Digital Storm Velox Z270 Gaming Desktop Review

With Intel's Kaby Lake processors finally striking the market, Digital Strom loved to present us a look at one of its new Z270 diversion PCs. The Digital Perforate Velox is an Intel Set i7-7700K and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080-equipped, duty rouged powerhouse with RGB LED fans and lights, and it's not for the wispy of suspicion or the low in cash. At $4,737, the Velox is one of the most expensive desktops we've had in our lab, and we're near to gain out if the performance and posturing matches the value, or if it's all fitting hype and colorful lights.

Exterior

The Digital Attack Velox has been redesigned, with umpteen discernible improvements over the old type of the chassis, which featured an acrylic windowed commission that also had an air intake above it. Nonetheless, the new custom-designed, forged-steel rotund lift case's sect indorse is all pane, giving you a discerning survey of the region element with its RGB LED illumination slip and pillowcase fans. The nigh surface window sports an air intake that lines up with the side of the motherboard ILM, and the lowermost of the someone is elevated with a smooth metric dispersion; it was comfortably counterbalanced and prefab squirming the device noticeably easier than whatsoever of our opposite new reviewed machines, despite not having any handles and the added GPU.

 As with all right-sided window cases, the components are side behind compared to traditional (and many current) cases with the components viewed from the sinistral surface. That solo makes the Velox single, and its Phoebus Journalist customised blusher job (for an added toll of $150) pushes the tasteful even boost with a smoothen two-tone visage. The sleek (yet not work) finishing is indicatory of good acquisition and assist, and it stands out in a sea of general mortal left-sided cases.
The previous writing of the Velox had a rather bulky front-panel I/O, but the new chassis low it to two USB 3.0 ports, an SD carte order, frequence in/out jackstones, and a USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type-C opening resourceful of 5 Gb/s accumulation rates. What's more, the slots are all hidden behind the white-painted panel, combining seamlessly into the showcase. The exclusive front-panel gimmick that stands out against the covered (besides the Digital Storm symbolization) is the slim-tray DVD-RW travel, but even the illegal optical 

The nurture commission is all grim, eliminate for the I/O and GPU ports. The motherboard features quartet USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports, in improver to two USB 3.1 ports (a Type-C and Type-A), both resourceful of aggregation transplant speeds up to 10 Gb/s. Onboard video production options from the motherboard are specific to an HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 programme, but who needs those when you bed two graphics game low the punk? The GPUs each feature an HDMI 2.0 and DVI-D opening, as compartment as iii DisplayPort 1.2 interfaces, and unnecessary to say you've got plenteousness of options for connecting quintuple displays.

The surface panels are cut (suppose poster committee), feathery (again, notice fare), and unhurried to disappear, and they can be likened to a span of fissiparous pants (don't inquire as to how I eff that) - they originate off with a obtuse upward tug. There are no hinges, rews, edges, or rails to choky, with the primary body fair receptacles for the panels' posts, which hold into set with a tamed tap or a young pushing erstwhile they are rough up.

Interior

Once inner, we're greeted with an discouraging, yet easily convenient set of components that would change most enthusiasts squee tears of joy. A freshly minted Intel Core i7-7700K is overclocked to an efficacious 5.0GHz using a 100MHz assumption time and an all-core multiplier of 50. Inquisitively, most every different BIOS environs is on Motorcar, with the exclusion of the XMP hardware saliency and an adaptive emf background for the CPU that gets the droppings up to travel with 1.36V of knowledge.

We were incredulous roughly the steadiness of the company's Travelling 3 ($99) overclocking accommodation (peculiarly because of the quality of the BIOS settings), but the processor remained pitching solid during our emphasize tests (Bloom 95 for several hours), with only irregular jumps in emf (unintegrated and squab spikes up to 1.39V) to stabilize the scheme. We're accustomed to perception vendors accomplish extremity overclocks using stable voltages, but Digital Storm's use of the motherboard's built-in features to find lasting time frequencies and emf rule speaks to the company's shrewdness with the component it offers.

The CPU is seated on an Asus Maximus IX Heron Z270 motherboard, a feature-rich ROG-branded offering with twofold M.2 PCIe x4 slots, six SATA 6Gbps ports, and individual gamer-centric technologies. The oftenness knucklebones (anterior and face panels) are fed with the company's SupremeFX S1220 codec, and customizable LED lighting adorns the PCH and raise I/O covers.

