Opinions on building a PC

Hi all. I recently (And happily) Stumbled on to this website from a series of youtube vids. I believe it was from checking out some kind of beast called Nightmare. Which lead me to a review of the Enix.

To then my surprise I see the Sub Zero cooling now offered by the site. First I just want to get this out of the way. From your promo, it seems your as dedicated to making awesome rigs as I am. I've built my last 2. While it is fun, I really want to use water cooling as well as putting water blocks on my new GFX cards (dont feel up to the task just yet).

Considering all that I've seen, the 72 hour stress tests, the video card optimizing and my favorite (Which few people even think about) the killing of unnecessary windows start-up processes, I feel like I can trust this DS with my cash and believe you will deliver a non DOA product.

So that out of the way I plan to have somewhere around 3500 by December 29th but willing to pay as much as 4k. Working over time

(Had to sell my beast to make rent, have a stable job at TI now but the ache of losing my meticulously made, so silent : ( rig has left a hole so before anyone asks "WHY SPEND SO MUCH - NOT NECESSARY" That is the reason. That and I want to give my sister back her PC that she is letting me use for the time being to get buy - i7 920 OC 5870 gfx)


So my intentions for this rig are as follows.

I am getting a very nice, very sharp Samsung from fry's oct 20th UN40C6300SFXZA . 40 inchs is perfect since I game in front of a pretty bad 720p 37 inch lcd at the moment, It's both my gaming monitor and Living room Monitor.

So considering the highest possible resolution I am going to be at for a few years is 1920 by 1080. I wanted to build a system that would run my games at max setting with this resolution with 4x 16x. and attain 60 FPS without hiccup, meaning I really don't want to dip below 40 fps.

When i say games I have to admit my goal will be to run Skyrim, Batman Arkham City, Rage, and Crysis 2 at those desired frame rates.

I know the first 3 are not even out yet so I will stick to just using Crysis 2 with High Res textures and Dx 11 patch, 4x AA 16x AF as well as Metro 2033 maxed - 4x AA 16x AF as the reference games.



So far I am Partial to Nvidia 580 3gig. Be it a single or double with or without water block.


So my questions I suppose are as follows.

Does Digital Storm offer Normal Liquid cooling and Liquid Cooling on the gfx cards? I see that there's the sub zero cooling for CPU and 1 Video card option, but considering its $750. I could just SLI up and do normal liquid cooling for the cpu for the same price. So I was hoping you might have a normal Water option for the cpu and gfx card(s) that might be cheaper.

If there is only the Sub Zero and Liquid cooled gfx card option, Does the GFX card benefit from the subzero cooling?

If not, is there a solution in the works for a sub zero kit for the gfx cards in the future?


Since it seems today's games are putting all the stress on the cards, it's now making them (GFX cards) the bottle neck in checking the performance of cpus in games. Lately reviewers have to have quad SLI setups to see the difference that CPUs have in regards to their impact on a games FPS.

With that in mind, would I gain more performance from a OC SUB ZERO CPU + liquid cooled GFX card |Considering Liquid cooled has been known to be able to allow a extra 20 percent increase on the memory and shader clock| or would I see more performance in say a Enix, with SLI x2 Nvidia 580 3gig.

It seems that all your gaming rigs can still be upgraded to the 5.2 ghz option with normal water cooling solution - Though it states a EXTREME motherboard is necessary which I don't see a Extreme, I do see a ultimate.

Another item I noticed is that the Enix can use what looks like Normal motherboards and not just Micro ATX. That is, at least I have the vertical case Silver Stone selected when I am picking my parts (IF I where to not go on water cooled GFX cards)

My next topic is SSD in Raid 0. SSD is still way to expensive for my tastes. But I do like the x2 60gig force with 550 read 510 write 6gig Bandwidth. How stable are they? I know people are having issues with freezing on some SSD drives they personally install, is that just the nature of the 1st gen SSDs or just a faulty batch?

Well, I gotta get going to bed at the moment. Over night job awaits. Thanks for any feedback and thanks for being sincere in making truly great rigs. You guys sell at a bit of a premium over your competitors but not to extreme and the knowing I can count on you is worth the extra 2 days of Over time : P

Thanks again






Edited by Michael Romano - 30 Sep 2011 at 11:16am

Please post your budget and res in teh config section of the forum and we will take it form there.

you don't need lc nor do you need the extra fps from oc on gpu with sli 570/580, the extra vram is not gonna help at 1900 x 1200.

Please post the info on the config section so we can config a system that will give you what you need then we can discuss lc and extra vram and etc. that way you can see the small differences between an air cooled and one you have in mind and then make your final decision. Right now you got lot of stuff that is not giving you performance for the money you want to spend.

I like you build pcs too but for a long time, I came here cause I was tired of it and did not want to be bothered.

Edited by DST4ME - 30 Sep 2011 at 12:54pm

maybe I mis understood, do you want DS to build this system or are you trying to build it yourself?

if its yourself we can continue here, if its DS then the config section of the site is for configuring builds that DS will build.

Ya I see your post we will continue there