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?
Incredibly fast; nice Storm Trooper aesthetic.
This rig is monstrously heavy, noisy, and expensive.
| 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 |
| 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 |
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dstevens
November 13, 2008 at 12:47pm
a company finally does everything right and it costs 10 thousand dollars to own one. lmfao wtf pwnt
so much for the concept of fast cheap computing lol.
nice to see that high end system manufacturers are lacing thier machines with all the best parts for us junkies lol :)
seems like a nice machine all around... the half images of it kinda make me want to see more lol...
a good full image of the machine wouldnt hurt tho ;)
c8503
November 13, 2008 at 9:27am
Seriosly guys... you praise the exterior but give us no graphics? Please don't be punishing online users! You're better than that!!!
s3th
November 13, 2008 at 12:06am
I wish I was rich :[, I save up for a 2000 dollar computer and it kicks ass , then you got this thats almost as much a car or a very cheap apartment, it always makes me look at my computer and question its ability. I think whoever buys this should definately look into philanthropism lol
horzo
November 12, 2008 at 6:00pm
Using a game that is known to punish hardware as a benchmark is sort of the point.
b_boy_69_00
November 12, 2008 at 6:05pm
It doesn't punish them because it's this absolute marvel of futuristic software, it punishes them because it was poorly written and poorly executed code. MaxPC wouldn't use Photoshop to benchmark if it was full of memory leaks, so why should they use a game with poorly written code? And if they found Photoshop to be full of memory leaks and Adobe updated it, wouldn't they use the update version that had been fixed of all of its problems?
BaggerX
November 13, 2008 at 11:17am
Poorly written and innefficient code is par for the course for many games. It doesn't necessarily make them bad games, just poorly written, so they can still offer great graphics and fun gameplay. You can't really just substitute one game for another. It makes sense to use the one that stresses the hardware the most, as long as it is a game that people would actually be playing on these big rigs. If there's an update for such a game, I'm sure they would use that, because that's what everyone would be running. Of course then you've broken your comparison to earlier systems and you'd have to re-run the updated benchmark on those in order to have a valid comparison. That's why they have to have a zero-point system to test against.
soccer1105
November 12, 2008 at 6:10pm
I agree. I really have nothing to add to the argument, but I do agree.
b_boy_69_00
November 12, 2008 at 5:57pm
I would like to start a petition right now to have Crysis removed from every hardware testers benchmark list. For the simple fact that although it was a great looking game, they main fact that it punishes computers is the poorly written code. If a Crysis game must be used then Warhead should be used. The graphics are better and it runs on half the machine that it took Crysis to run. My modest set-up would bearly run Crysis, but runs Warhead just fine, which shows how flawed Crysis was originally. Some may not agree with the removal of Crysis, but if its not removed then any benchmark that is run with it should also be run with Warhead also. i just think there are better games out there to use that are made with such flawed code.
xs0u1x
November 13, 2008 at 1:47am
when a $2000+ system is running the game at 54fps........something is wrong there, and you dont have to be a genius to figure that out.
Stephenh1984
November 12, 2008 at 6:26pm
i still don't think it is that poorly written, i really do think it looks that good, and not only that the physics and large maps also hurt the performance, and besides the only thing i look at and probably most people look at is crysis(i could always be wrong), so i agree with you that they should benchmark them both
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