Digital Storm as a company has been around since 2001. It has become fairly well known in the community for building solid computer systems, primarily targeted at the enthusiast, though they also have a workstation and server product line-up as well. The company has historically taken a design approach to their products that incorporates only top shelf, standard components in an effort to offer the consumer a high quality product that is both easily serviceable and upgradeable down the road. That said, even with top shelf components, quality systems with a reasonable value and price point are not always equal to just the sum of their parts. We’ll step you through the salient features, performance, and value of Digital Storm’s 950si custom Core i7 gaming system in the pages ahead and let you be the judge of what this boutique builder, with a history for quality products, has to offer.
But we got the more standard issued being given off in the digital star internet site, with Our test system was powered by an Intel Core i7 920 processor (2.66GHz), overclocked to 3.79GHz and was built upon EVGA’s X58 3X SLI motherboard that we evaluated for you here recently. Also installed was 6GB of Corsair DDR3 system memory set to 1600MHz with latency settings of 9,9,9,24. For graphics, the system was powered by a single GeForce GTX 285 card though dual and 3-way SLI configurations are also available. Finally, we had a single 1.5TB Seagate Baracuda 7200.11 hard drive installed in our system though smaller and faster 10K RPM drives are available as well as larger RAID setups.
To be honest, we’re not all that fond of that extra side panel fan and would have preferred the cleaner look of the case in its standard form. In conjunction with the two large 130mm fans in this chassis, the added side fan isn’t required in our opinion, but this is definitely an issue of personal preference more than anything. Additional ventilation is available to the drive cage area of the system via the standard screened vent ports on either side of the chassis and air is pulled in with one of the internal 130mm fans.
Finally, in the right hand shot above, you can see the various IO ports for the EVGA motherboard in the system. Also, if you look closely, you’ll noticed there is a fan speed controller knob sticking out of one of the card slot plates on the back of the chassis. This knob allowed us to dial up or down the fan speed of the CPU cooler. On that note, this design build from Digital Storm isn’t something we would recommend for the enthusiast that is concerned about acoustics. In fact, due to the CoolerMaster V8 cooler employed on the system’s heavily overclocked Core i7 chip, along with the extra Zalman fan on the side panel of the case, the system was a bit louder than we expected it to be (at its factory-shipped fan speed settings), especially given the rather quiet demeanor of the Silverstone TJ-09 case itself.
In addition, if you’re a serious gamer and want every bit of performance from the components you’ve selected, you’re likely going to have to make compromises in noise levels, unless you’re not shy of stepping into the realm of liquid cooling. As a result, though we weren’t fond of that extra side panel fan cut into the case, nor the audible whine of the CoolerMaster V8 cooler at its max setting, it’s sort of comes with the territory for an overclocked gaming rig like this – though we think a few tweaks in the configuration menu may have offered a little less racket and just about the same bang for our buck. All told, we’re more than confident in this type of gaming system product as delivered by Digital Storm. You can’t help but admire a well built killer gaming rig and the Digital Storm 950Si fits that bill to a tee.
