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.
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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.
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san1s - Tuesday, May 19, 2009 - link
red coolant, black + red evga classified x58 and red + black dominator gt ram...I would be proud to show off that system, no matter if its prebuilt or not
rbarone69 - Tuesday, May 19, 2009 - link
It's actually better for the consumer and the company that the margins are higher. This incentives the company to work hard to support the customer and keeps them in business for the term of the support. Overclocked watercooled systems tend to require more hands on and support than the average rig and if the margins were thin then the customers to support engineer ratio would be much different. I'm glad to actually see gross margin calculation although it *may* hurt their sales to the people who think it's "too high" because support is not of any value until you need it.Although for the budget minded, of course building one is going to be cheaper, but if you're time is of any value and building computers isn't "fun" then this is a great deal with an acceptable margin.
Wow on the performance benchmarks! It's sad that it's so loud but I'm sure it'll keep a bedroom warm on a cold winter day.
I do have to say after seeing this I'm going to check them out. I'm tiered of dealing with Dell and my homebuilt systems that tend to be a time sink.
Thanks and keep up the great work on these reviews!
Tyler Lowe - Tuesday, May 19, 2009 - link
I purchased my system from Digital Storm about 2 years ago now. At the time I purchased my system, their entry level systems started at around $699. It's a bit of a shame to see that more entry level customers will simply be priced out of the opportunity to experience the build quality that goes into a Digital Storm system, but I could understand why a builder would abandon those price points.A few things have changed since I bought my system aside from the price range of the systems for sale. For one thing, My owner's binder did have basic benchmark scores hand recorded by the technician running the stress testing and benchmarks. So I guess you might consider the current owner's binder a bit of a step backward from the point of view of the author of this article. On the other hand, they have dome some nice things to dress it up. In particular, that certificate of ownership definitely falls into line with the things they do to help make their customers feel special.
The website has improved dramatically over the past couple of years. Those info links are something that was steadily being improved on during the time I was active on their community forums and it looks like they have really made some progress with the format of their site. The fact that the system configurator does not alert the potential buyer to incompatible selections or incomplete builds, is something that the management at Digital Storm had once been very keen on implementing in their site. I'm a little surprised to see that has yet to come to pass.
The accesories bundle hasn't changed much, but that internal packing material is something that I had hoped to see them adopt and even suggested it a couple of times on their forums. Looks like they were listening to those of us that suggested improving the internal packaging to protect against shipping damage. That is one thing I will say about Digital Storm- they really do listen to their customers. Even if it takes months for the ideas suggested to be formed into some sort of action, if something a customer suggests makes sense, odds are, that suggestion in some form will see implimentation.
When it comes to the interior, if nothing has changed, customers shelling out $1200 can expect that same sort of ultra clean build as someone spending $8,000. That's something that I always admired about the company. No customer is an unimportant customer, and entry level builds recieved the same level of care as the high ticket items.
I have seen several reviews of Digital Storm systems on multiple sites over the past two or three years now, and one thing that never really comes across in those reviews, is what it is like to be a Digital Storm Customer. If a reviewer went through the entire buy process, they would quickly understand why even those that had minor issues give this company such high marks. You get taken care of, no matter what, and you are made to feel special by their customer service reps and community of fellow customers.
I would not recomend them to anyone that already has the skills (and time) to plan and build a system with decent cable management, and the knowhow to overclock it, but for those that do not, and have the means, I really do not have a problem recommending them based on my experience there.
Matt Campbell - Tuesday, May 19, 2009 - link
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