My Digital Storm Saga, or buy from someone else... It all begins when I decided to treat myself to a new computer. I've been doing incremental improvements to my computer for years and I wanted to start over fresh. I did some looking around and came across Digital Storm, the reviews that I found were okay, but what sold me was that they used retail components in their computers and not some modified or adapted version like you get with some major manufacturers. So, I took the plunge. The lead time for a computer form them was six weeks, but I was pleasantly surprised when the computer arrived much sooner than expected. That was my last good feeling. On the day I received it, I set it up, turned it on, and immediately got my first error screen (Blue Screen of Death or BSOD). It was the be the first of many. It was late and I really didn't have the time to fully go through the computer to try and figure out what was going on, so I turned it off and went to bed. The following day, I was pleasantly surprised when the computer started right up and seemed to be working, but no, this was just a brief interlude for more problems. The BSODs were soon back. Time to do some basic troubleshooting, I shut it down and made sure that everything was seated correctly, I reseated the memory, reseated the video card, made sure that all the cables were secure and tried again. It did seem to work better, but by no means trouble-free. I was still getting periodic BSODs. Time to run some diagnostics, and low and behold, I had a bad stick of memory. Time to call support. My call took me to some form of gatekeeper that took my information and promised me a callback from a technician. I was told that the call would be after my workday. It wasn't, it was right in the middle of my day and if I hadn't been free from work at that time, I would have missed the call. Troubleshooting was non-existent, but I did go over the steps I had taken to determine the problem and it may have ticked all the boxes for her, and she determined that she would need to send me new memory. Great, right? Hold on a minute though, I had to have the highly inflated cost of the new memory placed on hold on my card so that I could have the memory shipped to me. The only alternative was to send the memory to them and wait for new memory to be sent to me. I reluctantly chose to let them hold the funds. The memory saga doesn't end there, no, rather than sending the memory by some expedited method, it was sent by ground shipping... I got to wait a week for the memory. When I get the memory, I'm a week and a half into owning the computer and all I have is a large 50 lb. paperweight. Because, you see, not only did the new memory not fix the problem, now the computer wouldn't even turn on. It went from bad to worse. During this time, I received one of those form messages from the company asking me how they did, so I told them. This did elicit a response, I got an email from their Digital Storm Management team wanting to know how they could fix the problem. I was hopeful that I would have a solution, but no, I didn't. So a couple of things that I want to interject here. Digital Storm has a 30-day money-back guarantee and we were not at two weeks into that 30-day timeframe and I didn't have a working computer. I was not confident in the hardware I had, so I let them know what my desire to resolve this issue was. They could build me a new computer, from the ground up, and send it to me and I would send them the defective one back, they refused. My second option was that I send them back the computer, they rebuild it, send it back to me, but the 30-day money-back guarantee wouldn't start until I had a working computer in my hands, they didn't like that either. That left the only option that I could see, and that is to return the device. When I discussed this last option initially with the person from the management team, he told me that I would be responsible for the shipping, so I would not be getting a full refund. Think about that, I received defective equipment, not just once, but twice (the new memory was also defective), and they are going to hold on to the shipping charges. What's worse is that in my last phone conversation with him, the management team representative worded it in such a way that I was given to understand that I would receive a full refund. Guess what didn't happen. So, here is my story of woe. I got a POS from a boutique manufacturer and paid $56 for the privilege. read more

I cannot stress enough to stay away from this company, and do not look back. I have been dealing with a nightmare of a return and warn others to be careful. I ordered my computer on 7/19/2019 reading the reviews on multiple sites both good and bad I thought I would take the plunge. 7/26/2019 - Machine makes it to stage 3 7/26/2019 - Receive an Email stating that they are having an Intel Shortage of CPU 7/26/2019 - Email is recalled, this should have been the time I canceled, but went no problem, I will stick it out. 7/31/2019 - Stage 4, and then 30 minutes later Stage 5 8/8/2019 - Send an email asking what is up with is being stuck in Stage 5, and follow-up with a call, was told they reason was parts were replaced causing additional testing. 8/9/2019 - Stage 6 Quality Assurance Call Multiple times while it sits in Stage 6, told it going to be looked at and shipped out. 8/21/2019 - Email Digital Storm explaining I keep getting the same answers from phone calls and emailing management. 8/22/2019 - Digital Storm emails me response stating it still waiting for a QA person to look at. 8/22/2019 - I threaten to cancel the order as I have waited long enough. 8/26/2019 - Digital Storm writes back hate to lose a customer but will get it scheduled to go out today. 8/26/2019 - Receive an email by mistake from Digital Storm stating VIP urgent must ship today customer thinking of canceling. 8/26/2019 - Stage 7 Packaging. And ships that day. Computer Arrives on 9/3/2017 Open it up power it up Blue Screen and Video Artifacts and then open up a support ticket was after hours. 9/4/2019 - Support works with me and it discovered that I have a bad video card. Explaining they been having a lot of hardware issues with 2080ti cards and windows. 9/4/2019 - They put a hold on my Credit Card, then removes the hold when it determines it has a custom water block need to ship the bad card back. 9/4/2019 - Emails go back and forth with Digital Storm management about my frustration of a non-working machine, and concerns of the 30 days and that they will extend it 1-2 weeks based on the issue that they want me to have a working machine. 9/5/2019 - Shipping label for video card created, with detail instructions and shipped out on 9/6/2019. 9/16/2019 - Video Card Shipped from Digital storm back to me 9/17/2019 - was not home and delivered it on 9/18/2019. 9/19/2019 - Placed the new Video Card into the machine and same issue. 9/19/2019 - Emails go out and now I ask for a refund, as I been without a system now, and pretty much had enough. Talk to Digital storm customer service supervisor explaining my lack of confidence in the system, they offer to build me a new one, and like sorry I can not wait this long again and be without a system and request a refund. Due to the amount they needed management approval and will get back to me. 9/20/2019 - Digital storm emails me saying sorry, we will investigate the system further when it arrives so we can learn from this. 9/20/2019 - Digital storm ask for photos, and supply the photos to them for the return and refund, and asked me to complete a online form of the issue. 9/23/2019 - After shipping places close receive the return label from Digital Storm. 9/24/2019 - System is Shipped back for a refund. 10/3/2019 - System Arrives and I get an email that they are fixing the machine. I call them speak to a nice female who rushes back and tell the engineer that this is refund per Digital Storm Management. They confirmed the system had an issue, and the refund will be no later then the following Friday the 11th. 10/11/2019 - I email Digital Storm, asking where the refund is. Digital Storm emails me back that the power outages have plagued them for the last two days and I will hear from Customer Service Rep about the system. I receive a voicemail 20 minutes later stating all they needed to do is power it on and reset the power and it magically worked. Now where the fun begins, because I asked it was confirmed broken by the tech on 10/3/2019 and magically 8 days later it is now working. Better yet, if that was the case why not reach out to me on 10/4 or 10/5 but no emails or calls from them until I reached out to them on 10/11. Where the person who left the voicemail said I am only in the office for 5 more minutes, I call back no answer. 10/14/2019 - Call Digital storm and they are like sorry it is software issue we will not refund you due to software issues without a 15% restocking fee 4.x% credit card charge. I was like but it was not working on the 10/3 and your techs also said when they troubleshooted it to begin with was a bad part. At this point I am fed up, I am like fine so when would I get a refund? We need time to determine the issue before we refund it. I was like you just said the system was working so the refund should be immediate? No answer. 10/21/2019 - Called today was approved 10/18 at 19.9% fee now you can see how they make there money. You been warned. read more

