Digital Storm Black Ops Assassin Review

In 2002, Digital Storm made their entrance into the world of gaming PCs, starting out in a garage. Since their humble beginnings they have moved into a large facility and have grown into a main contender against companies like Alienware, CyberPower PC, Velocity Micro, iBUYPOWER and Falcon Northwest. They claim to focus on performance, support and value and for the most part that indeed seems to be the case. There are always areas that any company can improve in, but Digital Storm's gaming PCs have earned an excellent reputation because of this focus.

Recently, we reviewed the Digital Storm Black Ops Assassin, which is one of their most impressive gaming computers. The Black Ops Assassin was a great addition to our reviews of gaming PCs and received our TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award for its exceptional performance and quality hardware. It incorporates high-end components, maximum gaming speed and attractive design elements all at a price you can easily justify spending.

Video/Audio:

As of late, all the rage in gaming PCs seems to be dual graphics cards. The Digital Storm Black Ops Assassin uses dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580s. Although technically the ATI Radeon HD 5970 is a superior card, it seems that NVIDIA has captivated the hearts of many with their new Fermi technology, PhysX and 3D Vision. NVIDIA obviously invested a lot of time and research into the adaptation of DirectX 11 since they are the current leaders in tessellation.

The tessellation capabilities of the GTX 580 cards are just one of the major perks of the card. The issue of this card not being the best for raw power can easily be solved by adding a second card. For that reason it is our belief that this will be the hardcore standard among gaming PCs until the next best thing comes along. From what we've seen from gaming PC companies like Digital Storm, they must think the same thing since their big rigs all come with this dual NVIDIA card standard. There are always options that allow you to customize that, but this seems to be what is mainly advertised.

The audio is just regular 7.1 surround sound that is integrated in like on almost all modern motherboards, and that is about all you need for getting started. Competitive gamers will sometimes get a sound card. Due to the superior sound quality, most sound cards allow you to hear subtleties like foot steps behind you. Also, most offer better 3D sound so you can hear and know where you're enemy is shooting you from before you even turn to face them. However, a sound card is not included in this particular gaming PC.

Processor:

The Digital Storm Black Ops Assassin uses an Intel Core i7-950 processor. This was a bit surprising considering that everything else on this computer is pretty much top of the line among gaming PCs. The i7-950 isn't a bad processor by any means and it will most definitely cut down on the price of your gaming PC. Despite that, we almost expected more, considering the rest of the rig. Six-core processors like the i7 980X or at least the 970 would complement the rest of this computer much better. The benchmark tests run on this system show that the 950 just doesn’t quite stack up to the other top-quality hardware used in this system. However, as with almost any gaming PC, if you really want a higher-end processor it only takes a few seconds – and a small investment – to make the change.

Memory/Storage:

The Digital Storm Black Ops Assassin gaming computer comes with six gigabytes of RAM. This particular set of triple-channel DDR3 RAM was clocked at 1600MHz without any overclocking, which is perfect for anyone looking for fast RAM that will not only get the job done but will keep most people happy for years to come. If you wish to double the memory, 12GB is also available and will be more than enough for any gaming PC on the market today.

As for storage space, this gaming PC comes with an 80GB SSD (solid-state drive) for the operating system and a few other programs that you want to load a little faster. HDDs (hard-disk drives) can't provide quite as fast of load times as SSDs, but they are significantly less expensive. Now, 80GB isn't enough to hold everything else you want to store on your gaming computer, so it also comes with a 1TB HDD. This style of using two different storage drives has become standard for any quality gaming system.

Additional Features:

The motherboard that this gaming PC comes with is the ASUS Sabertooth X58. This is one of the newest boards on the market and has received good reviews from most users. It's capable of handling about anything you can throw at it, including overclocking. Like most motherboards, it can handle up to 24GB, which is way more than any gamer will need for quite some time.

This ASUS board has multiple PCIe and PCI expansion slots. There are six serial ATA ports for your hard drives and they support all the main RAID setups like RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and 5. There is a PS2 input for your keyboard if that's your style. If not, there are plenty of USB ports that should cover all your peripheral needs.

Support/Warranty:

This is where Digital Storm gaming PCs took a hit. They have plenty of information and FAQs for their customers to read over on their website. There is nice community section so that you can interact with other customers. They have email and phone support available to work through any problems you may be experiencing, and there is even a three-year warranty covering your gaming PC. What it lacks that others have is live chat, which isn't terribly important, and driver downloads, which is important. They build the machine but you'll have to look elsewhere for driver downloads for upgrades or reinstalls.

Summary:

The Digital Storm Black Ops Assassin is one of the best gaming PCs. We were impressed with the extremely high quality of the majority of hardware used in this system, though we would like to have seen a higher-end processor to match the other components. The lack of driver downloads on their website is a surprising oversight, but the stellar customer support and incredible performance of this system more than compensate for that shortcoming."

Source :
http://computers.toptenreviews.com/gaming/digital-storm/digital-storm-black-ops-assassin-review.html