Stormy Experience - Bolt X

I ordered a Bolt X about 3 months ago. I had a not as expected experience and would love to share.



I made a PDF to provide all the Information I would have loved to have before I decided to go with Digital Storm. Sorry for the low picture quality, but there is a rather small maximum file size allowance for files.

Stormy Experience

Feel free to reach out if you interested in more details.

Please move this post to the customer review section.


Edited by jakman76 - 14 Mar 2019 at 12:47am

Edited by Tidgxor - 14 Mar 2019 at 10:38am

Hi jakman76,

Thank you for taking the time to complete such an extensive write-up, feedback such as this allows us to improve our operations for our customers and get a pulse from the customers' shoes.

We took your feedback very seriously and will continue to tweak and adjust our business.

1. The power connector for the graphics card is a tight fit, but it should not come out easily, it appears that shipping might give enough shocks and bumps to dislodge it lose. We're sorry you had to experience this problem upon boot, luckily you were able to easily identify and resolve it.

2. You're right about the LED strip coming loose, I've personally seen on builds where this issue can occur due to heat, we had changed the supplier over the past few months, but it appears this issue still seems to crop up. I will bring this up to our R&D team, we'll need to consider a better supplier that uses a more aggressive adhesive. In addition, we'll need to be more proactive in alternative placement locations.

3. We don't plug the pump into the CPU fan header because thermal cooling performance can drop if the motherboard feels the CPU is running cool (the PWM speed signal will drop; slowing the pump down). If we manually configure the motherboard BIOS to never do that on a liquid cooling system, there have been frequent situations where a BIOS reset will create a thermal cooling performance down the road. Placing the pump into a chassis fan header prevents the possibility of this issue and does not cause any issues.

4. I reviewed your BIOS screenshots from QA and your system was overclocked to run at 4.7 GHz on all eight CPU cores, this is a major performance boost compared to the stock CPU TurboBoost feature by Intel which only overclocks a few cores. In order to see this performance boost, you'll need to apply a load and use a software utility such as "CPU-Z" to verify. I'm unable to confirm the graphics card overclock via QA photos, but we are happy to confirm for you; if it's not present we can help set it and refund you the GPU overclocking service you paid for.

5. The drives should not overheat being placed behind the chassis; could you confirm the temperatures they are running at via "Hardware Monitor" which is a software utility? If you can email me directly I would be happy to help explore this.

6. Our thermal fan control board doesn't work with all configurations and the team has corrected this since then with a validation notice as you now see. This was from the feedback loop we get from customers, I am sorry you had to deal with this issue. We would be more than happy to issue a refund for the control board cost you paid (please email me).

7. I spoke with Ron about the communication you had with him, he sincerely apologized about the situation and will take your feedback closely and ensure he does not let anyone "hang" on hearing from him.

Hi Alex,

thank you for taking the time to reply to some (only the bad ones) of my concerns.
I was deliberating for a while if I should spend the time for a reply.

First of all, I'm glad you "took my feedback seriously". That was the whole intent. I hope future customers will benefit.

I need to comment on your feedback.

1. The connector was not in. As I said, the metal plate from the liquid cooling prevents the connector to go all the way in to close the lock mechanism. You can bend the connector socket to make it work (maybe that's what you call a tight fit) but I opted to shave the connector plastic off a bit to be able to lock the connector. I don't think shipping can unlock a properly locked connector.

2. Don't use the strip as a back-light for your logo. The necessary twist and bend in the strip is causing it to come of. The adhesive is probably OK.

3. Not sure why you're going against the cooler manufacturers recommendation, but your have your explanation which is debatable but definitely acceptable.

4. Good news is, I took screenshots too (made an unboxing video with screen content too). Overclocking was not enabled. I did not mind - because you shipped the system with an old BIOS 1003, (1201 came out 1/11 well before system assembly) so I had to redo all BIOS settings anyway and you had a promo for the overclocking (CPU + GPU) for $0 - no money lost.

picture - got blocked from including links or pictures:
/forums/uploads/17913/Capture.JPG

5. The system design (air intake through the radiator) blows the hot air from CPU and GPU through the system. There is almost no flow through HDDs the back since the case has a vent opening right above the drives where most of the air goes out before passing over the drives. Under relatively good system load, the drives go up to 48 and 52C. With the new arrangement, they go up to 43 and 46. Still high, but I feel more comfortable with (Drive Spec is -40-55C).

picture - got blocked from including links or pictures:
/forums/uploads/17913/Capture_hdd.JPG

6. Thank you. I think refunding the board is the appropriate way to handle this after finding it incompatible with the system. I don't think there is a need for the Corsair Commander you're offering as well, the mainboard with FanXpert4 is perfectly fine handling all the FANs and LEDs.

7. I'm glad he apologized to you.


With that said, I think there is no more to add. Thanks for everyone in the forum who liked the review - I appreciate your feedback. I'm looking forward to a lot of fun with the system.

Edited by jakman76 - 18 Mar 2019 at 4:16pm