A little disappointed in my purchase...

... that I didn't make it sooner! I missed free BF3!

Glad to soon be joining the digital storm family! As someone who built their first PC when I was 15(?) and now 29 I can appreciate buying pre-built systems. Back in the day (P1/p2/you had to deal with jumpers on mobos/ incompatible hardware and so on. While those days have long past we are now in the era of overclocking, greybox hardware, and shoddy parts it's just nice to buy from the experts.

The last 3 rigs that I have bought have been dell and while they tend to earn the ire of the internet at times- i've had nothing but positive experiences with their out of the box systems. The previous system that I bought was a Dell XPS 630 rig (3 years ago?) that worked (and continues to work) great up until now. I have a few compliants about my system- specifically that when I bought it- they included a power supply that only realistically supported 1 gpu and when I went to upgrade to a second ATI 4800 series GPU- the crossfire setup never quite worked as well as I wanted because of the power limitations.

My first instinct was to go with a Dell again for this purchase- buy Alienware (as back in the day they were THE name in custom built rigs) but as I started reading reviews the aurora line kept on striking out. I specifically noticed when doing my due diligence by consulting Tom's hardware that the components that they were using in their $2500 range rig just wasn't up to snuff. The GTX 460 in SLI was a little outdated and wasn't performing as well as other components on the market. The Alienware cases which used to be the pinacle of pre-built flashy just didn't stand the test of time and have started to look dated.

I came across several reviews pointing to the ODE-3. (Still not sure if this is pronounced O-D-E spelled out or Ode) The reviews from windows magazine and C-net were very informative and seems that everyone has run this machine through the rigors of testing and has yet to come up short. The biggest gripest that have come up are the amatuerish way that the USB3 port on the front has been hardwired to the back and a lack of a 3rd available PCI-e Socket which are both things that I can live with.

When comparing the ODE to other retailers- the ODE came up big with the overclocking to 4.5 and closed loop cooling coming standard (i still don't trust reservoirs and have a fear of a coolant leak bricking my system). I'm excited about the dual 470's powering the ODE- they are solid components that have gotten great reviews.

The ODE is an attractive case overall and I enjoy the departure from what I see as a lack of creativity in case builders to mesh form and function. Cases nowadays are trying to all look as black ops military as possible- and as someone who served with real toughbooks the faux military industrial design I believe is getting tired.

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Things that bummed me out in the buying process:

1. I missed the free BF3 day! I only found DSO a day earlier and didn't have enough information to order the machine then. Boo.

My Two Cents: More advertising for DSO! Its hard to tell the fly by night custom PC producers apart from the quality ones. I had a real dinger of a time trying to find a repuitable dealer.

2. The website is a little hard to navigate in that the site when arriving on the page differentiating 'black ops' and 'special ops' both are labeled as gaming computers and use very similar language. After playing with the site I came to realize that the only difference between the rigs were the cases and starting components.

My2C: There has to be a better way of streamlining the process.

3. In many of the reviews of the ODE3 system that I read online- a blueray player was included in the base price as reviewed. As the system isn't cusomizable- i wonder when the BR player got switched out. I wonder if this would have affected any of the reviews.

My2C: If you are going to show off the reviews - make sure they are for the product you currently offer or better.

4. After the purchase I saw a box that said something to the accord of "fill out this survey for free processor or memory upgrade" which of course i clicked on. I was a little bummed out to find out that this in fact a 'contest' for a free memory or processor upgrade.

My issue isn't with the nature of having an contest incentive for people to fill out surveys- my problem was that it wasn't labeled as a contest and I got excited for nadda.

My2C: Don't give false impressions to get clickthroughs that late in the game after i've already given you my CC information. It's tacky.

Things I enjoyed:

1. I really enjoyed the free tee shirt! I know it sounds silly but I do have a theory that every great purchase in live should come with a free tee-shirt. Tee shirts cost next to nothing and its always nice to get something free.

2. Youtube videos. I really enjoyed these as they really sold me on the machine. I hope that you produce more of them in the future as they are a great buying guide. An especially long one that details the features of all of your different cases would have been great.

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Questions:

1. Now that I'm looking at the new system coming in the mail in the next 5-10 days, I'm hoping to pick up some new monitors (sub $200 each) can anyone recommend any (besides just brands, I own acer and dell already and may go with them again) or links that would be useful?

I'd very much like a small bezel on the outside of the monitors for whatever nvidia is calling their eyefinity support.

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Thanks for reading!

I'm very excited to receive my new ODE-3 soon!



Edited by gadgetstorms - 27 Nov 2011 at 9:12am

The thing to remember with the entire ODE line is it is built to be cost effective both both DS and the customer. They are very powerful machines for the money but you will never have the same ability to upgrade them later that you will get from a full custom rig.

To address some of your concerns:

No 3rd PCI-e slot, that is more a limitation of the LGA 1155 socket MOBOs then anything else. The Sandybrdige MOBO can not handle x3 SLI. There are a few MOBO that have a 3rd PCI-E lane but it only opperates at x4 and using it will disable some of the USB connections on the back of the board that are on the same data lanes. You would have to go with the x79 series boards for the Sandybridge-e CPUs to do anything more then x2 SLI. So that is not DS fault.

BluRay drive:
Like Max said that is due to drive prices. They also changed which SSD that the systems come with because of this problem due. There was massive flooding over in India, which makes like 80% of all data and optical drives for the planet, so prices for all drives has skyrocketed. As I said before the ODE line is about saving money so they changed the components instead of raising the prices for the systems.

The Reviews:
DS can't do anything about the reviews being for the old version of the system when they were forced to make changes due to circumstances outside of their control. You really want them to send another free system to all those companies just so they can do another review with one that doesn't have a BluRay player??? Try to be a little realistic. The other problem is once the price of the drives go back down the ODE will switch back to using a BluRay player. The important hardware did not change so the review is still valid.

Something else you should learn about this company, is you have a problem with something talk to them first before posting complaints about what you don't like on the forums. I can't promise you'll get what you want but they are usually very reasonable people to work with and will often go out of their way to help you or reach a compromise.

With all that said, two of your biggest complaints, no 3rd PCI-e slot and no BluRay drive are in no way DS's fault and you would know that by reading these forums or learning some basic knowledge about the hardware in your system. To use the x79 platform and the Sandy-e CPUs that go with it would have cost you over $500 more and the BluRay drive another $50. Two massive costs that defeat the purpose of the ODE line, saving money.

Originally posted by maxyme I agree with your input on how the site is kinda confusing now since the redesign. They took out the blu-ray player because hard drive prices are up and they had to counter that, they will add it back in whenever hard drive prices normalize.

Thanks for the update! I wasn't aware that the hard drive prices were up since of the flood in india(?). It would be nice if they made note of this fact immediately available on their website - I'd totally respect if they made that clear and would have still bought my system.

Cheers!

Thank you everyone for the support and responding to the post.

Edited by Alex - 27 Nov 2011 at 12:15pm

No problem, thank you again for choosing Digital Storm!