As is usual for Xi-Machines, the Animate X2 Advanced was delivered extremely well protected against transport damage. The actual packaging of the workstation is very securely padded in another large cardboard box with a huge number of small polystyrene elements. However, unpacking and collecting the numerous polystyrene elements, especially with a statically charged fleece jumper, elicited a curse or two from the author. Alternatively, you could also use bubble wrap, which is easier to unpack and repack.
Even when unpacking, the numerous labels on each side of the packaging were noticeable, indicating further transport protection for the CPU and graphics card inside the workstation case.
Case
The case is the midi tower version of the standard workstation case from Xi-Machines made from elegant-looking, black brushed aluminium with chrome-plated feet. Two USB 3.0 ports as well as a headphone and microphone socket are hidden under a small hinged lid on the top, with the power switch and reset button right next to it. There are two empty 5¼-inch slots on the front of the housing in case an optical drive or multi-card slot reader needs to be retrofitted.
After removing the transport lock for the CPU and graphics card, the inside of the case looks very tidy: one usable PCIe x4 and PCIe x16 slot each are still free, and three hot-swap bays are still available in the neighbouring HDD cage. As you would expect from Xi-Machines, the cable management is flawless, with only one really visible cable running from the powerful and quiet power supply unit to the graphics card.
Features
Xi-Machines has equipped the Animate X2 with an Intel Xeon W-2155 CPU with ten cores and 64 Gbytes of registered ECC RAM system memory. The RAM memory is divided into four 16 Gbyte modules. This leaves four RAM slots free. In total, the memory can be expanded to a maximum of 512 Gbytes.
When it comes to mass storage, Xi-Machines has opted for so-called Enterprise Edition drives. Enterprise Edition is not a special edition for Star Trek fans, but means that these mass storage devices have a significantly higher operational reliability and service life than the normally available consumer/desktop models. The Meantime Between Failure (MTBF) is significantly higher for the Enterprise Edition models, and so is the price.
Three different mass storage devices were installed: a 480 Gbyte SSD for the operating system, a 480 Gbyte M.2 SSD as a scratch disc and a 3.2 Tbyte (!) PCIe SSD module with crazy transfer rates for project data. The graphics card is the Ti version of the current Geforce RTX 2080 with 11 Gbytes of RAM. In addition, the Animate X2 Advanced offers almost all currently relevant interfaces at the rear of the housing.
The scope of delivery also includes a mouse and a keyboard of acceptable quality, extra cables for the power supply unit, a small box with screws and an anti-static wrist strap with a clamp for earthing.
Performance
In the Cinebench 20 CPU test, the Animate X2 Advanced came out on top of the test field with 5,258 points, as expected. In the older Cinebench 15 test, it was also at the top with 2,200 points and the Geforce RTX 2080Ti achieved 159 points in the OpenGL test. In the V-Ray render test for CPU and GPU, the good results of the Cinebench tests were confirmed with a computing time of just 1 minute and 1 second for the CPU test and just 46 seconds for the GPU test.
When rendering the classroom scene in Blender, the Geforce RTX was able to show what it can do. The ten CPU cores of the Xeon W-2155 calculated a brisk 8 minutes and 49 seconds, while the Geforce RTX 2080 Ti took just a quarter of the time at 2 minutes and 12 seconds. The unofficial Octane-Bench beta test also showed what the RTX cards have over their predecessors: 302 points without RTX and a whopping 895 with.
Xi-Machines has gone all out when it comes to mass storage: the 3.2 Tbyte PCIe SSD Enterprise Edition module achieved write rates of 2,035 Mbytes and read rates of 4,407 Mbytes per second in the Aja system test and delivered a sustained transfer rate of 4,400 Mbytes per second. However, with limitations, not with the mass storage, but with the benchmarks. According to Xi-Machines, the SSD is capable of reading data at up to 6,170 Mbytes per second – unfortunately, we were unable to measure this. The 500 Gbyte capacity SSD intended as a scratch disc also achieved similarly high write rates of 2,012 Mbytes per second as the large PCIe SSD, but with read rates of 2,729 Mbytes per second it did not come close to their values. The smaller system SSD wrote data at 362 and read it out again at 513 Mbytes per second – completely sufficient for the operating system. With a maximum DPC latency of 442 microseconds, the Animate X2 Advanced was in the midfield of the test candidates. This is fine for the traditional application area of 3D, rendering and HD video. In addition, Windows 10 Pro is configured in such a way that users can get started straight away without having to activate Windows, update drivers or prevent questionable optimisation tools from working.
The cooling concept of the Animate X2 Advanced works well, because even under simultaneous synthetic full utilisation of all components with the Aida 64 stress test, the temperature values of the CPU, the mainboard and the mass storage remained within the normal range.
Only the Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Ti reached a slightly higher value of 81°C, although this is unlikely to be reached under realistic load scenarios in practice. And under all the load and stress, hardly a murmur could be heard from the Animate X2 Advanced, only the graphics card stood out a little when the fans started up, but everything was absolutely bearable.
Conclusion
At 9,875 euros, the Xi-Machines Animate X2 Advanced is certainly no bargain, but calling it expensive is not justified either. Of course, in comparison with the other test candidates, none of which offer selected and tested Enterprise Edition devices of 3.2 Tbyte size and a 5-year warranty, the price seems quite high.
However, if you consider the costs incurred and the loss of image for the customer if a workstation fails unexpectedly in the middle of a large project, then the price is put into perspective and the attribute expensive can very quickly turn into inexpensive.
The Xi-Machines Animate X2 Advanced is unquestionably fast in all areas, offers excellent hardware components and processing and extensive options for increasing the capacities of mass storage and RAM memory. In terms of operational safety and reliability: If I had to buy a computer for a nuclear power plant, I would probably order it from Xi-Machines.
