sexy computers that weren't built by either me or luke okay that's a little
unusual but that's what's going to be happening today welcome to my video on
the digital storm bolt 3 a pre-built gaming rig with an attitude as big as
its price tag but not as big as the price tag of the machine luke will be
showing off soon massage that like
button below if you want to see him bench a computer worth nearly ten
thousand dollars
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to learn more about it let's get this out of the way a
custom-built machine would be cheaper and it's pretty easy to do these days
but by the same token changing your own oil
is just plain not that difficult and yet some folks don't want to get their hands
dirty so we'll be checking out the digital storm bolt 3 from the
perspective of someone who wants a new pc and clean hands now i've been
intrigued by the tiny yet powerful bolt series ever since i first laid eyes on
one at a party at ces 2013 but it's
taken until the third generation for me to finally get my hands on one for
review and a lot has changed for one
thing the bolt has put on weight at about the same rate as a washed up celeb
in the last three years it isn't really that small anymore at just shy of 20
liters the bolt 3 is 30 percent larger than the silverstone raven rv z01 and
nearly three times the volume of those custom steam machine prototypes that
valve was sending out during the steamos beta but maybe big can still be sexy
right let's take a tour and see what digital storm has done to justify their
tiny beauty's additional heft starting at the front is a customized face plate
that includes an RGB backlit digital storm logo configurable through software
a slimline optical drive a dvd writer for us and front jacks including audio
and two usb 3.0 ports on the right side
is the side panel i guess with a curiously positioned air intake and not
much else to see other than perhaps a better look at the black brushed
aluminum finish that's as irresistible to the eye as it is to your fingerprints
on the top is the first hint that there's a serious business pc inside
with a grill that covers most of it and two Corsair static pressure series fans
acting as intakes through a filter that combined with positive internal air
pressure should do a solid job of keeping most of the dust out of this pc
which is good because this puppy is a work of art whose beauty i would never
want to see tarnished by the effects of age and the left side panel with its
full sized acrylic window is where we see all of that magic happen perhaps now
is a good time to reveal the specs of this bad boy then there's a custom
liquid cooled and modestly overclocked core i7 4790k processor on an ASUS z97i
deluxe motherboard with 16 gigs of dual channel ddr3 memory a 250 gig samsung
850 evo SSD a one terabyte seagate hard
drive a 600 watt 80 plus gold rated modular silverstone power supply a top
of the line gtx 980 ti on a pci express riser cable that enables its showcase
style mounting at the bottom of the machine and RGB led strips running
through the interior allowing you to change not only that front logo but also
the lighting of the entire inside but aside from listing specs what can we
say about this hardware well this mix means all of the latest features 2x2 ac
wi-fi enough usb 3 ports to choke a small mammal diy grade flexibility if
you ever want to get into overclocking or throw some significant upgrades at
the system with support for standard motherboards and curiously even quadruple width graphics cards
means that i guess my summary is this if the point of buying a pre-built machine
is to have someone knowledgeable pick everything out for you so you know
you're getting the good stuff without
putting any time or thought into it then mission freaking accomplished i've seen
a lot of expensive computers with proprietary motherboards questionable
power supplies and generic memory in them digital storm has avoided all of
these pitfalls even going as far as to provide custom yellow dyed coolant for
the top of the line swiftek dual 120 millimeter all-in-one water cooler and
matching yellow paracord style power cable extensions that give the computer
a surprisingly not off-the-shelf look
for something that wasn't built by the owner which doesn't
mean it wasn't hand built by someone i actually used to work at a retailer
where i was in charge of the custom-built computer department and i
think you guys would probably be surprised how much work and care goes
into building something like this when it's not being done on an assembly line
in china somewhere and it really shows in the back you can see the custom
controller that digital storm uses for led management temperature monitoring
and fan control and you can also see that they've got tidy cabling down to a
freaking science here in spite of the fact that behind the motherboard tray it
will have literally no impact on performance it's just taking pride in
your work which i guess leads us pretty well into performance doesn't it
the big drawback of compact gaming machines in the past has been their
disappointing thermal with throttling being a major issue and or acoustic
performance with even the bolt one with its 1u power supply getting a little bit
on the louder side when under load and i guess that's where the bolt 3 put on
some well-deserved extra pounds almost all the cooling in this machine with the
exception of the power supply and graphics card is handled by 120
millimeter fans and thanks to the very spacious bottom graphics card mounting
area our gtx 980 ti not only avoided
thermal throttling but turboed up nicely and stayed quiet even under load which
leads us to the conclusion i can do math just as well as you spreadsheet warriors
who are crunching the costs of the components of this system in excel right
now so i'll save you the trouble with some promos they have running the
bolt 3 costs a little over 500 more than
buying all of the exact same components down to you know the included but
thankfully not installed mcafee software the os was actually very clean wire
extensions and water dye and all that stuff and then putting them together
yourself and the performance wouldn't be different so then what do you get for
your money the machine is extraordinarily well packaged which
combined with digital storms qa means that the likelihood of dealing with an
rma or an incompatible component is minuscule you get more than just a
pretty face with the components they picked out for me being pretty much
impossible to criticize from a quality or reliability perspective and you get
to just click buy instead of tinkering with it yourself for the
let's be honest eight would be conservative probably closer to 15 to 20
hours that it would take for a relatively inexperienced builder to
piece together all the parts themselves online and then put it together
considering how pcmr showpiece worthy it
looks and while as a hot rodder myself reviewing a stock car off the lot isn't
exactly my wheelhouse if i try to think of it
less in terms of what i could build for the same amount and more in terms of the
other things in my life that i know how to do but pay more to have someone else
do for me like eating out at a restaurant or the things that i just
don't feel like learning how to do like car maintenance
it just doesn't seem nearly as outlandish anymore and i'd feel a heck
of a lot better recommending this to a non-diy oriented friend than most of the
pre-built pcs i've ever seen so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked
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apple watch that should tell you all you need to know about the apple watch
watch the video anyway there's more to say