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?

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Digital Storm Benchmark Crusher