Now, this is a story all about how My life got flipped-turned upside down And I'd like to take a minute Just sit right there I'll tell you how I got treated like crap by a company called Digital Storm. Hello My name is not Will Smith, but in fact is Liam. And like many people who have purchased Computers from Digital Storm My brother and I were very happy and excited when we ordered ours on 8/20/18. We had been thinking of getting a nice gaming PC for a long time and with the release of the new RTX cards we ordered one each. We both paid a huge amount of money for a computer I am not saying the following price to brag. My brother and I bought identical Aventum 3's and they cost $XX,XXX.XX plus shipping each. Fast forward to 12/13/18 my PC's in stage 6, I called Digital Storm and requested a change of my CPU from the i9-7980XE to the new i9-9980XE, this extended my wait time some, paid $300 for the upgrade. In December 2018 my brother received his PC and everything was fine (and still is) except His PC was in the new Aventum X case, not the Aventum 3 case. we did not even realize it until my PC arrived on 1/21/19. A little back story on the difference between the cases, they are very similar the biggest difference is the Aventum 3 has small Plexiglass windows on a plastic side panel, the Aventum X has full tempered glass on both sides, definitely higher quality, and better looking which is pretty much the whole point of buying a PC from Digital Storm. Back to 1/21/19 My PC arrives and I was surprised to see how different my PC was from my brothers. I thought this is the wrong case but we soon realized my case was the Aventum 3 and my brothers was the Aventum X. There was also a front panel that was bent out a little and looked bad, far from the the "art of perfection" they advertise, When I offered to send Digital Storm a picture I was informed they already had a picture of it but sent it to me anyway bent. To make this part of the story shorter I called DS, they said they have no idea why my brothers case was upgraded. We agreed that I can send mine in and get it changed to the Aventum X case at no charge. At this point I had not plugged my PC in, when I did there was no display on my monitor. I tried every display port and HDMI on the back of the Gpu's and the motherboard, still no display, tried another monitor, nothing, plugged the monitors into a different PC, they worked, so I called Digital Storm Tech Support, went though various methods of trying to get it to work with them like removing ram, etc. Now the fun part, back in the box my PC went to DS after four months of waiting on 1/25/19 on an RMA. After calling several times trying to find out the status of my PC, always being promised to get a call back, those calls never came. Finally on 2/19/19 I get a call back and they inform me that they have not tested it after almost a month, but when they do if one of the components is bad they will cover the shipping cost but I will need to pay for the Aventum X case, I ask the cost and I am told that the case upgrade will be $200 and the shipping will be $400 (The guy who told me this is named Ron S. and he said on 2/19/19 that the shipping would be $400.) So I said ok knowing that something in the computer was broken because it didn't work at my house so I was fine paying the $200 for the case. 3/11/19 I get a phone call from Ron S. at Digital Storm and my PC is working fine!!! They plugged it in and presto!! it fired right up and displayed, I guess I just have bad luck huh? So remember the $400 for shipping well I have to pay that but wait...whats that? its $800 now? Wow what happened to $400 on 2/19/19? Well Ron S. is sure he remembers telling me it was $800 then, I guess that would be easy to mix up, you know $400 vs $800 - they are pretty similar numbers. But hey at least I don't have to pay for the Aventum X case now, what a joke. At this point I am steaming mad and don't want the PC anymore because I never want to deal with this dishonest company ever again and would have liked to get a full refund but of course there is a 15% restocking fee and it would be something like $1800, there is a way around the fee if you meet 3 criteria, the one I miss is 'faulty hardware' because it 'fired right up' at DS. So no refund for meeeeeeee, called a lawyer, they cost more than $800 so I ended up paying $700 for shipping. Today is 5/7/19 I have still not received my computer, its been 9 months or 260 days since I placed my order on 8/20/18. I thought hard about paying the lawyer the $2,000 because I wanted DS out of my life forever. I might receive a broken PC again. I wish I would have just researched and built a PC for myself. Don't make my mistake. There's better companies or do it yourself. If you read till the end here is how much I have paid Digital Storm. Original PC cost $13,135.00 plus $399.00 for shipping Total $13,534.00 CPU upgrade $300.00. Shipping again $700.00 Grand total $14,534.00 read more

