Digital Storm Core i7-965

Digital Storm - Website and Ordering Impressions

Digital Storm's website immediately comes up in a web search, as do their forums. Their current Reseller Rating is 9.61/10 for the last six months and 9.04 lifetime, which is very good. Besides the raw scores, the customer feedback and reviews from buyers are very useful to read before making a purchase. As a testament to their support, many reviewers who had slight problems on arrival still gave them glowing reviews, which is unusual. Digital Storm actively responded to even minor complaints, which we like to see. Reading through their forums also revealed quite a few happy customers and very few complaints. So far, so good.

The website layout is clean and fairly streamlined. The main page shows links to Desktops, Laptops, the forums, Upgrades (installation cost is free for parts purchased through their website), and a "Guide" page that offers advice and recommendations.

The four desktop enclosures currently offered are shown across the top of that page (but are not clickable, which is a little deceiving), and five platforms are offered that can be customized with any one of the four cases.

Their most inexpensive systems start at $1200 (Phenom II and DDR2, minus $50 "Instant Rebate") and scale up well above $6000. They have a shipping calculator available prior to ordering, which we really like to see, but it requires a full address and threw an error when we attempted to put in a zip code only. Ground shipping is currently free, and other shipping rates, while high, were not outrageous, with almost zero increase for multiple systems (this may be an error in the calculator, or it's a large price break for dedicated customers ;)). We did notice that it's possible to add configurations to your cart with missing items (e.g. no chassis selected) and it doesn't alert the customer about the error. Presumably, they would catch this after purchase and follow up with a call or email, but the engine could easily prevent this.