both included but Fujitsu insists on adding a bundle of bloatware to the installation, much of it out of place on a system designed for professional workstation users.

Final verdict

Conservatively styled, the Celsius W530 is a very nice little entry-level workstation that we could see being used to run a mix of CAD/CAM, image editing and other graphics-intensive applications whilst also hosting general office productivity tools.

The Xeon E3-1271 v3 processor and Nvidia Quadro graphics card make excellent partners, plus there's scope for further enhancement and it all comes at a very affordable price.

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