Digital Storm Ode Level 3 user reviews

Pros EXCEPTIONAL customer experience from start to finish. They have a great web site design, not to mention product design. High quality system components. Excellent gaming performance.

Cons None that I can think of. The USB sticking out the back isn't a problem to me since it gets lost in the natural wire clutter after all other connections have been made.

Summary I honestly couldn't be happier about this purchasing decision. I had been contemplating building a new gaming system for Star Wars Old Republic, so did an extensive amount of research on pre-builds versus self builds. Fortunately for me Digital Storms name and specifically the ODE 3 kept coming up.

After doing some price comparison of the system components, I confirmed that one could save a few hundred by piecing a similar system together themselves. However the fact that the system comes working right out of the box & has a 3 year warranty if something does go wrong, was more than enough for me to justify the added cost.

Once I did decide to purchase, the experience could not have been better. Digital Storm literally updates you as the order progresses through every phase (build, test, ship). I know that this doesn't sound like anything great, but it is pretty reassuring to see the extensive quality assurance checks the machine goes through before getting shipped. It was also nice to know I wasn't just getting some pre-built machine that had been sitting on a shelf for who knows how long.

Receiving the product was another wonderful experience. It is extremely well packaged which prevented the internal components from moving about in shipment. Also, I love the fact that it comes with a nice "Digital Storm" user manual binder which includes an actual signed quality certificate.

I haven't had to use the technical support as of yet and perhaps may never need to do so. That said, I do take comfort knowing if/when that happens, I'll be able to call a skilled American to talk me through it.

All in all, this system is worth every penny based on performance alone. Add in the purchasing/customer experience and you'll see why Digital Storm has developed so many brand loyal customers. Now they have one more!

Pros + overclocked i7 2600K to 4.6 ghz w/Corsair H80 liquid cooler.
+ Asus P8P67 Sabertooth mobo (5 yr Asus warranty)
+ EVGA GTX 570 video cards in SLI
+ Corsair T600 roomy case w/ nice cable management + 200 mm fans
+ Corsair 120 gig fast SSD boot drive

Cons - Corsair GS series 800 W PSU is cert for SLI and gets the job done on a budget, but would probably have to upgrade PSU if you decide to switch to a higher level video card like SLI GTX 580's later on.

Summary Bought a DS Ode 3 for my 24 yr old son in Dec 2011. Best deal out there under $2400 for top graphics performance using all top quality name brand components you can study or price on newegg.com or toms hardware reviews. Very pleased with Digital Storms purchase process where you are kept well informed via e-mail of every step completed in the build process...and they have great blogs for questions they respond to promptly. Performed flawlessly out of the box. He games using one 24" monitor at 1920 X 1080 resolution, and is playing Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Portal 2, StarCraft 2, MineCraft, SecondLife, FarCry 2 all at maximum settings while running cool and quiet. PC has run practically non-stop for a week now and no problems. Excellent build quality - will buy from Digital Storm again in future.

Pros Outdated review

Cons Outdated review

Summary CNET needs to highlight the DATE of such reviews. Such reviews have a limited usefulness in this fast moving field of gaming computers. To highlight this review NINE MONTHS after the review was published -- without emphasizing the aged nature of the review -- is a procedural problem that needs -- you guessed it -- a review!

Pros Powerful enough for most games.

Cons Price, sort of.

Summary The complaint about the USB 3.0 plug going into the rear I/O of the motherboard is Digital Storm's fault in the choice of the case, not in their wiring decisions. The Corsair 600T has always been made with an external USB 3.0 plug that goes into the back of the motherboard, instead of an internal USB 3.0 header. Digital Storm's wiring seems perfectly fine. Also the case is wide because the it was made for builders to have excellent cable routing behind the motherboard tray, and also for the support of a fairly large 240mm radiator on the top used for liquid cooling if needed.

In performance, having an i7-2600K and two GTX 570's in SLI is fast enough for just about every game out there if you're only using a single monitor. However, higher resolutions, such as going way over 1920x1080 and/or using multiple monitors, requires more graphics memory. Most GTX 570's only have 1280MB of memory which is really only enough for up to reoslutions of 1920x1080 or maybe 1920x1200 when gaming (note: video card memory does NOT add up in a multiple video card setup, both for CrossfireX and SLI). The lower memory in a high end card like the GTX 570 really hurts itself when trying to push the graphics processor to its full potential in extremely high resolutions and also with multiple monitors.

This brings me to my point of price. Relative to other boutique vendors, the performance is very good. However, it doesn't make much sense to throw so much money at a vendor to build a gaming pc for you. With a $2000 budget, the performance of this PC can be surpassed significantly if the person is willing to do some research on parts to build his or her own computer. An AMD Radeon 7970--the fastest single graphics processing unit as of Q1 2012, and even boasts many other features such as PCI Express 3.0 support with the upcoming Ivy Bridge intel processors--CrossfireX dual gpu setup can be achieved with this budget. Also, having a pre-overclocked 2600k does not mean very much. The i7-2600k has an unlocked multiplier (indicated by the "k") so it is absurdly easy to overclock on your own, and getting over 4.5ghz is typical. Another thing to note is that there is very little difference between the $100 cheaper i5-2500k and the i7-2600k in gaming performance since most games currently do not take advantage of hyperthreading from an i7 cpu.

If you have a lot of money to spend on a gaming computer and you do not feel like researching much on computers, then this is one of the best values out there. If you are willing to spend some time researching computer components, then a computer of the same performance can be easily built by yourself for less than $2000.