Review: Digital Storm Bolt II

Page 1 of 3Introduction and design

If I had to choose one word to describe the Digital Storm Bolt II, I'd pick "deceptive." I mean that, of course, in the most endearing way possible.

While it doesn't look like it can play some of this year's games at max settings – and sure doesn't sound like it either – I promise you, this gaming PC is an absolute monster. And don't let its size fool you. The Bolt II packs a liquid-cooled Intel Core i7 CPU and Nvidia GeForce GTX 780Ti that collaborate to produce a textbook high-end gaming experience.

This would-be Steam Machine is intended to sit beneath the TV, but why pigeonhole into to the living room? This gaming PC easily rivals some of the best full-size boutique machines around. The Bolt II could make for a commanding gaming rig in your bedroom or study and, if you're the social type, will garner respect from your rivals at a local LAN.

But as a trade-off, the Bolt II will cost you a cool $2,550 (about £1,580, AU$2,786) as it was configured for this review. This also won't necessarily be the easiest box to upgrade down the road.

The phrase "good things come in small packages" is given a new definition here. The Bolt II is unrealistically slim, measuring in at 16.4 x 4.4 x 14.1 inches (H x W x D). For a visual comparison, that's about 2.5x the size of the PS4 and 1.5x bigger than the Xbox One. While its size is uncommon, it's the aesthetic appeal of the custom chassis that's the real showstopper.

Available in either solid black or burnished gold paint, every available panel – save for the windowed plastic panel on its right – is perforated with holes for maximum airflow. Small rubber feet adorn the underside when the Bolt II is standing up, or on its left side on the chance you'd like it to lay flat. The left set is removeable, if you decide that your Bolt II belongs in an entertainment center.

Open up the case by twisting two thumbscrews on its rear panel, and you'll find a masterwork of cable management and Tetris-like component placement. First and foremost is the 240mm custom liquid cooling system that takes up most of the front half of the case. Cooling lines run from the system itself to the GPU, stopping off at the CPU before heading back to the start of the loop. This system takes up almost all of the rig's interior.

That sounds problematic, but after four hours of processor heavy VR gaming on the Oculus Rift, temperatures barely reached the 95-degree mark. How can I be so sure? The Digital Storm Hydrolux Control Center, a program exclusive to Digital Storm's liquid-cooled systems, told me so.

The only disadvantage to the system, which I mentioned in my Digital Storm Vanquish II review, is that the company doesn't offer much room to change out components. If you remember, the Vanquish II sported a Asus H81M micro-ATX motherboard. The Bolt II trades out the larger H81M for a "9 Series" Z97I-Plus mini-ITX board.

The mini-ITX form factor facilitates such a tiny case, but it's not without drawbacks. A miniscule board keeps the Bolt II from fitting more than one of each component: one GPU, one SSD, one optical drive, one mechanical hard drive, and two sticks of DDR3 memory. Upgrading here means swapping one out for another, never adding to what's already there.

Page 1 of 3Introduction and design

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Digital Storm Krypton

Pros Excellent performance. Packs Nvidia's latest mobile graphics card. Generous port selection. High-quality sound with amplification for headphones.

Cons FireWire 800 port protrudes slightly. Generic design with plastic construction. Bottom Line The Digital Storm Krypton is a midrange gaming laptop that leverages the latest Nvidia and Intel hardware to deliver top-notch performance.

By Brian Westover

The Digital Storm Krypton ($2,297, as tested) poses a common question for mobile gamers. What's more important in a gaming laptop, the total package or pure performance? While we grapple with this quandry every time we review a new gaming machine, the answer here is clear. The Krypton focuses on high performance, thanks to an overclocked Intel Core i7-4810MQ processor and a new Nvidia GeForce GTX 880M graphics card. Other systems may be prettier, or offer more storage and entertainment options, but as far as pure gaming power, the Krypton delivers. It's enough to make the Digital Storm Krypton our Editors' Choice for midrange gaming laptops.

Design
Measuring 1.81 by 16.3 by 11.3 inches (HWD) and weighing 9.1 pounds, the Krypton is a big laptop that packs some potent hardware. The design itself is a bit generic, though. The Clevo chassis looks just like those we've seen from other manufacturers, and the black plastic with a matte finish isn't particularly exciting.

