My Velox Review and Experience

Posting this here since I do not have rights to post in Customer Reviews. Please feel free to move :)

To all, I'm completely unbiased and trying to point out my experience as I lived it, bad and good...

Some Background Info

I wanted to post my experience and my review of Digital Storm as a company as well as a final product. I ordered a system back in June, a Velox build, pretty much fully loaded as enthusiast PC’s go, I went with the following setup:

System Configuration:
Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Digital Storm Velox
Processor: Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 6950X 3.0GHz (10-Core) (Extreme Performance)
Motherboard: ASUS X99 RAMPAGE V EDITION 10 (Intel X99 Chipset) (Up to 4x PCI-E Devices) (RGB Lighting)
System Memory: 32GB DDR4 2666MHz Corsair Dominator Platinum DHX (Extreme-Performance)
Power Supply: 1200W Corsair AX1200i (Digitally Controlled Power)
Storage Set 1: 1x SSD M.2 (512GB Samsung 950 PRO) (NVM Express) (Extreme Performance)
Storage Set 2: 2x SSD (1TB Samsung 850 EVO)
RAID Config: RAID 0: Striping: Performance, But No Data Fault Tolerance (Requires 2 Identical HDDs)
Graphics Card(s): 2x SLI Dual (GeForce GTX 1080 8GB (NVIDIA Founders Edition) (VR Ready)
HB SLI Bridge
Extreme Cooling: H20: HydroLux PRO: Exotic Custom Cooling System (2x Graphics Cards + CPU)
HydroLux Tubing Style: Flexible Tubing (Requires HydroLux Liquid Cooling System)
HydroLux Fluid Color: Yellow Fluid (Requires HydroLux Liquid Cooling System)
Airflow Control: Digital Storm Thermal Management Control Board & Software
CPU Boost: Stage 1: Overclock CPU - Up to 4.4GHz (Depends on Cooling and Motherboard)
Graphics Boost: Yes, Overclock the video card(s) as much as possible with complete stability
Warranty: Life-time Expert Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty (3 Year Labor & 1 Year Part Replacement)


My initial experience was pretty bad…. the system had issues from the start…. It wouldn't always boot, it would BSOD, would give me a Watchdog_Timeout_error which only recovered through a system restore and the one to crown all the issues was about two weeks in, it would randomly shut off…. clearly a power issue amongst other numerous issues.
I had some email exchanges with support and Alex and given the fact that I was very disappointed, every little misstep was a blow-up on my side. To quote Alex “we started off on the wrong foot” and he was about to make things right….

Now that we got the bad out of the way, let's focus on the Good.
Once you get to support (it can take a day or two, it’s a small company) my experience was awesome, Charles was extremely helpful and spent over two hours on the phone with me and answered every email on time. We did a ton of work and if Charles is any indication of the level of support DS has, then it’s pretty much World Class… having said this, I only dealt with Charles from Support….


This is where Alex and Jericho came in… I believe it was Alex who approved this (he was traveling at the time so I dealt with Jericho), because of the issues I was having and being that the system was new, Alex approved a new build with a high priority, they issued an RMA and before I shipped the PC back, the new build was already in Stage #5 just 36 hours after the RMA was issued…. That was amazing and in my opinion the right thing to do… It was done 100% at DS expense (shipping the 1st system back and the new system back, they also honored my original shipping choice which was UPS Freight).

Now, before I move on, I do want to give DS a ton of credit here, approving a second build and starting the new build even before they received my old system in addition to absorbing over $600 worth of shipping is without a doubt a game changing decision, this alone gives me full confidence that this company stands behind their product and prioritizes customer service.

My new build would have some changes given the timing and the situation, so I added:
Graphics Card(s): 2x SLI Dual (GeForce GTX TITAN X 12GB (Pascal) (NVIDIA Founders Edition) (VR Ready)
Warranty: Life-time Expert Care with 3 Year Limited Warranty ( 4 Year Labor & 2 Year Part Replacement)


Build Time

The first system was ordered June 26
Stage 1: June 28th
Stage 2: July 6th
Stage 3: July 8th
Stage 4: July 11th
Stage 5: July 12th
Stage 6: July 14th
Stage 7: July 14th
Shipped: July 15th
Delivered: July 22nd


There were a couple of weeks where we did not sync with support, I kept calling them but there was an apparent misunderstanding on their side with the scheduled appointments and due to my business travels we did not sync back until sometime in mid Aug

Shipped Back: Aug 20th

2nd Build:

Approved: Aug 17th
Stage 1: Aug 18th
Stage 2: Aug 18th
Stage 3: Aug 18th
Stage 4: Aug 19th
Stage 5: Aug 19th
Stage 6: Aug 26th
Stage 7: Aug 27th
Shipped: Aug 31st
Delivered: Sept 8th

During this time I was heavily engaged with Jericho, communicating back and forth, he actually send me pictures of my system when it was built. He explained that QA took longer than usual because of my first system and the experience I had, they wanted to make sure it was perfect….


