DigitalStorm Enix: Phenomenal Cosmic Power, Itty Bitty Living Space
by Dustin Sklavos on May 12, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- SilverStone
- DigitalStorm
DigitalStorm's Take
I got in touch with DigitalStorm to discuss my concerns about the processor voltage, and after a bit of back and forth and discussion with Anand, we felt it would be best to include a statement from them:
Dear Dustin Sklavos,
Thank you for taking the time to recently review our Enix gaming system. We greatly appreciate your thorough attention to detail and are very interested in the voltage concern that you discovered while stressing the CPU.
After further testing at our facility, we were able to lower the offset voltage slightly while maintaining stability, but we quickly hit a stability wall while running our stress-test suite of LinX (AVX binaries with SP1) and Prime95. The Asus P8P67-M Pro does not have fine value adjustments for CPU Vcore, load line calibration, PLL overvoltage, phase control, and duty control. Without the option to enter exact values on these adjustments, a higher CPU offset voltage was needed in order to successfully pass our stress-test suite.
From our experience, the constant load voltage range of 1.45V to 1.48V from a Prime95 CPU burn-in test on the Enix at 4.7Ghz is an ideal range for the long term stability and performance of a system that is overclocked to almost 5GHz. In the past, when we’ve tried to use the absolute bare voltage necessary to achieve stability, a processor overclocked to 4.7GHz+ may become unstable after a month or two. Taking that into consideration, we want to ensure our customers receive a long-term stable system. The Enix is also configured to only supply that much voltage under the most extreme stress conditions. Under normal web browsing or gaming, a system will never experience the same stress conditions.
In addition, to ensure all of our current Enix customers are protected, we are automatically extending warranty coverage for any CPU related issues for up to 10 years from the date of purchase.
I am glad to hear that our Enix passed all of your tests with flying colors and that there were no issues with the stability of the system. I appreciate your feedback as it is always helpful in improving the customer experience at Digital Storm.
Regards,
Rajeev Kuruppu
Product Development
And there you have it. While I still have my reservations, at the very least DigitalStorm is willing to stand behind the overclocks on their Enix line and I'm not sure how much more we can really ask. Overclocking enthusiasts should be well aware of the long-term stability issues that frequently crop up, and as they point out they felt a bit more voltage would be best over the long haul. If you're comfortable doing the tweaking on your own, that's fine, but for a vendor that doesn't want to see flaky system returns after a few months we understand their approach.
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randinspace - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
I think his point was that they'll just give you what they value it at when it dies, which a lot of companies do in other industries now that products and parts don't stay on the market indefinitely.Although even if they decided on a flat $300 or so they should be covered by inflation, the profit they made off the rest of the unit as a whole, insurance, tax write-offs, etc.
fingerbob69 - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
I don't know if US law is different to UK law in this regard but if the cpu was to die during the 10 yr guarantee period, in say year 9, then DigitalStorm would be obliged to replace it with an equivalent chip ...or better.As the customer, I would interpret that to be Intel's latest/last mid range release. So for example, if I had had a duff i7-750 in a DigitalStorm unit, with that chip having gone eol some years past, I would today be expecting a 2600k as replacement...which of course means a mobo change also as the two are integral to each other.
Belard - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
If you go back 5 years ago... the TOP Dog CPU was the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800, which was about $500 USD.Today, a $60 AMD X2 bottom end CPU is just as fast and its a 1 year old CPU. So it takes about 3~4 years for a $500~900 CPU to be replaced by a $100 or less bottom end model.
Is there a typo, don't recall an i7-750. An i5-750, yes.
Common sense, they'd have to replace the board and maybe the memory too if an O/C CPU dies. I'm sure they'll be updating the BIOS with better controls ASAP still. If in 5 years, they need to replace the CPU, as long as its faster - even at $60, it'll be fair. With 16GB costing about $200 today, it should be about $20 in 10 years :)
LOL... you'll be OLD and saying "I remember the says when we had 2 core CPUs! Imagine that! Can't imagine how I got anything down with 3Ghz Quads"
Would warranty of the CPU cover the labor to replace it and the system board?
qwertymac93 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Hmm, dual 590s? trade those for dual 6950's and upgrade the SSD to a 240GB vertex 3, then we are talkin'.qwertymac93 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Meant 580, Not 590. Man, not having an edit feature sucks...MeSh1 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
No peek inside?arthur449 - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
In Silverstone's FT03 manual, they strongly recommend removing the angled 120mm fan shroud under the video cards and mounting a pair of 80mm fans in its place when using two cards in Crossfire/SLI.Azfar - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Err..i'm a bit confused looking at the optical drive bay. the conventional drive won't work at this slot type....right ?JarredWalton - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
Correct; you need a slot-loading slim laptop drive, which adds to the overall cost.Zap - Thursday, May 12, 2011 - link
It isn't too bad a cost for a combo drive. Try pricing out (or even finding these days) a slim slot load BD burner! Back when the Panasonic one was available, they were running close to $600 for just the bare drive!I did a quick price search and the Optiarc used in this DigitalStorm rig runs about $150. Expensive? Yes, however not exorbitantly so.