Finally after 1 month....My reivew

I received my PC a little over a month ago and I believe I have spent enough time with my new DS rig to finally give my review of it. First off, I would like to thank all the experts on this forum for the excellent technicial advice I have been given, especially !ender and Justin.Kerr. They were very helpful with assisting me in fine-tuning the OC on my rig. For those that are wondering, I will get to that in a minute.

 

I ordered my new rig from DS on June 9th, made some adjustments on the 10th. Process couldn't have gone smoother. Received confirmation email  on June 11th. I then sat back and waited. From the 15th to the 21st, I received emails from Stage 2 thru Stage 7, which only made the anticipation that much harder to bear.  But then as I was checking my emails on the 21st throughout the day after getting the Stage 7 email, I recieve the email that my PC has shipped via FedEx. Like most of you, I was constantly checking FedEx's website daily to find out the status. It took 7 days for the PC to arrive, which considering it was coming from CA via ground and I'm in NJ, it was pretty fast.

 

I promptly opened the GIGANTIC box and the first thing I noticed was how well everything was packaged. The PC was safe and sound. The foam packing inside the case held the cooler and vid cards in place. Props to DS for a first rate job on the packaging. I hooked everything up, crossed my fingers and powered it up. Lights lit up, fans started spinning and Windows 7 booted up in no time. Sweet. Configured Windows 7 to my preferences. Everything was working as it should.

 

Now this is where some minor problems showed up. Per all the posts on this forum, I downloaded RealTemps and Prime95. RealTemps were showing the idle temps in the high 40's. A little strange but I wasn't too worried. I ran Prime95 and literally within 10 seconds, the temps jumped past 90C with no hint of leveling off. This really worried me. I called DS support and spoke to a couple of reps who told me that those temps were a bit high. During their tests, the highest the temps got to was in the mid 80s. They suggested the cooler may have shifted during shipment. Hmmm...I suppose that could happen but I didn't really want to go thru the process of reseating the cooler since it would have involved unplugging everything and taking out the mobo. Not something I was looking forward to. I decided to jump on the forum seeking some advice. A few members suggested that perhaps my OC was a little too aggressive and that I should try lowering the settings or fine-tuning them. So with their help, I was able to lower the voltage without sacrificing the CPU speed which was still at 3.8GHz. Voltage was lowered to 1.20. I ran Prime95 for 12+ hours and it was stable. At this point I was happy with the config and left it as is. Temps were idle in the high 30s to low 40s. Load temps never went passed 75 and held steady in the low 70s which was acceptable to me.

 

That was about 2 1/2 weeks ago. Since then, I have installed Bad Company 2, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins. All i can say is WOW. All games are run on the highest settings at 1920 x 1200 res. The PC doesn't even break a sweat. Games are simply breathtaking. Everything just runs so smooth. Haven't had one stability issue since and I could not be happier with my choice with Digital Storm.

 

Here are my specs:

 

System Configuration:
Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Cooler Master HAF 932
Exterior Finish: - Not Available
Trim Accents: - Not Available
Processor: Intel Core i7 960 3.2GHz (Quad Core)
Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D Premium SLI (Intel X58 Chipset) (Features USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s)
System Memory: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm Certified Performance Series  (Highly Recommended) (Hand Tested)
Power Supply: 1000W Corsair (Dual/Triple/Quad SLI Compatible)
Expansion Bay: - Not Available
Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (64GB Solid State (By: Corsair Nova Series) (Model: CSSD-V64GB2-BRKT)
Set 1 Raid Options: Configure HDD Set 1 to a Raid 0 Config - Stripe Performance (Requires Two HDDs)
Hard Drive Set 2: Multimedia\Data: 1x (64GB Solid State (By: Corsair Nova Series) (Model: CSSD-V64GB2-BRKT)
Hard Drive Set 3: Backup\Misc.: - No Thanks
Optical Drive 1: DVD±R/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 24x / CD-Writer 48x)
Optical Drive 2: - No Thanks
Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections)
Video Card(s): 2x CrossFire Dual HOT SELLER (ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB)
Add-on Card: - No Thanks
Sound Card: Integrated Motherboard Audio
Extreme Cooling: AIR: Stage 1: Cooler Master V8 High Performance Cooler (Compatible With ONLY i7 Processors)
H20 Tube Color: - Not Applicable, I do not have a FrostChill or Sub-Zero LCS Cooling System Selected
Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans
Internal Lighting: Internal Chassis Lighting System (Blue)
Enhancements: - Not Available
Chassis Mods: - Not Available
Noise Reduction: - Not Available
CPU Boost: FREE: Stage 1: Overclock the processor between 3.3GHz to 3.9GHz (Cooling Upgrade Recommended)
- Hide quoted text -
Graphics Boost: - Not Available
Memory Boost: - Not Available
OS Boost: - Not Available
Windows OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-Bit Edition)
Restore Kit: Digital Storm Specialized Recovery System (DVD Image Based)
Virus Protection: - Not Available
Office: - Not Available
Benchmarking: - Not Available
Pre-Install Game: - Not Available
Display: - No Thanks
Surge Shield: - No Thanks
Speakers: - No Thanks
Keyboard: - No Thanks
Mouse: - No Thanks
External Storage: - No Thanks
Exclusive T-Shirt: FREE: Digital Storm T-Shirt - Black (Large)
Priority Build: - No Thanks, Ship Within 5-15 Business Days After Order Is Successfully Processed
Warranty: 3 Year Limited Warranty with Life-Time Customer Support (3 Year Labor & 1 Year Parts)

 

 

 

 

And of course, here are some pcis:

 

 

Sorry for the long winded post.