New Rig

Greetings all  ,

 

I was going to post my review under the Customer Review section, but no permission to do so.    Not seen any new reviews there for 1/08 yet so that may have a glitch.  Anyway, here's the stats. 

 

Case: Digital Storm Twister ULTRA (Black Anodized Aluminum Finish)
Power Supply: 1000W SilverStone Strider (Dual SLI Compatible) (Model: ST1000) (Silent)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.00GHz (1333MHz Front Side Bus) (4MB Cache)
Motherboard: nVidia 680i Core 2 Quad (By: XFX) (nForce 680i SLI)
Memory: 2GB DDR2 Corsair at 1250MHz Dominator (Dual Channel) (Extreme-Performance)
Floppy / Card: Digital Media Card Reader (Black)
Hard Drive 1: 150GB Western Digital Raptor (10K RPM) (16MB Cache) (SATA) (Extreme Speed)
Optical Drive 1: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
Optical Drive 2: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
Network Card: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card: 2x SLI Dual (nVidia GeForce 8800GTS 512MB (By: eVGA) (PCI-Express)
TV Tuner: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer (Up to 7.1 Channel) (Recommended)
Physics Card: - No Thanks
Cooling: Air Cooled Stage 2 (Silent Artic Cooling Heat-sink (Copper Heatpipes)
Case Lighting: Blizzard Internal Lighting (Blue Edition) (Cold Cathode Tubes)
Round Cables: Enhanced Interior Air Flow (Optical Drive & Floppy Cables (Blue Edition)
User Manual: Personalized Platinum Digital Storm Binder (Includes Paperwork/Benchmarks/CDs/Manuals)
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based)
Office: Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student (Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote)
LCD Display: Samsung 24 inch (Widescreen) (Black) (High-Performance Gaming Display)
Speakers: Logitech 2.1 System (Black Edition) (Model R20) (Includes Subwoofer)
Mouse: Razer Lachesis Gaming Mouse (High-Speed Gaming Grade)
Warranty: 4 Year Platinum Care Extended Parts & Labor Warranty (Highly Recommended)
Support: Lifetime Toll-Free Platinum Care Technical Support

 

Ordered 12-12-07 and arrived 1-8-08.  Not bad considering DSO closed for four work days due to the holidays and getting Christmas orders done.

 

I did get a couple calls for DSO after I placed my order.  First call was for them being out of stock on the 1066MHz Ram and out of stock on the eVGA motherboards.  They gave me a half off offer to upgrade to the 1250MHz Ram so I couldn't say no to that, even though it put me a tad over budget.  Also, they switched me to the XFX version of the 680i motherboard.  I am guessing the XFX is just as good as eVGA from what I was told by DSO.  Next call was for them being out of stock on the 22" Acer monitor and the G15 keyboard.  I asked about a discount to upgrade monitors to the 24" and got $30.00 off.  A tad more over budget, but not bad since I needed a monitor and did not feel like more shopping around.  I really liked the G15 keyboard though so I just went and picked that up at Best Buy.

 

Back to the rig, the box was a bit worn and banged up on the edges, but you gotta love UPS for that.  The rig was well packed on the inside with a good layer of padding all around it.  I got it out of the box and found one of the side panels was loose and popped off with it still in the locked position on the tab on the back.  It was not broken and I was able to get it back on nice and snug.  I checked inside and everything seemed to be very neat and fit nice and snug.  After closing it back up, I did notice that the finish was kind of a brushed steel look.  One of the sides however seemed as though they got a little too eager on the brushed finish and it appeared rubbed/scratched near the front.  After comparing my system with a good friend of mine, who got about the same system and got his new DSO rig two days before me (he also ordered two days ahead of me), I did find one fan was missing.  I called DSO about the fan and they shipped it out to me.  Arrived about four days later.

 

I re-built my office desk to custom fit my new rig, with minimal wires showing so it looked nice and clean, and fired it up.  Very fast and the 24" widescreen Samsung is very nice.  The SLI mode was not turned on on the video settings so I gave that a click.  I also found there appeared to be a glitch in the monitor where there were blue pixels all over the screen.  New drivers did not help so I changed the resolution from 1920 by 1200 down to 1920 by 1080 and 60 Hertz to 59 and it got rid of the blue pixels.  Still looks very nice. 

 

One other issue I had was no sound.  I updated the Creative drivers, but that did not help.  After about two hours of frustration and tinkering around with a friend of mine, we just deleted all the drivers and Vista loaded up some default ones that gave me sound.  I called DSO and was told there was a glitch with the Extreme Gamer card and the Ultra case where the computer did not recognize the rear ports when you had the front ports on the case.  The speakers did work fine when plugged into the headphone jack in front with the Creative drivers installed.

 

I also got a couple random error messages the first few times I was using the computer, but after a few Windows updates they seem to be gone.

 

I feel like I should buy Josh a beer for all the times I talked to him on the phone.  Josh gets a big  from me for helping out.  I also sent an email to Alex about all the issues I had, but not sure he got it since I have not had a reply.

 

As of now, my rig is up and running great.  I've been playing Crysis on it and it runs like a champ on high settings.  I bought the rig for both gaming and to do all the home and office stuff.  I am new to Vista so I still have some exploring to do.