Bought a PC off their site that was a really good deal for a prebuilt with a RTX3080 in it. The messaged me and told me it was on backorder for 2 to 3 weeks. They offered that I could wait, cancel, or switch to the Lynx Level 2. I told them I would wait. Later that day I got an email saying my order was cancelled. They told me it was cancelled and that the Lynx Level 4 was now removed from their website and I could choose another prebuilt or build my own PC even though it would be more expensive. I called them to see and why it was cancelled. The representative claimed they were out of 3080 and wouldn't know when they would be back in, but I could build a PC from their site. Why would I build a PC or even why would you guys still even be offering PC's with 3080's in it if you just have to cancel the orders since you don't know when they are coming in. It's because they have them and they realized I was getting too good of a deal on something they left on their website. Terrible people with trash morals. read more

I'll start by stating I've built many a computer on my own. For my retirement I chose to go ahead and avoid the frustration of putting one together. Sadly I took tomshardware for a recommendation and chose Digital Storm. The long story short is that it took weeks for a $5000 computer to be built for me. I used PCI-E and M.2 Storage and twin GTX980 Strix cards. The case was a joke. There was a cut out for external plugs. When you opened the door the cables got caught on the door. I immediately starting getting overheating problems. even though I had liquid cooling. I finally returned the computer for repair....they wanted to charge ME for their broken machine. They claimed it was a bad PCI-E port causing the Video Card to overheat. Needless to say that was untrue. After less than a year of having the computer I went ahead and bought a Cosmos 2 case, a Gigabyte Auros Gaming 9 MB, a new Intel Kaby Lake and some other odds and ends and rebuilt it myself. Not only would I not recommend Digital Storm, I find their prices to be about 3 times what they should be. Considering how long it took to deliver, the fact it was a faulty product and then they didn't fix it after having it back for over 3 weeks? I hate Dell with a passion, but Digital Storm makes Dell look like a superstar. read more

I ordered a custom build and spend around $4500.00. When I received the computer, the video card was dead. They sent me a new one after 2 weeks. I had to pay to ship it back. The power supply failed...twice. The tiny power supply isn't available except through DS. I had to send them mine back before they'd send me a new one. The broken one I sent back had a mounting bracket attached. The new one they sent me didn't. Can't mount it now. Waited 2 weeks and they sent me another power supply with no bracket. The computer overheats and shuts down. They agreed to let me send it back for repair. I have to pay the shipping. $93.00. After reading the reviews I'm hesitant to return it. Bottom line is their service is terrible and they clearly use cheap components. It's a very expensive mistake I've made but lesson learned. Stay away from Digital Storm. I didn't mind paying a premium for a premium product. They advertise as such but deliver something below average at best. read more

I ordered a digital storm apollo system on october 29th. Throughout the entire build I was notified as to which stage they were in via email... I have used Cyberpowerpc before, and digital storm beats them in quality, craftsmanship, and operability. Cyberpc gave me problems with the processor overheating, a bad psu, and a video card that didn't work. This did not happen with Digital storm...my new baby was working right out of the box. I did notice that digital storm gave me a true 16GB system, some companies just don't test the memory to the extent digital storm does. I plan to buy digital storm for my next system. For the price quality, technical operation, and anti-obsolete system, trust digital storm. I considered falcon nw but for the price digital storm beat them hands down. read more

Digital Storm makes great computers if nothing ever breaks. But as soon as something breaks you will get the worst customer support possible. I encountered my issue in November of 2014 and didn't get it resolved until March 2015 because of the poor response time and the lack of priority their customers garner. I could write a three page paper on why I was disappointed, you could actually check their Facebook reviews for exactly that, but the short issue of the matter is that they just don't care. They build amazing machines but they need to bring their customer service up from the bowels of hell it currently resides. I'm praying that my system doesn't break again because I would do anything to avoid working with their customer service. Edit: They responded to this complaint faster than they ever responded to any of my contact requests, even if it was only a macro message. read more

Had the $2500 system for 7 months and it won't turn on suddenly, this is what you get from ordering something from a non "name brand" PC company. read more

It took over a month for my computer to arrive. When it finally did, it was damaged and had issues. When I reached out to support I was told that they are basically too busy to help. I had to fix it myself. A manager got in touch with me and said he would look into it but never bothered calling me back. I will never return as a customer, nor will I ever recommend a product from Digital Storm - not even my worst enemy. read more

Ordered a DS Lance laptop back in 2015. Had several issues on first use like drivers not being loaded and there were issues with the onboard camera. They handled it alright but of course had to sit through the usual troubleshoot script. Overall left me with a somewhat neutral feeling but will probably not buy from again. read more

Never had a chance to review the PC, never got it. Customer service was very had to get ahold of & just gave quick answers when asking for a updated after being in stage 1 for 20 business day. I ask how to go about canceling Incase it came to that & the next email I received was a confirmation of my order being canceled. Just went with cyber power instead. read more

Easy to order. Horrible support. I tried getting an update on an order and no one answers the phone or responds to email. While on hold you get the option of a callback. Not bad, but you get a message saying the system is full and try again later. Regretting my purchase decision. read more

This year they apparently had way more orders than usual, so my build took longer than it should have. That aswell as the 1080 shortage did not help, however, the staff were super friendly. When the card I ordered for my Vanquish 5 was out of stock with no expected date of restocking they gave a better card for free. After owning my computer for a month my drivers crapped out on me, I called tech support. They were super friendly, and fixed all of the issues I was having with my pc. The guy was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. read more

Bought a PC from Digital Storm on over 45 days ago. I would love to write a review on the actual product but that won't be coming as I haven't even received it yet. As a matter of fact I built my own in 5 days this past week. Unreal a company that pays for all these sponsorships to YouTubers to promote their business and make them look like a respectable company can't even stand by a basic shipping date promise. More than doubled it at this point. I've built cars faster. Literally. Don't waste your tike here. Refunding this bullshit. read more