The motherboard's two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots from the CPU athlete metal-reinforced connectors to domiciliate strong graphics game, and that's likely a worthwhile boast for the Velox's GPU setup, which consists of two EVGA Geforce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X graphics cards in SLI (over with an LED-lit EVGA high-bandwidth bridge). The cards picture action (Founder's Edition) timepiece rates with EVGA's ACX 3.0 mechanism, but Digital Disturbance included its Graphics Increase operate (for $45), which purportedly overclocks the GPU to its peak stabilised timekeeper rate. For this particular GPU falsification, that extent seems to be an more 150Mhz on the nucleus timekeeper (sharing the GPUs a 1,757MHz supposal quantify, 1,883 increase) and 50MHz on the faculty timepi

A 512GB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD is {hidden underneath the effectual graphics cards, and a 3TB 7,200 RPM Toshiba HDD gives you plenteousness of tot store space for just almost anything a gamer could position at it. The storage DIMM slots are all busy with a 32GB (4 x 8GB) kit of Digital Storm's DDR4-3000Mhz (ADATA modules) with CAS timings of 16-16-16-36, which offers locomote and content above par for the cipher someone.

We didn't judge too more from the left broadside of the framing when we removed the body, but we were delighted to not exclusive see tasteful and cleanly-run cables and much places to organize storage drives, but also a 120mm signaling fan for the undersurface of the motherboard's ILM and two of the Thermaltake Riing person hubs, which cause a total of six Riing RGB LED individual fans.

Triad of the Riing RGB LED fans are 140mm and mounted behindhand the frontmost commission (running vertically) as intakes; two 120mm Riing fans are positioned at the top of the human, with other towards the worst, above the motherboard's rear I/O body. A Pirate H115i 280mm winking curl CPU cooler is mounted behind the advanced commission fans, and it sports two Corsair-branded 140mm fans on the privileged choose of the radiator, pulling the air into the occurrence. An RGB LED light sketch lines the turn and paw edges of the cover, and it comes basic

The rig is powered by an 80+ Gold certified EVGA Supernova 850 G2, which features a unary 12V wader with 70.8A of humour. The full modular PSU makes it unchaste for Digital Rainfall to thread the cables cleanly throughout the chassis and unite to the individually-braided architect cables bespoken to the CPU, ATX knowledge, and GPU inputs. This esthetical added contributes to $69 of the number vizor, but it adds to the two-tone strain that this Velox analyze consume embraces. The remaining modular PSU (and SATA) cables are also expertly tucked forth.

Software And Accessories

Digital Storm didn't headache the Velox with what one could count "bloatware," but it did pose Corsair Connectedness to try and lizard the CPU cell, in element to MSI Afterburner to do the similar for the graphics game, which the organisation overclocked erstwhile the works settings (for an additional $45).

    msi afterburner-velox

    buccaneer linkage home graphs

    msi afterburner-velox

    corsair instruction residence graphs

We didn't see these programs undischarged in the Vanquish 5 Digital Attack newly sent us for examination, but then again, that special try didn't possess a fancy i-series Buccaneer wet icebox or GPU overclocking services performed on it, and it seems Digital Perforate instrument ship your scheme with only the software it needs to win its desirable action boundary.

Specifications

Digital Storm Velox Z270

• Processor

  Intel Core i7-7700K @5.0GHz

• Motherboard

  Asus Maximus IX Hero Z270 ATX

• Memory

  32GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3000

• Graphics

  EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 ACX 3.0 8GB GDDR5X

• Storage

  512GB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD - 3TB 7,200RPM HDD

• Optical Drive

  DVD-RW

• Networking

  Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet

• Interface

  USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type-C (Front) - USB 3.1 (Gen 2) Type-C (Rear) - USB 3.1 (Gen 2) Type-A (Rear) - USB 3.0 x4 (Rear) - USB 3.0 x2 (Front) - USB 2.0 x4 (Rear) - SD Card Reader

• Video Output

  DisplayPort 1.2 x6 (GPUs) - HDMI 2.0 x2 (GPUs) - DVI-D x2 (GPUs) - DisplayPort 1.2 (Motherboard) - HDMI 1.4 (Motherboard)

• Power Supply

  EVGA Supernova 850 G2 850W

• Case

  Velox Full Tower

• Cooling

  280mm Corsair H115i Closed-Loop CPU Liquid Cooler - 140mm Corsair Fan (Radiator) x2 - 140mm Thermaltake Riing RGB LED Fan x3 - 120mm Thermaltake Riing RGB LED Fan x3

• Operating System

  Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

• Extras

  Stage 3 CPU Overclock (+ $99) - Graphics Boost (+ $45) - Custom Paint: Apollo White (+ $149) - Exotic Cable Management: White (+ $69) - Thermaltake Riing RGB LED Case Fans (+ $119)

• Dimensions

  19.5 x 9.25 x 22.2 inches