"The Ultimate Beast" Pics+Review

UPDATE: I've upgraded my system slightly (Yes, already!) to be sure it's now the best of the best. Take a look at new specs and new benchmarks... I now get over 600MB/s read/write speeds! :)

Hello all. For those who haven't followed along on This Thread, I recently built what I would call my ultimate dream machine, or for short T.U.B. ("The Ultimate Beast"). I've always wanted to try to get the best of the best and last month I finally had enough money saved up to do so (how much you ask? Well, think almost at 5 digits...).

I did a lot of research around trying to find the best place to get a custom built top-of-the-line machine. Of course I've always heard of Alienware or Falcon-NW and whatnot and was close at going with them, until I found Digital Storm. After more research and asking around, I decided to go with DS. They seemed to have more customizability, better parts, and more quality assurance than anyone else. After even longer, I finally figured out the build I wanted and ordered it on Feb. 13th.

Though it did take a while to get to me (probably longer than most - I got it on March 27th), my purchasing experience was great and I had a lot of contact via email and phone with the people at DS. I was picky and wanted to make sure all was going OK, that they had my order exactly right, etc. And they of course got back with me to make sure I was satisfied with things or told me what may work better, etc. All in all, it was a good experience and I would buy from them again. Though, I did have a few tiffs (explained in the thread link above) right when I got my machine, but I got them all figured out and dealt with and even DS personally talked with me to make sure I was 100% satisfied doing everything in their power.

To sum it up a bit:

Customer Service: 10/10
Ordering Process: 9/10
Parts/Components Available: 10/10
Build Quality: 9/10
Out-Of-Box Experience: 9/10
Overall Satisfaction: 9/10

And now for the good stuff, here's my build:

Chassis Model: Digital Storm 950Si
Exterior Finish: - EXOTIC StormBlue High-Gloss Automotive Paint Finish
Interior Finish: - EXOTIC StormBlack High-Gloss Automotive Paint Finish
Trim Accents: Paint All Trim Accents: Chassis Vents, Grills, Screws, and Hose Clamps (Red)
Processor: Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 965 3.2GHz OC'd to 4.0 Ghz (Quad Core) (Extreme Performance)
Motherboard: EVGA X58 3X SLI (Intel X58 Chipset) (Supports Triple SLI or CrossFire)
System Memory: 12GB DDR3 1600MHz Corsair Dominator DHX (High-Performance)
Power Supply: Corsair 1000W HX (Silent Edition) (Dual/Triple/Quad SLI Compatible)
Card Reader: Internal Digital Media Card Reader (Black)
*NEW* Hard Drive Set 1: 3x OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD in RAID 0 (Original was 2x OCZ Apex 250GB SSD in RAID 0)
Hard Drive Set 2: 1x (1TB Western Digital (7200 RPM) (16MB Cache) (SATA) (Extreme Speed)
Optical Drive 1: Blu-Ray Writer/Reader (Burn Blu-Ray discs and play them)
Optical Drive 2: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) (LightScribe Edition)
*NEW* Internet Access: Killer NIC M1 PCI card (Orig: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections))
Video Card(s): 2x SLI Quad (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 1.792GB) (Includes PhysX Technology)
Sound Card: Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion (Includes Front I/O) (PCI-Express Slot Based)
Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 3: High-Performance Liquid Chilled FrostBite System For CPU
Liquid Color: UV Blue: Medium Glowing Non-conductive Fluid (Requires H20: Stage 3 & UV Lighting)
Chassis Airflow: Upgrade Chassis With Zalman Performance Fans (Up to 6 Fans)
Internal Lighting: Internal Chassis Lighting System (UV) (Creates Glowing Effect For H20: Stage 3 UV Fluid)
Enhancements: LCD Temperature Display & Fan Controller (Requires Chassis Airflow Upgrade)
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-Bit Edition) (For Enthusiasts)

And here's a couple slideshows of pictures and benchmark screenshots that I made (in my Photobucket account):

PC Pics

*NEW* Benchmarks: Upgraded PC Benchmarks

NOTE: Pics still don't do it full justice, especially the 'night' shots, but I did what I could as I'm not a pro. photographer.

PC Benchmarks

New NOTE: Benchmarks were taken using the registered versions of PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage, and the free versions of ATTO Disk Benchmark, HDTune, HD Tach, and SiSoft Sandra Lite.

Orig. NOTE: I took benchmarks with registered version of 3DMark Vantage, trial of PCMark Vantage, HD Tach (both 'Quick' and 'Long') and HDTune. The only benchmark that showed some weird results was PCMark Vantage. Though the screenshot doesn't show it, when I looked at the details in comparison with the other machine, my scores were ridiculously low. I don't know if there was just a glitch or there's still some latency issue with my SSD drives or what, but I would take the PCMark Vantage score with a grain of salt.