It has been a very strange experience. I had purchased a custom built system from digital storm in july 2012 for about $2300. I got emails about how they were testing it and burning it in so everything would work perfectly before being sent. It was well packed with a HUGE box. Protected well. But man is it a huge full tower. When it arrived it would not boot up. I checked and had to change some BIOS settings to get it to book from the SSD drive. Why this needed to be changed I do not know, but it was a bad omen. The system is certainly very fast, but....it would have a blue screen of death crash usually once or twice a week. I also noticed a few weird things. They have a case that has a firewire connector in front, but there is no firewire on the board--so this connector is dead. No information about this. The front case has 2 USB 3.0 ports. But they are HALF speed. There was no indication about this, i had to look it up to locate. The BSOD issued continued for a while. I tried some things without any major resolution. Many emails to tech support were sent back and forth. Most of the advice was pretty generic--"re-install windows" to unplug and plug back everything. I did use MEMTEST booted on a usb stick to test the system and memory and everything SEEMED ok on that part. Having to put in one stick and test it, then try the other stick, then try each memory stick in each memory slot--well as you can imagine I spent many hours trying to troubleshoot my own system. Spending $2300 on a system that I have to spend hours to troubleshoot just seems very wrong. After much more time and effort on my part, I realized that there is a KNOWN bug in some SSDs, including the intel 520 SSD that came with the drive. There is a bug in sandforce that when it shifts into power saving mode it might set off a n error that results in a BSOD. Hence, THAT was the source of the error! Why they didn't know this is shocking. At any rate I did check back in with both Digital Storm and intel. They really weren't any help. I was frustrated and made a terrible mistake--I went out and got another SSD to replace the intel drive. The sony 840 drive is better and faster. But now I get BSODs about once a week to 10 days with different errors. I threw more good money after bad sadly. To Digital Storm's credit I can pack up everything and send it back to them to fix. There is no labor cost, but if things need to get replaced I might have to pay something. On top of this, I will pay shipping to and from digital storm. This tower is HUGE! they say $120 or so for shipping to and from, but I imagine the bill will be much larger. So I get to pay $120 to return to them, and maybe a few more bucks to get parts to solve a problem I had since it arrived? A problem I still have despite dropping a few MORE bills on a replacement SSD? Yah I should have just sent it back right away. But there is something seriously wrong here--they couldn't have spent so long building and burning in the system and then shipped it to me with the BIOS not set up correctly to boot from the SSD. And not knowing about a known sandforce bug is shocking to me. I'm torn between sending it back for more tinkering or just...trying to sell it for scrap and getting something else. Given the amount of money to ship and maybe MORE money for some repairs on a 2 year old system...I'm thinking I'd rather spend more money on an xbox one maybe! Perhaps the BOLT and any systems that are pre-made and preconfigured are good. But this was a custom built and I regret it terribly. I also concur with what some others have noted here--I get far more emails about surveys about my tech support experience than ACTUAL emails from tech support that have gone through every time to actually fix the problem. read more

Worst customer service and technical support. For the prices they charge, I expected top notch service and components and I got neither. The computer came with internal power cables too short (unable to reach video card). Technical support doesn't answer the phone, instead they email you days later. The manager sends a form letter every time you give them a poor rating. I got 3 emails from him and they all had exact same verbiage. It has taken weeks just for me to explain the cabling is short and get one shipped. Weeks. Stay away. You can get these parts cheaper elsewhere, and the service is terrible. read more

Whatever you do, do not order a PC from Digital Storm. Do not be fooled by promises of top notch components, premiere customer service, and strong warranties. If your PC is defective, it is incredibly stressful and painful just to get someone on the phone to help. My PC was defective out of the box, and it was impossible for anyone to address my problems. After a month of endless troubleshooting, I was directed to send the system back, only to receive the same broken system and problems 3 weeks later. After being told I had to send it back once again, I was assured I would get a replacement system, but then after hearing nothing back for 2 weeks, I asked on the status of my replacement system and was flat out refused and they hadn't even attempted to fix the broken system at all. After all this, I requested a refund. I was promised twice by managers I would get a full refund, but of course nothing ever came. Three more weeks later, DS rudely calls to tell me they are shipping the system back to me or I would have to pay a 15% restocking fee. It wasn't until posting my issues on their public forums that finally a manager agreed to give my money back, which still was not my full purchase price, but at this point I just want this nightmare to be over. Worst customer service experience of my life. Management will now have a canned response to this review. Emailing management directly will NOT get you a response. It wasn't until publicly airing my grievances on their forums was I able to get a response. No one will help you unless you threaten legal action. They are crooks and liars. Avoid at all costs! read more

