The Dream Machine arrives

From the date of ordering to the system being shipped took 17 business days.  As I read through the forum posts while my system was being built, I do believe that to manage expectations DigitalStorm should quote delivery times of 15-20 business days.  This is not at all unreasonable for a custom built PC, where all the components are chosen individually, over-clocking is on the menu, and the sytem is extensively tested.  A quick call to Alex yesterday sorted the missing drive blank-off grid issue; he is sending one in the mail, plus a second one as a spare.  He said he would also throw in a couple of software utilities for my inconvenience.  Now that’s what I call service!

At Kelly’s recommendation, even though I ordered an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 2.66GHz (1333MHz FSB), I upgraded to 1600 MHz memory since he felt they could get the FSB speed up during the over-clock.  They achieved 3.00GHz and 1714MHz for the CPU and FSB respectively.  For those of you wondering why there is water cooling capable OCZ memory when I have no water cooling, DigitalStorm offered to upgrade the 4GB DDR3 Corsair 1600MHz Dominator DHX (7,7,7,20) I ordered to 4GB DDR3 OCZ Flex XLC 1600MHz (6,6,6,18) at no additional cost since the Corsair memory was temporarily unavailable.  The full system spec can be found at http://www.digitalstormonline.com/comploadsaved.asp?id=148838.  I have supplemented this with an additional 150GByte WD Raptor (will put Vista 64 bit on this), and 2 x 750GB WD Caviar disks for data.

I use my PC for 2 main applications, flight simulator and video editing.  FSX goes from being a painful 20 fps with mediocre slider settings on my old PC, to a 50-60 fps experience with all sliders and options maxed out.  I have yet to install the video editing software to see how much render times drop, somehow I do not think I am going to be disappointed.

Why DigitalStorm?  Although I have built several PCs myself I have never ventured into the world of over-clocking.  I liked the ability to choose individual components as I have done in the past for my self-builds, and to decide exactly what I wanted to be over-clocked.  That together with the customer reviews and satisfaction ratings, and there is just no competition.  Many thanks DigitalStorm, keep up the good work.