Digital Storm Core i7-965

Problems

We had very few problems with the Digital Storm Core i7. The system was very stable and would complete hours of testing without issues, other than the driver related rendering oddities noted for SPECviewperf. This is particularly impressive given this is a triple SLI system that can often be laden with headaches, as we've experienced firsthand.

We do have a couple of minor annoyances to note. Boot from CD-ROM was set as the default, which increased boot time slightly. The system includes a Blu-ray drive, but it didn't include a preinstalled player - we had to load PowerDVD ourselves from the included disc. Apart from these minor quirks, though, the system had no issues.

Pricing

Typically, we examine a system's components in this section against standard aftermarket pricing and try to determine the rough difference between the system price and the cost of components. It's a little more difficult with high-end systems such as this one, which incorporate some specializations (water-cooling combinations) and mods (side case fan labor). Buying the same components at Newegg this time comes out to around $4600 with shipping. In contrast, pricing our system on the Digital Storm website yields $5926 with (free) shipping.

That means they have an approximately 22% margin, which goes towards labor, overclocking and BIOS tweaking, testing/quality, lifetime tech support, and the 3-year warranty - as well operations costs to keep the lights on at Digital Storm and turn a profit of course. While the amount is quite high, margins are usually quite high for these types of systems (our Velocity Micro system was about 34%), and the buyer understands they are paying a premium for bleeding edge performance.

If you don't want a high-end system, Digital Storm offers far more affordable setups starting at around $1600. However, the margin remains at around 25%, which isn't something we would recommend for a typical midrange computer. In our minds, the key thing to remember here is the target audience for this system. We have often berated other suppliers for simply throwing a bunch of high-performing components in a case and selling it without the optimizations, customizations, and support that buyers are usually looking for in a $5000+ PC purchase. Digital Storm delivers on all these counts. If that's what you're after, they're the most "affordable" we've tested to date, but they'll never win a real bang-for-the-buck competition.

Final Thoughts

Digital Storm prides themselves on performance, support, and value. Against the first point, this system shattered all previous gaming performance records by huge margins. It was continuously stable, and did not exhibit any quirks or gaming crashes that can be common with complicated triple SLI systems. On the second point, support, the company has one of the highest Reseller Ratings out there, a great BBB rating, and very positive feedback throughout their forums. We also called their support lines on several occasions and were talking with a real person in about 30 seconds. They certainly succeed on the first two points.

When compared for value, there are companies out there that can sell the same components for less, but not with Digital Storm's mix of customizations (paint finishes, water-cooling, etc.) along with value-added options like factory warrantied overclocking on the CPU, GPU, and memory. We were very impressed with our first look at one of their high-end systems, and if you're in the market for a customized high-end gaming rig, you should definitely look at what they have. Our one major dislike was the noise coming from the video cards, and we would encourage users to choose GPU water-cooling to circumvent this. For their mix of raw performance, overclocking and custom options, and quality, we're awarding Digital Storm a Silver Editor's Choice Award. We look forward to seeing what they can do in the future.