1st Time Buyer - Stage 3 Slade - Two Week Review

I'm a first time DS buyer, and I've had my stage 3 Slade for a little over two weeks now. It replaced a Cyberpower PC I bought in 2008, the only upgrading to it that had been done was new video card (Nvidia GTX 480) and a little more RAM.

I had started playing Planetside 2 with some friends and the game was totally unplayable on the lowest settings, 30-40 fps max, and down to the single digits when any sort of large conflict was going on. Time to upgrade!

I ordered my Slade when the Black Friday sale went into effect Thursday, the 5 year warranty is what sold me.

I started up my new PC when it first arrived and it booted up in about 20 seconds (first SSD for me), I could probably shut it down and reboot it 5-8 times in the time it would take my older PC to boot up!

So, my first test was to see how Planetside 2 performed. When you load into the game, you start in your factions main base which is pretty populated with players. I went from getting 40fps max at the lowest settings to 120fps with everything maxed out!! The maximum fps from my old PC is now my new minimum! So needless to say, this thing is wicked fast!

Far Cry 3 came out a few days after I received my PC, and I started playing that. It was about this time that I started to get the BSOD with the same error again and again.

I called DS tech support and got to speak with someone that day (which was great), very helpful guy who walked me through step by step adjusting some voltages as he said the errors I was getting were common with overclocked systems (mine is/was stage 2 overclocked).

The adjustments he had me make ended up not solving the problem, and I was still getting the same BSOD. The next time I spoke with him was a Friday and he had me disable the overclocking completely and see how it ran over the weekend. I put a lot of gaming time in over the weekend and didn't have a single crash. The lack of performance from the overclocking is noticeable (I'd say it was performing at about 85% of what it was with the overclocking), but it's still really fast.

Monday when I spoke with the tech, I told him I didn't have a single crash after putting it through its paces over the weekend. The tech said we could do one of two things 1) leave it without the over clocking or 2) he could write up a new overclock and e-mail me the instructions. I said that I'd like a new overclock (after all, that's what I paid for) and this is where things stand currently. I will update as new info becomes available =).

So to sum up my first buying experience from DS:

Positives
+ This PC is really fast even without the overclocking and blazing fast when it's enabled.
+ Tech Support is excellent
+ Packing was very secure and neat

Negatives
- While this may not be a direct DS issue, the Slade case is definitely not as quiet as I was lead to believe, the fans are pretty loud (it looks like they changed some things around regarding the Slade info page since I placed my order, possibly making this irrelevant for future orders)
- My biggest complaint is that the PC I paid for doesn't work properly, it crashes. Yes, it works fine without the overclocking, but having it was part of my order so directly out of the box a $69.00 option doesn't work, and as of this moment still doesn't.

I would rate my DS purchase at 8/10 solely because of the overclocking issue. If that gets resolved than it will be 10/10. Even if it doesn't get fixed I still would recommend buying from Digital Storm, and I can defiantly see myself purchasing my next replacement from them!



Edited by pcftw - 11 Dec 2012 at 4:42pm

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. Even when a system passes overclocking tests here, it can still fail at a customers location do to even small things like voltage fluctuations as overclocking makes a processor become very sensitive to even the smallest factors.

I'm glad that our team is helping you with fine-tuning your overclock, if it's still not stable as you state, just let us know, we'll do our best to help you get it stable. If you rather use it stock, we can always refund you for the overclocking service.

Thought I'd give an update, still no overclocking. Have only gotten one additional set of instructions since my post and they didn't help. Still out $69.

@pcftw,

Sorry to hear about that.

Please send an email to [email protected] and our team will be more than happy to take care of you.