I chose Digital Storm primarily based on this text found on their website: "Strict 72-hour stress-testing and benchmarking to ensure rock solid stable operation" and "Analyzed by an extremely dedicated production manager that is obsessed with perfection" Unfortunately, the system I received was not stable. Several games would crash with a display driver error. This was repeatable, and fairly common. And on a few occasions, the system would restart itself while gaming. Digital storm first sent me a new video card after hours and hours of my own troubleshooting and investigation proved fruitless. This did not resolve the driver crashing problem. (Seems that lots of people had this problem. Search 'Zotac 580 display crashing"). So I called back and they said they wanted me to ship/deliver my machine to them so they could diagnose and fix it and thoroughly test it. Since I had *just* spend around $2,500 for this machine, there's no way I was going to be without a computer for 1-3 weeks while they fixed a problem it never should have left their facility with in the first place. So I asked if I could just have a loaner system in the meantime. They said no, but eventually said that they would go ahead and build me a new one. Then once it was finished, I could bring the old one in and swap. So I agreed. Unfortunately some of the parts I originally had were no longer available. The CPU heatsink, and the case were notable. The case eventually came in on order, but it delayed the shipment. During the course of working with Digital Storm on this issue, I noticed a lot of general customer service foibles and missteps. I was handled by multiple people when good customer service involves having one person work through a person's issue from start to finish for consistency. I won't go into all the details here, but they were a lot of minor issues that added up. In the end, I spent probably 30+ hours of my time having to deal with this issue (phone, email, personal troubleshooting, driving to their office to swap), with the end result being that I finally got a system that was stable. But that is what I should have had in the very beginning! If the computer was stable for a while then suddenly developed problems, I would understand. But this was unstable right from being built. Listen. No one is perfect. And regardless of what they advertise, no ever system is going to work flawlessly when you first plug it in. I get that. I really do. But what separates a great company from mediocre is one that realizes that when something doesn't go according to the way it should, and the customer is going through lots of hassle to get a working product, you *acknowledge* that effort, and make it a point to try to make it up to them. Something as simple as a "10% off your next computer purchase" would have made me a repeat customer and I'd be singing their praises for how they handled the situation. As it stands now, I have no desire to give them repeat business, and I've suggested to several friends that they stay away based on my experiences. Why should I OR my friends risk having an imperfect system built for them, when getting it working properly is going to be such an unrewarding hassle? I have no answer. read more

What a nightmare. Received my $4k+ PC on a Saturday, unpacked it, plugged it in and it wouldn't boot up. DS has no week end or after hours tech support so I had to wait until Monday to call. Called and the receptionist iniated a support case but no techs available for immediate support so I had to wait for a callback. Tech called a few hours later and they had me pull the ram, then video cards, sound card and then power connections to the motherboard and still no luck. After trying everything the tech suggested which included checking the power supply we determine my motherboard was shot, 72 hour burn in ??, so he was going to send me a return shipping label. Severals days pass with no word and no response to several emails but finally after six days I got my shipping label so I pack it up, re-installed all the hardware to the way I received it and shipped it back. It arrives at DS and then a day later I receive an email stating a clip or fastener on the motherboard was broken by me so they could not replace the motherboard for free and that I would have to spend another $500.00+ for a replacement. What? Really? They send me a PC that didn't work and now they want me to pay fora new motherboard because some clip is broken which BTW I don't think had anything to do with why the PC didn't work. We argue back and forth and I explain that even if I did damage a clip or fastener it was only because it didn't work in the first place and their tech told me to remove hardware and connectors. Not to mention that he originally wanted to send me the replacement motherboard for me to replace. They wouldn't budge and fix the PC so I told them I wanted my money back and they said sure but we're going to hold back the money for the motherboard, are you f'n kidding me, really. Now pissed I told them to fix it and give me what paid $4,200.00 for, working as it should have from day one and they still refused. I told them they had 24 hour to agree to fix it on their dime or I'm disputing their payment with my credit card company. They didn't agree so I disputed and they're still holding out. After 3 weeks pass without a word I get a barage of emails regading the RMA stages of completion all with in two hours which included the final QC verification that is supposed to last 72 hours and then it would be shipping in a day or two, what, I'm done with these guys even though now they agreed to cover the motherboard cost but now it was too late. I told them 3 weeks prior I had initiated a dispute for the charges and I was done with them but they're arrogant, obstinate and ignorant and I no longer wish to deal with them. Worst company in wthe world IMHO. read more

Horrible customer service. They never get back to you and every time you call back, they get irritated. If your pc comes out of the box defective like mine then good luck to you. Don't expect your problems to be solved in one day or the next. It took three weeks for my problem to get resolved. It should of been done in one day. read more

Digital Scam, I mean, Storm is horrible! They are horribly expensive, use inferior parts then charge you fees to get your money back! I ordered a system from them, a top of the line one, and when it arrived the first thing I noticed was that one of the hard drive bays was bent, like Leaning Tower of Pisa bent. They told me that easily could have happened in shipping. Right.... I don't buy that one bit. Next, once I began setting my programs up I kept getting Bad_pool_header BSOD crashes. Over and over they would happen so I ran a check disk and found that the hard drive was riddled with errors. I ran a fix, but it couldn't repair them. So, With the BSOD crashes and the hard drive errors I figured I had either bad ram/ mobo that was causing the bad-pool-headers and a bad hard drive. So, needless to say I stuck this crap heap back in the box and started an RMA. This was a pain in the ass to do too. It took forever to get anyone to send me the shipping label. They wanted to troubleshoot it. I told them that they should have made sure it was working before they shipped it here. All over their web page and in all the fluff e-mails they send you they keep saying how they do all this rigorous testing and QA yet the couldn't even spot a bent hard drive bay/Tray?! When I did get the shipping label I mailed it back to them and sent many many emails saying that I wanted a full refund as there was not only damage to the case, but bad hardware. Each reply I got was the same old song and dance, "We'll fix it! It'll be rock solid and working great!" Right, thats what you said I'd get in the first place. Over and over again I told them I wanted my money. Finally I flat out said that if they shipped the thing back to me I would not accept it and would tell the delivery guy to send it back. Eventually they agreed to a refund and that if they didn't find anything wrong with it I'd have to pay a 15% restocking fee and the shipping. Not surprisingly, they magically found the PC to be just fine despite all the BSOD crashes and bad_pool_headers. So I ended up having to eat 500 bucks! I guess they have to make money some way because their systems are crap! Do not order from Digital Scam whatever you do. You can get a great PC from Best Buy online like I did. It had better specs and cost less. They aren't customizable, but they work and if you have issues with it you just have to drive it down to your nearest Best Buy. UPDATE: After speaking with Alex, I was issued a full refund. read more

DONT BUY!! Terrible quality and customer service! Stopped working within the first two weeks and took them over two months to fix it!! And then got it back and it was still broken!!! Terrible terrible terrible! read more

