Jeff's Digital Storm System Review‏

Before I start the system review a little preamble.  The one critical application for me is Flight Simulator.  Every computer I have purchased for the last 15 years has been chosen to run Flight Simulator with the highest fidelity and speed possible (within my budget).   My last two computers were from Falcon Northwest and Velocity Micro.  I first learned of Digital Storm from the May 2009 Anandtech  Digital Storm Core i7-965 review.   For the past 9 months or so I would periodically visit the Digital Storm site and build my “dream” configuration system.   I was also checking Falcon Northwest and Velocity Micro for comparable configurations but I always found that I preferred the component options available from Digital Storm.    In February just after the conclusion of a 96 hour Flight Simulator event my computer experienced a motherboard failure.   Repair or replace?  I decided it was time to replace.

 I placed the order for my DS system on March 2

 System Configuration:
Chassis Model: Digital Storm HailStorm (Black OPS Edition)
Processor: Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 975 3.33GHz (Quad Core) (Extreme Performance)
Motherboard: !SALE: EVGA X58 3X SLI (Intel X58 Chipset) (Supports Triple SLI or CrossFire)
System Memory: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series (Highly Recommended) (Hand Tested)
Power Supply: 1250W Enermax Galaxy EVO (Dual/Triple/Quad SLI Compatible) (Recommended)
Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (160GB Solid State (By: Intel) (Extreme Performance) (Model: SSDSA2MH160G2R5)
Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: 1x (256GB Solid State (By: Corsair) (Model: CMFSSD-256GBG2D)
Hard Drive Set 3: Backup\Misc.: 1x (2TB Western Digital (7200 RPM) (64MB Cache) (SATA) (Extreme Speed WD2001FASS 2TB)
Optical Drive 1: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 22x / CD-Writer 48x)
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card(s): 1x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 1GB (Includes PhysX Technology)
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 3: FrostChill Cooling System: CPU Only
Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans
Internal Lighting: Internal Chassis Lighting System (Blue)
Noise Reduction: Noise Suppression Package (Optimized Airflow & Fan Speeds with Noise Dampening Material)
CPU Boost: Stage 2: Overclock the processor between 4.0GHz to 4.2GHz (Requires H20 Cooling Upgrade)
Graphics Boost: FREE: Yes, Overclock the video card(s) as much as possible with complete stability
Memory Boost: Yes, Overclock memory frequency (Includes Memory Fan Kit Installed)
OS Boost: FREE: Yes, Disable and tweak all of the non-crucial services on the operating system
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-Bit Edition)
Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based)
Office: Microsoft Office 2007 Basic (Word Excel Outlook)
Pre-Install Game: Flight Simulator X: Gold Edition (Pre-Install, apply updates, and test gameplay with my system)
Warranty: 3 Year Platinum Care Extended Parts & Labor Warranty

 A brief phone call with Sarah helped me finalize my configuration and then it was a matter watching and waiting as the system progressed through the stages.  

Stage 2: (Inventory Assignment)               March 8

Stage 3: (Phase 1 Integration)                    March 8

Stage 4: (Engineering Lab)                            March 8

Stage 5: (Phase 2 Stress Testing)               March 10

Stage 6: (Quality Assurance)                       March 22

Stage 7: (QA Passed)                                      April 2

 Overclocked Processor Settings
 
Processor Speed GHz: 4.1
CPU Multiplier: 25
Voltage CPU VCore: 1.375
VDroop Control: Yes
i7 - BCLK MHz: 165
i7 - Voltage CPU VTT: 175

On April 1 I called and spoke with Eric about the QA delay and was advised that they were waiting on Flight Simulator.  I requested that they ship the system and ship FSX Gold separately when it arrived.

 The system was delivered to my home on Friday April 9 where my hands on experience began.  The box arrived in very good condition and there was no damage.  The first power on bootup was not successful.   I checked the SATA and power cables, and reseating the disk drives but the system still could not seem to find the boot device.  There was a message “No Drives Found.”   I decided to contact Digital Storm support and consulted the Digital Storm notebook to get the support phone number.   I was very surprised that I could not find any Digital Storm phone number on any of the enclosed documentation including the order receipt.   I called my brother and had him go online to Digital Storm website and find the phone number.   I logged the problem by phone.   I continued to troubleshoot the bootup failure.  I removed all disks except the SSD that had the OS and still not bootup.  I then tried to  boot from Windows DVD which worked.  I ejected the Windows DVD and restarted and this time the system did boot from the hard drive and recognized the other drives.  I was back in business.   I got an email from Digital Storm on Monday notifying me that they had created a trouble ticket.  I sent an update by web to let them know they could close the ticket.  I also received a confirmation phone call from Mike.

 Pictures of my “Out of Box Experience” below.

 

 

 

 

 

It took me the better part of a week to install and configure Flight Simulator X and the many add-ons I have on the 256GB Corsair SSD.  My current FSX installation is 115GB and having it on the SSD really speeds up the time to load a flight compared to my previous hard drive installation.  I did have some problems with surround sound so I decided to install the Creative Labs X-Fi Platinum card from my old PC.  It was an unpleasant surprise to discover that both PCI slots were obstructed by wiring which prevented me from installing the card.  The case lighting  switch uses one of the PCI slots but the wiring also blocks the second PCI slot.   I notified Digital Storm by mail and received a call back from Robert the next day.  I have sent a pictures and he is checking into it.   In the meantime I was able to get surround sound working using the on-board sound.

 

 Overall I am very happy with my new Digital Storm system.  My flight simulator experience is an order of magnitude better.  I have pushed most of the visual effects sliders full right and am getting very smooth performance.  The system build took a little longer than I expected.   All of the Digital Storm folks I have had contact with have been very pleasant and professional.