In the end, thus far, this thing is just crazy fast. I'm still trying it on some of my fav games (like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead), but it obviously has no problems playing at 1920x1200 with every setting at absolute max detail. The RAID 0 SSDs just blow everything out of the water. Boot time into workable environment is a matter of seconds (maybe 15-30 depending on BIOS boot stuff) and programs start up almost instantly. File copying is ridiculous for most things and the same with program installations. I still haven't had time to do further tests such as video encoding, conversion, and compression and whatnot else, but I'm sure it will do awesome there as well.

After everything, I just want to say Thank You DS and everyone else here who has helped make my dream machine come true! :D

Edited by LittlBUGer - 05 Apr 2009 at 1:22am

very nice

Very Nice!!!!

So Little, have you gotten the chance to game on it yet?

Yes, let us know about Crysis! I'm looking forward to finding out how my rig will do w/ that soon too. Congrats! I especially like the paint job.

Edited by LDLD - 30 Mar 2009 at 12:12pm

Medium settings are you kidding me mine can't even play supreme commander on the lowest settings.

Nice system! 

that would be better, but then after you are done I will raid 2 vertex 2-s together J/K

or just get a fusion duo and blow out all of that out of the water

just say...WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by DST4ME or just get a fusion duo and blow out all of that out of the water

Yea right, rofl! Costs just as much as my entire PC did, :D

Well, you may or may not be pleased to know that, after some research and discussion in the OCZ forums, my build will change slightly soon. In order to make my PC truly "The Ultimate Beast", I had to get the best-of-the-best for the HDs too. So I just bought 3x 120 GB Vertex drives that I'll put in a RAID 0, replacing my current 2 Apex 250GB ones. I also bought a Killer NIC M1 card for my free PCI slot just for fun, to see if that helps anyway. Had to get a new UPS while I was at it too, as my current one gets overloaded when all runs full tilt, heh.

So, now that's done, anyone need an OCZ Apex 250 GB SSD at less than retail price? I've got 2! ;)

Edited by LittlBUGer - 31 Mar 2009 at 5:06pm

As said by a couple people from OCZ forums: "The Vertex II was a concept model shown at a PC exhibition and perhaps it'll see the light of day, or perhaps it won't." So since I have no idea when it will be out, and the upcoming 'Summit' drive will maybe be slightly better, I see no reason to not get the Vertex now. :)

204MB/s read and 170MB/s write is hardly anything close to vertex 2.

also this hardly sounds like a concept model:

OCZ has shown us the prototypes of Vertex 2, their next generation SSD, and the company's CEO Ryan Peterson and EVP and Chief Marketing officer Alex Mei were kind enough to show us a first glimpse of the drive's performance. The drive is insanely fast as this internal quad raid drive can write at up to 480MB/s and read around 550MB/s. In order to achieve thee speeds you will have to get to SATA 3.0, as SATA 2.0 is maxed out at 300MB/s per device. SATA 3.0 on the other hand gets you all the way to 750GB/s which will be enough even for Vertex 2. This drive will come the market in 2009

if its does not come out, I'm gonna be super pissed at ocz.

Edited by DST4ME - 03 Apr 2009 at 1:02am

I'm was not talking about whether you made the right choice or not, I'm talking about the SSD themselves, 3 drives is raid is not the same as one drive with internal raid.

Originally posted by DST4ME 204MB/s read and 170MB/s write is hardly anything close to vertex 2. also this hardly sounds like a concept model: OCZ has shown us the prototypes of Vertex 2, their next generation SSD, and the company's CEO Ryan Peterson and EVP and Chief Marketing officer Alex Mei were kind enough to show us a first glimpse of the drive's performance. The drive is insanely fast as this internal quad raid drive can write at up to 480MB/s and read around 550MB/s. In order to achieve thee speeds you will have to get to SATA 3.0, as SATA 2.0 is maxed out at 300MB/s per device. SATA 3.0 on the other hand gets you all the way to 750GB/s which will be enough even for Vertex 2. This drive will come the market in 2009 if its does not come out, I'm gonna be super pissed at ocz.

after waiting this long to order my system i will be to

For the mike be sure to right click the speaker and click on recording devices and configure the Front Panel Microphone.  Hope this helps,

@Onkel_Ken
Don't worry about the mic anymore, I finally got it figured out. It was the headset I was using before. Worked fine in XP x64, but not in Vista x64. So after I connected a standalone mic, voila, it works.

@tman5890
Thanks. :D