I purchased a Digital Storm machine on October 20th of this year. It arrived on November 1st. When I unboxed the machine, it did not have a video card. Digital Storm only offered a 15% restocking fee. So basically, they want to charge me $200 for selling me a piece of junk. They claim they have photos and videos that "prove" they installed it. But I have not seen them. I have filed a complaint with the BBB, and will be disputing the charges. But I suggest that you do not buy from this company. If you do, I hope you have a great experience. If something goes wrong, they will not help you. read more

They were a little spendy but the components were solid and I was willing to pay for quality construction and testing. Unfortunately, the components were all that was good about this experience. This was, flat out, the worst experience I've ever had with a computer company. Wouldn't boot out of the box, unending hours spent working with what seemed like very friendly but questionably competent individuals trying to get it resolved. They shipped my box back, after an RMA, without the side panel, then sent me some cardboard rather than the case's original paneling. Weird, incredibly poor overall experience that has turned me away from small fabricators in a huge way. read more

I had high hopes getting my system from Digital Storm, being a boutique with a relatively good reputation relative to other SIs who will remain nameless. When I first got the system, the packaging was a nice surprise. All the extra stuff from the components that I picked, like screws, ties and manuals, were packaged together and I got a cool certification binder thing. Things started to go a bit downhill when I booted the system up. Just to check on things, I ran Aida64 CPU/FPU/cache stress for about 20 minutes and saw that my temperatures would hit 90-95 degrees, ultimately hitting TJmax and throttling the CPU core clock down substantially. Moreover, even when the CPU wasn't being thermally throttled, I would see some downclocking happen on the order of 300-500Mhz. Similarly, I was getting alot of BSODs while playing games. I really wasn't getting terribly far into them before it happened, and it seemed to correlate to graphical intensity. This stressed me out a bit, so I decided to pull the thing apart and have a look. Here's what I found: - The air flow configuration was set up to have intake on the back of the machine and exhaust out the front. I'm not sure if this makes a difference, but I've always believed the reverse to be ideal and most cases are built with the assumption that airflow goes front to back. - The CPU IHS was only about 60-70% covered by thermal paste. Given that I ordered it with an AIO, this confuses me, since they almost always have well placed pre-applied paste. I checked to make sure the IHS was flat, which it was, so this could only have been an application error during the build. - BIOS tweaks were sort of a mess. I wish I'd taken note of exactly what tweaks Digital Storm had made, but there were a lot of VRM-related settings and an overclock that was clearly not stable given even my very brief stability tests. The fact that Digital Storm claims to have a LOT of QC makes me really wonder about this stuff. They also forgot to turn up the power limits, so the 300-500Mhz throttling I saw was simply a power limit issue. Ultimately, I reversed the airflow in the case, bought a new AIO and put it in the system, reset the BIOS and made a few more conservative tweaks, and my system ran about 30 degrees cooler under load and was AIDA64 stable for three hours, as well as not having a single blue screen since. I will give mad props to the support team, however. Corresponding with them about the issues I was seeing was probably the best tech support experience I've had - they were incredibly thorough, respected my time, and clearly knew what they were on about. I wish it was the support who built my system, honestly. As with everything, buying from a system integrator is sort of a gamble, but my experience with them seems kinda weird - having great systems from other high quantity SIs but my Digital Storm unit was a bit of a dud out of the box. read more

Awful customer service. I ordered a computer about a week and a half ago from Digital Storm based on recommendations about their professionalism and customer service. The first problem came two days after I ordered it when they had to downgrade my processor because they were out of stock on the one that I wanted. That would have been fine, but the woman that I talked to knew nothing about PCs and attempted to lie to me and claim I was getting an upgrade. That should have been enough of a warning signal for me to pull out, but I went ahead and authorized the bill and they happily withdrew my money. Fast forward to today. I had received an email stating that my system was estimated to ship out on either the 1st or 2nd of September. Today is the 3rd. I called Digital Storm for an update and was put on hold for nearly an hour. The customer service rep I was speaking to either forgot about me or thought he hung up on me. I was then told that my PC wasn't going to make it to my house before Labor Day, which is what I paid extra for (priority service). I wrote an email to the management asking for either an email or a call back from someone in management so that we could discuss my grievances. A few minutes later the kid that I had originally spoken to called me back and asked if I was on hold. He called me to ask if I was still on hold. Let that sink in. I received a very curt "sorry you were on hold" response from the manager, completely disregarding my other issues and the fact that I wanted to discuss these problems and made to feel better about spending so much money with them. In reality I just wanted one person there to act like they cared about me as a customer and I wouldn't have canceled my order. They couldn't even do that. They would've kept a customer and a large sale for the cheap price of showing a little humanity. So they canceled my order as requested, and as of right now (4 hours after the cancellation) they haven't submitted my refund. I assume that they are holding it for as long as they can out of spite. I find it hard to believe that a company could act that way, but in my interactions with them I've discovered that they are a poorly run business with no real customer service ability. There are many other places that can build you a PC. Digital Storm is more of a headache than it's worth. read more

Spent 2 grand to be told "it's only been a week, we have 15 days to ship your item" dang man, that was rough Hopefully I never have to do any warranty replacements on this pc, man the time it got there and got back it would've seemed like it was hand delivered, and kissed by the pope himself, graduated high school and came back. Besides the joke of a customer service agent,longer than 1 month to receive it. It turned on!! It worked. But you'd think they are producing every individual part at their facility considering the time it took. But nope! rest assured!! They use standard parts. Come to find out from the customer service agent, my pc was a prebuilt and was just sitting in a warehouse already built and tested waiting to be shipped. Man did that make a me a little angry. After already 18 days of being in "stage 1". I asked why it wasn't shipped and she said she's just able to see what I ordered and inventory. Man was that thrilling?? If that wasn't bad enough. They sent me the wrong keyboard!!! But it was a more expensive one so how can I complain!!?? I never said anything because they couldn't say anything when I asked where my order was . I should've drove to Best Buy and bought something, because once this company gets your money they forget your a customer. read more