The 17.3-inch display has a 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, providing full HD support. With an anti-glare finish, there are no issues with reflectivity, though the blacks aren't quite as dark or rich as you might see on other displays. The accompanying audio—pumped out of two Onkyo speakers set just below the display and an integrated subwoofer on the underside of the chassis—is quite good, thanks to a Soundblaster X-Fi 3 sound card. The Krypton also adds amplification to the headphone output, which will help headset wearers to hear every little effect, from the crunch of footsteps to the staccato beat of enemy fire.

The keyboard offers plenty of room
for typing and gaming, and it features square keys—adjacent to one another instead of spaced out, like on a chiclet-style keyboard—with blue LED backlighting. The touchpad just below has a glowing insignia across its surface, which rotates through several colors. The mouse features separate right and left buttons, with a fingerprint reader nestled between them for easy, secure logins.

Features
On the sides and rear of the Krypton, you'll find all manner of ports and connectors. On the right is a tray-loading Blu-ray player/DVD burner, along with several audio connections (for headphones, a mic, and external speakers), and a USB 2.0 port. On the left are two USB 3.0 ports, a combination USB/eSATA port, a Gigabit LAN port, a multiformat card reader (SD/MMC/MS), and a FireWire 800 port. The FireWire port is a head scratcher, not only because it's a bit out of date, but also because the port on our review unit protrudes slightly, just begging to get snagged on something.

The rear of the chassis has a 4-pin power connector, an HDMI port, a DisplayPort, and a mini-DisplayPort. For wireless connectivity, there's Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

The Krypton has both 250GB solid-state drive (SSD) for booting and a larger 750GB, 7,200rpm hard drive. The laptop is refreshingly free of any bloatware. All you'll find when you first boot up are Windows 8.1 (64-bit), drivers and utilities for sound, and Nvidia GeForce Experience, which serves as the control center for the Nvidia graphics card. Recently added to GeForce Experience are features like ShadowPlay, which lets you record in-game video, Game Stream (for streaming your games to an Nvidia Shield), and Battery Boost, which offers dramatically improved gaming performance when the system is on battery power. Digital Storm backs up the Krypton with a three-year warranty on labor, with one-year of part replacement and lifetime tech support.

Performance
With a quad-core Intel Core i7-4810MQ (overclocked from 2.8GHz up to 3.8GHz) and 16GB of memory, the Krypton packs a punch when it comes to heavy processing. It scored 6, 375 points in PCMark 7, and cranked through our multimedia tests at a swift pace, finishing Handbrake in 33 seconds and Photoshop in 3 minutes 14 seconds. While none of these scores top the charts, they are competitive with gaming laptops that cost up to $1,000 more.

The Krypton is outfitted with a new Nvidia GeForce GTX 880M graphics card, the same GPU seen in the Alienware 17 (2014). In 3DMark 11, the Krypton scored 11,810 points at Entry settings, and 2,943 points at Extreme settings. In gaming tests, with the resolution set to full HD and the detail settings high, it cranked through Aliens vs. Predator at 46 frames per second (fps) and scored 49fps in Heaven. This system will play almost any game you throw at it, but for smoother gameplay (up in the 60fps range), it may be best back off of the eye candy a bit. For top-of-the-line graphics support, you might want to opt for a dual-GPU system, like the Origin EON17-SLX (2014); even with the newest Nvidia card, the Krypton couldn't top the graphics might of two GPUs working in tandem.

It's not built for portability, but the Krypton lasted a decent 4 hours 7 minutes on our battery rundown test. While that amount of time won't get you very far—and gaming will shorten it considerably—it lasted a good bit longer than the 3:19 of the MSI GT70 2PC Dominator, and was hours ahead of the paltry 1:13 of the Origin EON17-SLX (2014).

Conclusion
With its potent processing and graphics performance, the Digital Storm Krypton offers a lot for its midrange price, even competing against high-end systems. While paying more will get you things like improved design and construction, or a larger hard drive, these characteristics are secondary for a lot of gamers. What you really want for your hard-earned money is gaming power, and the Digital Storm Krypton delivers. Compared with our last winner in this category, the MSI GT70 2PC Dominator, the Krypton offers superior performance in several areas—graphics and gaming, battery life, and productivity—for nearly the same price. 

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