Digital Storm Custom PC's

[dlodoski]

....Overall I could not have done it better myself for less money. If you're looking for anything from a budget gaming machine to a quad SLI duel Xenon workstation, give these guys a look.

I got that impression from looking through their website. A decent Vanquish machine would probably be fine for me.

Small time video guys like me have a lot to thank gaming for. The competitive technology environment for gaming is very suitable for video editing. Hehe

[Fred588]

I like the idea of a website through which one can select a variety of features and especially one where the total price gets updated every time you make a change. I thought that was what made Dell successful (for a while) and I was very disappointed when they pretty much stopped doing that or stripped the options to almost nothing.

On the other hand there are certain things I need to have on a machine to be used for video editing. For example, each of my editing machines has eight (or more) USB ports, most of them USB 3. Actually I need at least 14 USB connections for all purposes as I keep 10 external drives on the system, so still have to use several 7 to 1 external hubs. It would be really nice, in my view, to have that many actually built in, and with maybe six of them in the front, on the top, or on the monitors instead of at the back.

For the future another feature I think I could use would be the ability to run more than two displays, although my editing room looks like some sort of command center already with four computers running seven displays. And a functioning time vortex manipulator would be cool. (lol)

[Mynock]

The new GTX 10 Series cards from Nvidia are a huge jump in tech/performance. I'm not sure of the lower end models but GTX 1070's and GTX 1080's both have (3) Display Ports and (1) HDMI, so even my relatively low-end model can run four monitors.

If you want more USB ports I'm sure they do something for you, considering all the other crazy custom stuff I see on their Youtube Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/user/digitalstormpc/videos

[Fred588]

The new GTX 10 Series cards from Nvidia are a huge jump in tech/performance. I'm not sure of the lower end models but GTX 1070's and GTX 1080's both have (3) Display Ports and (1) HDMI, so even my relatively low-end model can run four monitors.

If you want more USB ports I'm sure they do something for you, considering all the other crazy custom stuff I see on their Youtube Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/user/digitalstormpc/videos

I should have added, those displays all being 4k or better. My top machine now has a INVIDIA Quadro k2200, which can drive a pair of displays. I have found that many of the vendors offering display drivers seem to leave out info on what display sizes are supported.

[Mynock]

Looks like you can run (3) 4k monitors in a 11,520 x 2160 resolution, but frame rates are terrible with only a single card. You'd need triple or even quad SLI to game at that resolution.

[Fred588]

Looks like you can run (3) 4k monitors in a 11,520 x 2160 resolution, but frame rates are terrible with only a single card. You'd need triple or even quad SLI to game at that resolution.

I am far from certain but I am guessing a lot might depend on how much of the total display is changing. I have noticed that sometimes when I am editing, if I have a video displaying on just one screen, or part of one screen everything runs very well but if I try to have a two video windows open, or two windows that are both partly devoted to video then things start to bog down. I am referring to video windows within my editing software, which usually involves things being rendered on the fly.

[Mynock]

Think I'm going to take advantage of Cyber Monday and pick up a better monitor myself. I'm getting a stuttering effect during gameplay that almost looks like low framerate, but I think it's actually cramming too many frames onto my 60hz monitor.
Don't think 4k is in the budget right now but I am going to spring for something with 144hz and 1ms response time. Would rather have smoothe gameplay at 1080p than a higher resolution (ok, I want both, but I don't have $700 to blow on a monitor lol).

[dlodoski]

Thanks to Mynock, I think I will be set for a while. It's going to take me a few days to be able to start playing with it though.

I went with a Slade 2 (which I don't think was available when this thread started). It's supposed to be relatively quiet.

I did some upgrades, most notably a Intel Core i9-7900X (10-Core) processor, 32 gigs of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 1080 8GB (Performance Edition) graphics card. I will use my existing monitors for now.

This is actually long overdue for me. I realized how bad things had gotten when I found myself using remote desktop to do rendering on one of my machines in the Philippines. Anyways, this ought to speed things up for me.

[Mynock]

8 Months in, the one thing that impresses me is the stability. Vanquish 7 should win the JD Power & Associates award for least amount of fucks given. It just works, and looks good doing it, no matter if you're watching Youtube or playing an FPS with the graphics settings on Ultimate. It has crashed exactly ONE time (hard reboot to desktop mid-game), but that might have been a driver issue.

I've seen GPU temps in the high 70s (C) but that's in a house with no AC during a hot spell, while gaming for several hours at a time. Even under heavy load the noise level of the fans is not noticeable over the fans I have in the windows.

General opinion is same as before, couldn't have done better for the money.