UPDATE: after threatening Digital Storm with a lawsuit under the California Lemon Law, they finally agreed to fix the computer. I drove it down again for the third time (it's more than a three hour drive each way) and it took them a MONTH, literally, to fix it! It is now running fine, but the entire ordeal start to finish was a massive headache and waste of time and money. I have since switched to an iMac, and will never buy a PC of any kind again. Especially from Digital Storm. PREVIOUS POST: Everything about how Digital Storm markets and promotes itself is well done and classy. They obviously do their best to deliver on their promise of screaming high end machines. The components are top notch, their assembly is impeccable, their packaging and delivery is outstanding... BUT: I paid $4,300 for a liquid-cooled high end desktop. Within 60 days, the 2 terabyte hard disk had a catastrophic failure. To save time, I actually drove the machine from north of Sacramento to Fremont to get it fixed, which took a full week. I then drove down again, picked it up, brought it home, and had an 'overclocking error' and another error message saying 'no operating system installed'. Took it back down yet again, another week, got the machine back... and nothing that I had ordered installed was on the machine - no Windows 7, no MS Office. Screwed around with customer service for another week, got stuff going. Then yesterday, same overclocking error. Turning it on and off several times got it to boot correctly. This morning: my secondary monitor is not working with the system, for no apparent reason. I have had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS with this machine and if I could get my money back, I would. As it is, I'm switching to Mac and I'll use this desktop PC as a flotation device in my hottub. read more

I finally get my order today and I thus raised my score from 1 star to 3 stars. Alex has been very helpful and responsive. Hopefully they can hire more of such people in their sales team. read more

Worst sales and customer service. My order was processed dec 21 2018 and its February 6 now and my order is still on stage 2. They sent me an email 2 weeks ago noting that the case I chose is not available anymore so I called them to choose a new case and they will try to ship it within 1 week. 2 weeks later and I didnt hear anything from them so I called again. To my surprise they said no one put a note about my call so they didnt do anything with it. You would think that their estimated time of shipping would be close which is 10-15 business days but no 30 business days later and no progress on my order. read more

I purchased a custom built DS system in July of 2012 with a price tag of nearly $3,000. The system had some initial bugs in the beginning but was what I was looking for. However, I've now owned my system for a mere 18 months and it has begun to fail. This past week I lost both my power supply and motherboard. I contacted support and did not hear anything back for days. Finally I received one reply, which I responded to, and again had no follow up. Over the course of the next few days I received numerous requests (5+ rate our service emails) to rate the people I had worked with but no help resolving my issue. Almost a week out from my initial issue, I finally was put in touch with a technician who was able to ascertain that my problems were something that the system needed to be sent back for. The problem? Not only would I have to pay shipping to send my system back, but I would also have to pay out of pocket for any hardware that was replaced as parts are only covered for one year. It would have cost me upwards of $800 for my system to be sent back and new parts placed in. For just a few hundred more I can purchase a brand new system with stats comparable to what I've currently got. When I checked online at the actual purchase of parts, my PSU, had I of bought it direct from the manufacturer would have come with a 7 year warranty and my motherboard would have been covered for a 3 year warranty. Why then is there such a short period of time for DS to have them? Due to the abysmal customer service after the purchase and long-term customer support on an issue (my PC is unusable) I absolutely would NOT recommend this organization for anyone seeking to buy a high end system. Save yourself the hassle and go with a company that cares about your needs after they've received your payment. read more

Short story - ordered in July, immediately returned for RMA, received in worse condition, now November and just received my refund in full. LONG Story: I have built many PCs in my life, including overclocking and upgrading them, something I started messing with in 2nd grade (I'm now 37). So I know how to build my own PC, but having other hobbies as well as recently coming into some money from selling a collectible online, I thought I'd save myself some time and trouble and have someone make a nice PC. I ordered a Bolt 3 with a configuration that made it around $3300 including warranties etc. I paid for the highest level CPU overclock as well as a GPU overclock. I also paid for laser-cut holes in the side of the case, which states that it will help overclocking. -Several days after my order, I see that it has been charged but they haven't started working on it. I call to ask why. They put me on hold to check with the inventory department, and say it should be going to 'Step 3' and be built any minute, as everything is in stock. -After another couple days it hasn't moved in status, so I call to ask why. They put me on hold and come back saying that inventory is waiting for the motherboard, contradicting what I was told during the previous call. I start to worry. -Things go well for a while and it proceeds through the steps. It reaches the last step and says that it should be shipping by the next day. -A couple days later it hasn't shipped, and I call. Then I'm told that they are waiting on the laser cutting for my door. This confuses me as the laser cutting states it will help GPU Overclocking, and Digital Storm says they build the PC 'as if it is their own' - so how did they properly overclock my GPU as much as possible without the lasercut door? As mentioned, I've overclocked and even two identical CPUs or GPUs can differ in manufacturing enough to where you might not get the same maximum overclocking, so I'd expected this to be determined during the overclocking phase, especially giving the price I'm paying for overclocking, I'd take the time to do it right if someone was paying me that much. The support guy tells me that they do the stress test and overclocking without the laser cutting, and just use stock numbers to enable the overclocking - nothing being done 'as if it were their own'. I proceeded to ask him what the point of the laser cutting was if the PC passed the testing fine without them. He told me that it could still overheat during a 7 or 8 hour gaming session and this will prevent that, to which I replied that they claim to do a 72 hour stress test, so why would 7 or 8 hours kill the PC? He apologized for bringing it up and said the call would have been quicker if he'd just stayed quiet, which was odd because as a customer I was glad to know what I was getting into. I did concede and decided it would still be an awesome PC, and I could always overclock it further myself to take advantage of the laser cutting. -I wrote to the email given to contact Management, voicing my concerns from the mixed information about inventory, as well as how the overclocking and testing was performed. I got a letter back just confirming that testing is done without laser cutting and overclocking is done with stock numbers, followed by a form letter apologizing for inconvenience, but not addressing any of the other concerns in my letter -I eventually receive the PC. According to Digital Storm's website (I'm pasting directly from there as of today): "All of our systems are specially packaged and shipped in secure, large, solid boxes which are protected by film membranes in order to suspend each system rightfully in place." I thought someone going to that care with packaging must care about their PCs. My PC comes in a cardboard box, packed in regular foam, with a couple of wedges of foam shoved under the video card. Not what I expected - I had my camera ready to show my friends that I got a PC so awesome it needed this really cool box. No dice. -PC gives random restarts, especially during startup. After some calls with support, including one where I completely disassembled it aside from removing the CPU cooling or motherboard, and reassembled it at their guidance - you know, what I was paying someone else over $3k to do. No luck and the restarts continue, I set up an RMA. -A couple of weeks later, I get the PC back in the same box. The box has no external damage, but as soon as I try to remove the PC I hear loose parts. I get it out and see that the PSU is not secured and has been bouncing around, knocking other parts loose. I found a couple of screws as well as a metal card-slot cover just loose in the bag that the PC is in. The DVD drive was also knocked out of place. It was a mess. -I called and asked for a refund. I returned the PC and waited. They stated that they'd send a check for the full amount. I get one minus $80, call and they promise me the other $80. Had to remind them yet again to send it. read more