Delivery

I have to say UPS Freight @ $399 is garbage…. They miss their scheduled delivery after they call me the first time… in fact I had to drive and pick my first system up because it was a friday and they would not send it out for delivery that day… My second build was also a bit of a hit or miss with delivery as they promised me it would be out for delivery a day earlier and it never went out…. Save your money and ship regular ground.

Build Quality & First Impressions

I went with a Velox for two reasons, 1) it fit right under my desk with a nice gap between the top and the desk for air circulation and 2) it is a very professional looking tower, it just blends in with any setup without overpowering a room like the Aventum for example… the Aventum was way too much of a footprint for me

The build quality of these systems (both builds) are simply amazing, DS does something very smart which is, leveraging the best consumer grade parts in the market, they cut no corners and it shows. Every component in this build is simply second to none…from the cables to the water blocks to the radiator, they use quality well recognized products.

The assembly and build is done to a master-crafter level, every little cable is tucked in with amazing craftsmanship… it is truly a Ferrari of PC’s. I would put DS at the pinnacle of the boutique PC builders and I have bought from many….

Build Quality & First ImpressionsPerformance & Reliability

My CPU on that first build was one of a kind… I had it running on 4.5Ghz @ 1.32v and it would boot at 4.5Ghz but i was not comfortable because it required 3.4v. In any event a 6850K @ 4.5Ghz is something rare… The first PC had so many issues that I won’t focus on it. At the end of the day, I have to give DS the benefit of the doubt, PC parts fail, I trust they did their testing and all was OK, but things wen’t south fast with real world testing and software.

My second build is a complete different story even after barely a day and a half…. All works out of the box, I did not have to tweak every game and application installed for it to worked, it just did as one expects.

It came OC at 4.2Ghz 42x100x1.34v, this seems to be standard for them, my first system was also 1.34v, however the BLCK was 125Mhz…

I haven't really tried to OC this CPU just yet, sitting at 43x100x1.34V and want to go steady and slow, but man these Titan X’s are just stupid fast

Running with an Acer Predator X34, 21:9 - 3440x1440

Every Game is maxed out (including gameworks, hairwork, all the sliders to max for these initial testings) and Vsync off, again for benchmarking

Witcher 3:: ~100 FPS
Doom: ~150 FPS
Star Wars Battlefront: ~160 FPS
Crysis 3: ~110 FPS
Deus Ex: ~80 FPS (SLI is spotty)
GTA V: (crashing at launch, have to figure out what the issue is)
Overwatch: ~200FPS
F1 2016: ~125 FPS
Hitman DX12: ~95
Rise of the Tomb Raider DX12: ~100

Catzilla: 17373 in 4k #9 in the world, this is nuts considering 7 of those people above me have 4-way SLI
Firestrike: 27882
Firestrike Extreme 20494
Firestrike Ultra: 13196
TimeSpy: 13660

I’ll be sure to post screenshots and updated results once I start playing with the OC, just wanted to give you guys an idea.

Temperatures in-games are 55-60c CPU and 45-50 GPU, pretty happy with that and crossing fingers nothing fails.

Idle temps are 27-29c

Haven't had a single BSOD, I seem to be having issues running GTA V and Deus Ex DX12, both crash at launch, but these seem to be issues that are well documented online…


Documentation

Ok, honestly… I have done business with Alienware (ALX systems), Falcon Northwest and Maingear PC… they all do a better job documenting the build… not a big deal but it is a shortcoming. I would have like to see an Overclocking documentation with details as to what they tried, would have loved to see the result of their testing and performance… all this needs to be documented. They need a much more custom approach with the binder.

Conclusion

We did have a rough start, but in the end it’s not the product a company sells (they are all on-par these days) but rather what a company does to make things right when problems do happen what really matters in the end. I can safely recommend Digital Storm to anyone looking for a top notch build with great support and people that seem to care to make things right…. It’s expensive, no doubt, but the best.


Some Pics:









I'll post more pictures with the final setup, going to be moving things around to be able to admire the beauty of this PC ;)



Edited by Xenecus - 09 Sep 2016 at 7:55pm

Congratulations That is a strong system and its unfortunate that you had to experience the best of DS, its service.