The Digital Storm Black Ops Enix Edition ($3,627 direct) is a tall, thin gaming desktop with a clean chic metallic style that even Apple would envy. But this PC is more than just a pretty faceplate: Its performance scores were off the charts, but that's to be expected when the internal components include two Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards and a quad-core Intel second-generation (a.k.a. Sandy Bridge) Core i7 processor. Its price tag indicates that it belongs in the high-end category of gaming desktops. Question is, is it hard-core enough to stand up with the big dogs? All signs point to yes.
Design and Features
The Black Ops Enix has a simple design: black matte metal all around, with the top and left side plastic grate in a bright red. It measures 19 by 9 by 11 inches (HWD) and has no ports showing except for a thin slit in the front that acts as the Blu-ray drive. The lack of an eject button here gave me pause, though; sure, you can go into
"Computer," right-click on the BD-ROM Drive E:, and select "Eject" to get your disc out, but if a disc gets stuck, then you're in trouble. Digital Storm also placed the power plug underneath the desktop , looping it underneath an arch between one of the four legs it stands on, so the Black Ops Enix can keep a clean design all around. Some may find this inconvenient, but I'm more than willing to take the extra step of tilting the desktop on its side for the sake of a more organized-looking system.
Design and Features
The Black Ops Enix has a simple design: black matte metal all around, with the top and left side plastic grate in a bright red. It measures 19 by 9 by 11 inches (HWD) and has no ports showing except for a thin slit in the front that acts as the Blu-ray drive. The lack of an eject button here gave me pause, though; sure, you can go into
"Computer," right-click on the BD-ROM Drive E:, and select "Eject" to get your disc out, but if a disc gets stuck, then you're in trouble. Digital Storm also placed the power plug underneath the desktop , looping it underneath an arch between one of the four legs it stands on, so the Black Ops Enix can keep a clean design all around. Some may find this inconvenient, but I'm more than willing to take the extra step of tilting the desktop on its side for the sake of a more organized-looking system.
There are two USB 3.0 ports, audio jack, and mic jack on top of the desktop that sit next to the power button and a small button that turns off the display. If you pull out the plastic grate on top of the desktop you'll find a cavalcade of connectivity options: 4 DVI-I ports, 6 USB 2.0 ports, two PS/2 ports (for old mice and keyboards), a slew of audio jacks, two mini-HDMI ports, eSATA port, and FireWire 400. Unfortunately, my unit didn't come bundled with any cables, but Digital Storm assures me that extra cables are included.
Getting into the desktop will require patience and tools, though, I can't understand why you would want to go into the system, as there's no room for expansion and really no need to expand. The only free slot inside is for a SATA port. From the removable side grate I was also able to see that all four RAM slots were filled and the card slots were already covered by the two Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 cards in an SLI configuration. On the top of the desktop is a pop-out slot where one of the hard drives resides, just in case it becomes faulty (or if you want to upgrade). The Black Ops Enix actually comes with not one, but two drives. There's a 128GB solid state drive (SSD) as the C: drive, which allows the desktop to boot up in seconds and a 1TB 7,200rpm spinning hard drive acting as a data drive. If the SSD starts to fill up, you can install most of your non-essential programs on the spinning drive. Some programs, however, may give you the error message "This product cannot be installed to the root directory of this drive," to which you'll have to create a folder so the program will install on the spinning drive. Some manufacturers install smaller SSDs to save money, but that is an inconvenient solution. But 128GB should be enough for a rotation of several games: you may eventually have to remove some games or programs in order to install new ones in the future.
The Black Ops Enix has a natural cooling system that's based on the fact that heat rises. The side vent takes in cool air while the fans propel the heat up and out, so you won't want to leave any devices on top of the tower that would block the flow. The aforementioned Nvidia graphics cards are placed vertically to help the natural flow of air. Though it makes the port placement inconvenient, the convective cooling helps keep the system relatively quiet.
One of the benefits of buying from a boutique PC builder is no bloatware. You'll find this Black Ops Enix clean of any extraneous software—it's just you and Windows 7 (64-bit). Digital Storm also couples this desktop with a lifetime Expert Customer Care with 3- year limited warranty.
Performance
Internal components were impressive. The desktop comes with a 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-2600K (a.k.a. Sandy Bridge) processor and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. This hardware helped the Black Ops Enix wipe the floor on our CPU-intensive benchmark tests, like PCMark Vantage (24,253) and Cinebench R11.5 (9.15). Pitted up against similarly configured desktops, like the Intel Core i7-2600K-powered Maingear F131 Super Stock ($2,300 direct, 4 stars) (14,817 PCMark and 9.35 Cinebench) and Falcon Northwest Mach V (Core i7-2600K) ($4,599 direct, 4 stars) (25,692 PCMark and 9.2 Cinebench), it came out on top over the Maingear in PCMark—likely because of the SSD. However, the 1,439-point difference between the Black Ops Enix and Falcon Northwest is minor in terms of real-world performance.
Internal components were impressive. The desktop comes with a 3.4GHz Intel Core i7-2600K (a.k.a. Sandy Bridge) processor and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. This hardware helped the Black Ops Enix wipe the floor on our CPU-intensive benchmark tests, like PCMark Vantage (24,253) and Cinebench R11.5 (9.15). Pitted up against similarly configured desktops, like the Intel Core i7-2600K-powered Maingear F131 Super Stock ($2,300 direct, 4 stars) (14,817 PCMark and 9.35 Cinebench) and Falcon Northwest Mach V (Core i7-2600K) ($4,599 direct, 4 stars) (25,692 PCMark and 9.2 Cinebench), it came out on top over the Maingear in PCMark—likely because of the SSD. However, the 1,439-point difference between the Black Ops Enix and Falcon Northwest is minor in terms of real-world performance.
On the gaming grid, the Black Ops Enix scored well over the necessary frame rates in our Crysis and Lost Planet 2 benchmark tests, scoring 127 frames per second (fps) and 239fps on Medium quality and 73fps and 123fps on Extreme/High quality, respectively. Performance on 3DMark Vantage also yielded some impressive results, with scores of 102,882 on the Entry setting and 24,618 on Extreme. Compared with the similarly equipped 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 SLI Falcon Northwest (98,688 Entry and 24,654 Extreme) the two were almost equally matched. Even in our Photoshop CS5 imaging test, the Black Ops Enix managed to breeze through our 13 filters in 2 minutes 19 seconds, and the Falcon Northwest wasn't far behind (2:26). Likewise, in our Handbrake video encoding test the Enix (1:13) came out just 2 seconds ahead of the Falcon.
Performance-wise, the Digital Storm Black Ops Enix Edition is on a par with our current Editors' Choice, the Falcon Northwest Mach V (Core i7-2600K). There are only a few things that separate the two: The Black Ops Enix is $972 cheaper than the Falcon, and it takes up less space. Otherwise, both aren't all that serviceable and come with all the perks of coming from a custom builder (i.e. no bloatware and 3-year warranty). But the Black Ops Enix has a beautiful design that will make any clean cable enthusiast joyful, a interior that's packed to the brim with powerful hardware, and it's nearly $1000 cheaper than its EC competition,. For these reasons, we award the Black Ops Enix our Editors' Choice for high-end gaming desktops.
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