Krypton: My Review

Hey all -

So a few day ago I posted how I had just ordered and was awaiting my new krypton and yesterday it arrived!

My specs are:

i7 4810mq cpu
8 Gigs 1600 MHZ Memory
17.3" screen
GTX 870m 6gb gpu/graphics card
120 gb ssd
750 gb (7200 RPM) hdd
Intel a/c dual band wifi
windows 8.1


Let me preface this all by saying I had a crumby old Dell Inspiron - core 2 duo that could barely run Minecraft, well it's been almost 10 years and after a bit of saving and lots of research, I decided to go with Digital Storm. I'm glad I did.

When the box arrived I was impressed by it's size and the packaging - opening it confirmed what I had heard. The guys at DS did a stellar job of keeping my laptop protected in transit (the sleeve thing is very cool).





As you can tell my photography skills are a little lacking, but that box on top of the laptop contained a very nice DS binder complete with driver discs, warranty info, some tech support docs, and of course the certificate of ownership.



The first thing I noticed was the power supply - that brick is massive! Lol. While this might bother some people, I don't mind. I didn't buy this for it's portability. I got it as a desktop replacement (mainly because I like to game from bed - yes, I'm that lazy). If a beefier p/s means faster gaming - I'm all for it.



Removing the laptop was easy enough and it looked gorgeous. All the shiny you see is even more protective plastic to keep it looking nice.



After removing the plastic layer, I turned this baby on. The keys, and "feel" of it felt good and although I'd heard about the benefits of SSD drives - I never understood the sheer wow of them till now. This thing is lightning fast when it boots or runs apps.



Here's one more pic of the side ports - usb 2/3, headphone jack, audio, (on the other side) blu-ray/dvd/cdrw, what you might expect.



Everything worked fine except that my larger drive wasn't showing up in windows - I called tech support and got a call back in 5 mins. (Yet another reason I chose DS - they actually care).

Mike was able to diagnose the problem quickly and within a couple of minutes the second drive showed up and worked perfectly.

So I can say from first hand experience - the tech support is awesome.

Some small things I noticed were there was no fancy ds logo on the laptop case - like I've see in other builds here - but honestly I don't mind.

And for some reason some online diagnostic websites read my gpu as only having 3gb - however when I run the direct x diagnostic on my computer it reads as having 10gb of memory! Lol - I'm not sure how it all breaks down or why - but hey, it's run my first two installed games seamlessly, (Lord of the rings online, Team Fortress 2). I'll be putting it through the paces with more intensive games soon.

So far I'm a very happy customer and I'd tell anyone who's looking to get a killer gaming laptop at an affordable price - you can't go wrong with Digital Storm.

I'll update my review in a few months - to give you all a perspective on longevity - till then cheers!

Very nice and we love pictures.  

Enjoy.

Hey all,

It's been a few days and I mentioned I would let you know how the krypton runs higher end games.

The long and short of it: Amazingly!

So I bought Crysis & Crysis:Warhead on Steam, mainly because I just wanted to run something I knew would use my gpu's resources.

I can report that it ran both games on the max: "Very High" settings at a constant 40 FPS. Only once or twice (for barely a nanosecond) did I notice any slow down (usually during a very effects intense sequence) but like I said it almost never happened - the game ran really smoothly!

I also mentioned earlier - not understanding why my gpu diagnostics kept telling me different amounts of memory on my graphics card.

Well to recap I bought the 870m 6gb gtx card - after doing a few more geforce diagnostics I realized the card has been over clocked to run at 8gb! (though some diagnostics even read 10gb of usable gpu memory)

I can only surmise DS did this for me, and that is really, really awesome of them - I haven't noticed any heat problems at all by the way and the fans are virtually silent.

I love this laptop, I'm not getting much sleep because Im always playing on it - but yeah, if you have any doubts - don't worry this thing can handle your games - no problem.

Hi bprat,

Thanks for letting me know - it is very confusing. I tried gpu-z like u suggested - yeah it does read at 6gb. Still very happy with it though. :)

Oh look, it's another happy Krypton owner here on the forums...  Thanks to reviews like these, I already know which laptop I'm getting when the time comes!

Originally posted by Roykirk Originally posted by Snaike ...Thanks to reviews like these, I already know which laptop I'm getting when the time comes!... So that time is coming quite soon now...right?

Nice review and pics!!

Congrats and enjoy as a pro!!!   

That's unfortunate about the mSATA.  I thought that it was just a stocking issue, but I haven't seen it available since a few days after I ordered mine in April, so not sure what's up.  It's a definite plus as it leaves you with room for two more hard drives instead of one.

Let us know your thoughts on the Krypton once you get yours.  More reviews will definitely help others with their decision-making as I'm sure we each have slightly different needs and it's good for others to look at reviews that match their own needs.