You want power? You got it. The beastly Benchmark Crusher from Digital Storm provides stellar performance and a workout all in one package. A few bench presses with this machine will whip you into tip-top shape in no time. Inside this hefty package are enough high-end performance parts to make any hardcore gamer wet his pants.

This rig's tri-SLI setup is massive. We're surprised there's room for the Asus Xonar D2X.

The machine’s black and white color scheme is eye-catching. Digital Storm coats the interior and exterior of a SilverStone TJ09 with a high-gloss automotive finish, resulting in a smooth and scratch-resistant surface. While the paint job isn’t flawless—a few noticeable nicks appear here and there—the three GeForce GTX 280s located inside definitely make up for it. Yes, that’s right, three

With three GeForce GTX 280s in tri-SLI running soundly in unison, this rig sailed through every one of our benchmarks. This is easily one of the fastest systems we’ve ever tested. To complement the system’s speed, Digital Storm configured two 300GB Western Digital Velociraptors in RAID 0 alongside a 1TB Western Digital Caviar for all your storing pleasure.

The heart and soul of the rig, a Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor, resides under a Liquid Chilled FrostBite water-cooling kit. As if the QX9770 wasn’t fast enough at stock speeds, Digital Storm cranked up the voltage and raised the CPU speed to 4.2GHz, 200MHz more than the Core 2 in the CyberPower Gamer Ultimate SLI Quad we reviewed in July. The Benchmark Crusher’s 200MHz speed advantage facilitated noticeable—albeit not substantial—performance gains in both application and gaming benchmarks. In Crysis, the Benchmark Crusher’s scores were similar to the very fast CyberPower rig’s, and its UT3 numbers were slightly faster. Why no massive frame-rate increase? Our standard resolution test of 1920x1200 isn’t enough to push three 280 GTX cards. These cards beg for 30-inch panels, so we obliged.

Unfortunately, during our monitor switch, the Crusher’s motherboard crapped out. Digital Storm quickly replaced the board, and we were up and running at 2560x1600.

At that resolution, even the mighty tri-SLI configuration took a hit, going from 54fps to 20fps in Crysis. What can we say except that the game is a GPU tormenter of immense proportions. The tri-SLI, however, suffered no problems with UT3’s less graphically intense engine, which was not impacted by moving from 1920x1200 to 2560x1600. Not at all.

From its outstanding performance to its eye-catching paint job, this rig impressed us. But with its bank-draining price tag ($9,255) and marginal performance gains over the CyberPower rig, is it worth crushing your wallet to get one?

Digital Storm Benchmark Crusher

WALL-E

Incredibly fast; nice Storm Trooper aesthetic.

SONNY

This rig is monstrously heavy, noisy, and expensive.

www.digitalstormonline.com

Specifications

	Digital Storm Benchmark Crusher
Processor	Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.2GHz@4.2GHz)
Motherboard	XFX nForce 790i SLI Ultra
RAM	4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3/1333 @ 2000MHz
Videocard	Three EVGA GeForce GTX 280 in SLI
Soundcard	Asus Xonar D2X PCI-E
Storage	Two WD Velociraptor 300GB in RAID 0, one WD Caviar 1TB
Optical	Lite-On Blu-ray DH4B1S, Lite-On DH 20A4H DVD burner
Case/PSU	Digital Storm 950Si/Corsair HX 1000W

Vista 64-Bit Benchmarks

	Zero Point	iBuyPower Gamer Paladin 990
Premiere Pro CS3	1,260 sec	557 sec
Photoshop CS3	150 sec	73 sec
ProShow	1,415 sec	667 sec
MainConcept	1,872 sec	1,168 sec
Crysis	26 fps	54 fps
Unreal Tournament 3	83 fps	136 fps

Best scores bolded. Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard, two EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX cards in SLI mode, a Western Digital 150GB Raptor and 500GB Caviar hard drives, an LG GGC-H20L optical drive, a Sound Blaster X-Fi soundcard, a PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad PSU, and Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit.