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Digital Storm 950Si

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:00:00 -0500

This sleek black rig brings quad SLI and Core i7 goodness

If you doubt the existence of mirror universes that are almost the same except for minor changes, Digital Storm’s 950Si rig could make a believer out of you.

The 950Si is that similar to Maingear’s Kick Ass Award–winning ePhex that we reviewed in August, albeit with some slight differences. For instance, the ePhex’s all-white enclosure was a Silverstone TJ10, while the 950Si uses a nearly all-black TJ09.

In graphics, the 950Si features dual EVGA GeForce GTX 295 cards while Maingear opted for three GeForce GTX 285 cards. Both rigs sport Intel’s top proc—the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition at 4GHz—but get there differently. Digital Storm does a straight multiplier overclock of 31x133MHz base clock to get to 4.1GHz. Maingear preferred a 21x multiplier with a 160MHz base clock to get to 4GHz.

Even in SSDs there’s a similar-but-different feel. Maingear tapped two Intel 80GB X-25M drives; Digital Storm opted for two of Corsair’s 64GB M64 SSDs.

The 950Si is surprisingly quiet for the amount of hardware packed inside.

Our performance tests yielded a few surprises. The water-cooled 4.1GHz Core i7 runs circles, squares, and heptagons around our now-ancient Core 2 Quad zero-point. But good against a Core 2 is one thing; good against another Core i7, that’s something else.

When compared with Maingear’s ePhex, the 950Si was able to grab two benchmark crowns by nudging the ePhex aside in the multithread-lovin’ Main Concept Reference and ProShow Producer tests. But then things got a little odd. Despite its slightly higher clocks (4.1GHz vs. 4GHz), the 950Si actually fell to the ePhex in Photoshop CS3 and Premiere Pro CS3 by about eight percent and 10 percent, respectively. We’re not sure why, but perhaps it’s the result of the higher QPI from the bclock overclock versus the straight multiplier overclock. Or perhaps it’s the RAM. Although we have not known this to impact performance, the ePhex packed 12GB of Kingston DDR3/1600 while the 950Si loads up with a lean 6GB of Mushkin DDR/1600.

The clash of the titans came in gaming, where it was the 950Si’s quad SLI (two dual-GPU GTX 295 cards) against the ePhex’s tri SLI (three GTX 285s). The winner? Tri SLI by a decision. While the ePhex hammered out a stunning 70fps in Crysis, the 950Si’s 65fps is nothing to sneeze at, either. Why wouldn’t four GPUs—albeit clocked lower—beat three? Crysis doesn’t really stress more than three GPUs, so the fourth is there for a ride. There’s also some overhead to having four GPUs, slightly more than there is even with three.

The real oddity was in Unreal Tournament 3.

Instead of the 200fps that we expected, the 950Si spit out a puzzling 115fps. That’s way off the mark for this much hardware. What’s the problem? We’re not sure, but as a sanity check, we also ran 3DMark Vantage’s GPU test on the “extreme” setting and found the 950Si on par with the ePhex, so we’re not too worried about the UT3 performance. However, one final test using Far Cry 2 on Ultra High settings showed the 950Si running about 27 percent slower than the ePhex. Mind you, that still amounts to an excellent 87fps at 1920x1200, but the Maingear rig was clearly the faster of the two.

One area where the 950Si clearly wins, though, is in price. At nearly $2,000 less than the ePhex, the 950Si is more than 30 percent cheaper. But is that really what a buyer who steps into this class of hardware is looking for? In today’s economy, perhaps. Still, the 950Si is a respectable machine, it’s just not the fastest thing out there.

Digital Storm Benchmark Crusher

Benson Hong — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:50:46 -0600

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 Twister Ultra 4

Gordon Mah Ung — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 17:38:33 -0500

Maximum PC’s mandate has always been that performance rules all else. But recently we’ve been harping about nothing but stability. It’s not that we previously ignored this area, but lately we’ve been inundated with rigs that have been overclocked so aggressively they make our standard benchmarks blow up within minutes. Because of this, our new message has been stability, stability, stability.

Apparently, Digital Storm got our memo. The company shipped us its current speed king: Intel’s 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme Quad-Core QX6800 clocked up to a mere 3.46GHz running a pair of 8800 GTX cards and 2GB of Corsair Dominator RAM cranked up to 1,066MHz, all on an EVGA 680i SLI board. From a hardware perspective, this is nothing new; this setup is similar to what we’ve been seeing since January.

Normally, this would make for one big yawner of a story, but the Twister hits the right notes for us. First up: performance. Although it doesn’t rip the speed crown from the wickedly fast Falcon Northwest Mach V that we reviewed in June, it does manage to top the higher-clocked Falcon in a few runs. Surprisingly, in Adobe Photoshop CS2, the Twister just squeezes by the Mach V with a score of 142 seconds versus 149. The difference is negligible due to the margin of error, but the Falcon Mach V has a 267MHz clock advantage, so count this as a win for the Twister. We’re also marking the Nero H.264 encode test as a win for the Twister. Although its score in this test is about a minute slower than the Mach V’s, the Twister is running a slower CPU and is 100 percent stable.

The Twister is top gun in our FEAR test, with a score that’s just a tad faster than that of the similarly equipped ABS PC that we reviewed in February. So, in performance the Twister holds three Lab records and really doesn’t have to apologize for performance elsewhere.

In build quality, we were interested to see if the company paid attention to items the techs missed last time, such as whether all the front USB ports were connected and operating. Fortunately, there were no such bone-headed errors. We do have to point out, however, that connecting two DVD burners to the same PATA port will kill your performance if you try to burn to multiple drives at once.

But is the Twister stable? Yes. We flew through all of our normal benchmarks with no issues—well, except for SYSmark2004 SE, which refused to run. We can’t blame the Twister for this though, since SYSmark2004 SE hasn’t worked in months. We did run the new SYSmark2007 Preview with no problems, and the Twister achieved an overall score of 219. We also subjected the Twister to our new quad-core torture test, Prime 95, with only one issue. On one of several overnight runs, the app reported a data anomaly, but it didn’t crash or lock up. On the Mach V, the Prime 95 test caused a spontaneous reboot within minutes. Our other multithreading tests also went without a hitch. So we have more faith in this rig’s long-term stability than in the stability of any machine we’ve tested since the Polywell Poly I680SLI-QX (March 2007), which sported a stock-clocked quad core.

That leaves the Twister in a great spot. It holds three Lab records and is much cheaper than the Mach V—and it’s stable.

Digital Storm Twister Ultra 4

Gordon Mah Ung — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:35:55 -0500

When we looked at Digital Storm’s Twister Ultra 4, we thought of it as Every Dude’s Machine. You know, it’s just how the average person would build it. There’s no fancy-pants paint or custom wiring. But there is a gratuitous use of drive bay doodads like an LED screen, removable hard drive adapter, and Creative Labs Live drive. The upshot? The already-macho-looking Cooler Master CM Stacker case looks even more, well, macho. Yup, this rig will make you hitch up your pants, snort, and say, “Oh yeah, this is just how I’d build it—none of that sissy stuff!”

That’s not to say the machine’s fit and finish isn’t impressive. The water-cooling on the CPU and dual GeForce 7900 GTX cards is top-of-the-line. Because 350-plus watts of heat must be wicked out of the case, Digital Storm thought a single small radiator wasn’t
sufficient for the dual videocard/CPU combination. So Digital Storm cleverly put one radiator on the case’s rear and somehow magically plumbed a second radiator to vent out the top of the case. It’s a neat job except for one thing: Not all of the hoses are secured with hose clamps, so they could pop off at any moment. They’re on fairly tight, but unsecured hoses around $6,500 worth of hardware makes us nn-nnn-nervous.

We’re also annoyed that the fans attached to the two radiators run super-loud. We’d expect a dual-radiator setup to run at a quieter speed. In the hard drive category, the Twister Ultra includes four 150GB Raptors in RAID 0. A single Seagate 750GB Barracuda gives you enough space to back up all the data on the RAID array, and sits in an easy-to-remove drive rack. The overclocked 7900 GTX cards let you run any game on the market with aplomb. But the Twister Ultra 4’s processor is a weakness. Yesterday, the Athlon 64 FX-62 was hot, and today it’s simply not. Digital Storm couldn’t secure an Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU by our deadline. (Note that Falcon Northwest, reviewed on page 78, was faced with the same deadline but managed to secure the powerful Intel chip.)

In the end, an FX-62—even one running at 3GHz—is like bringing a Tribble to a Klingon house party. You know it’s going to end up as garnish on an order of stewed gagh. The Twister Ultra ran so slow compared with Falcon’s Mach 4 that we weren’t even sure it was plugged into the wall.

The good news is that the Twister Ultra 4 compares well to our Athlon 64 FX-60 zeropoint system, chalking up scores between 28 and 14 percent faster than the 2.6GHz FX-60. The bad news is that Digital Storm reached a little far with this rig’s GPUs. The machine came with its cards running at a 683MHz core and 876MHz DDR RAM but could not complete Quake 4 until we cranked the cards down halfway to the stock clocks. Even at 667/850, however, there were signs of corruption, and successive runs of Quake 4 got progressively slower. After three runs, we were down to 85fps. Not good, especially considering the water-cooling on these cards.

Oh, by the way, none of the machine’s four front-mounted USB ports were plugged in. We’ve seen Digital Storm machines in the past and they’ve been competent. Not this time. Up against the heavily overclocked Core 2 Extreme in the Falcon Northwest machine, and given its puny Athlon 64 and two glitchy, overclocked GPUs, this review can only end in tears.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

+ BILL PAXTON: Trick water-cooling and a RAID could have made the Twister a mean machine.

- BILL SHATNER: Noisy acoustics, overly overclocked videocards, and last-month's CPU.

VERDICT: 5

URL: www.digitalstormonline.com