I just received my new desktop (Bolt II) from Digital Storm. It is perfect and looks awesome. The customer service is great. I definitely will recommend it to those people who want a powerful gaming rig but too lazy to put one by themselves. read more

Bought a Digital Storm computer a few years ago. The good: their techs are generally knowledgeable, not the untrained script readers and they do want and work to fix if a problem The sales people are nice and know products too. The not so good: Calling in on issues results in the person calling in to have to do the labor on the computer to try and isolate it and identify the problem and fix it while on the phone. Parts are shipped, swap it and check if solved the issue. In the change you have is a more complicated hardware issue with the computer and you are not interesting in being able to tear apart some of the computer, you can ship it in for a cost (free the first 60 days) and have it shipped back for a cost, each way. In my case I did that twice and the issue was never resolved since some of it was intermediate before a full fail on a component past the first 60 days. The cost to ship a larger gaming machine both ways can add up over time. For anyone buying a computer I would suggest checking what the company short and long term repair warranty and shipping costs. Update: Digital Storm did work to come up with a work around for the issue with the computer, so credit to them for doing so where other companies might not. read more

Over time I have discovered just how poorly DigitalStorm did when building my PC. From failing to fully insert the main power connector from the motherboard to selecting mismatched RAM... these problems caused all kinds of instability issues that were difficult for me to track down. I've had to live with the issues for years now... and it amounts to human error. I paid premium prices so that I'd avoid headaches but frankly, it would have worked better had I built the PC myself. The order process went poorly as well. They stopped building the machine without warning because they didn't have the exact power supply I had ordered.... so the machine just sat waiting, when literally ANY other supply would have worked just fine for me. A quick call "can we substitute a different supply?" would have solved the entire situation... but no. They just let it sit, and I had to call to ask why the system had not shipped before discovering this easy to solve issue. Sigh. The customer should NOT be having to solve these kinds of problems. That's what the builder is hired to do. read more

We are replacing eight developer workstations and decided to take a chance on a smaller company instead of going with one of the more established computer companies. Fortunately, we only ordered one to see how things would go before going all-in with the remaining workstations. There was some sort of bug that delayed the shipment of the product by about 5 business days and when I would call in to check (nobody notified me of the delay) on the status they would ramble on about how the machine had too much RAM and their software was unable to test it properly. They are very clear about constantly reminding you that these are estimates and not guarantees. This indicates, to me, that they have a chronic problem with delivering machines on time. Your mileage may vary. Given that we were still intending on replacing seven more workstations with them, I tried to press for a concession to see how customer-facing that they would be. I pressed for expedited delivery and they continually said no. I did speak with the COO about the issue via email and he continued to defend his team as opposed to trying to turn it into a positive customer experience. Specifically, he defended that a machine missing their shipping target by 100% (based on the lower part of their 10-15 day shipping estimate... it took 20 business days to ship it) was somehow OK and nothing to offer a concession for. They did offer an additional one-year warranty but given the service I received, I don't anticipate that being worth anything should I actually have to use it. Anyway, here we are on 5/29 and it hasn't shipped yet. The workstation was ordered on 4/30. Take a look at their BBB profile... they have 25 complaints over the past 12 months. It takes a lot of unhappy customer to generate that volume of BBB complaining. http://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/business-reviews/computers-wholesale-and-manufacturers/digital-storm-in-fremont-ca-301630/complaints Also, take a look at their restocking fees as listed in their Terms.... "4.9% credit card processing cancellation fee" and a 15% restocking fee. This means, if you cancel an order after they have started their build process, they take 19.9% and return the rest to you. In other words, on a $5,000 machine, they keep $1,000 if you cancel. http://www.digitalstormonline.com/terms.asp read more

If frustration was a winning prize Digital Storm would be the best of all. Having placed an order in Aug. updated my order beginning of Sept. and still my system is not ready. They say they had problems with their cases. Told me beginning of Nov. Told me end of Nov. Told me beginning of Dec. Warning be prepared to lay out thousands of dollars as I did for an Aventum 3 system and wait for months with little to no honest info as to what is going on with your build. Not very professional. read more

I DO NOT RECOMMEND DIGITAL STORM AT ALL. My son bought his DS for Christmas 2015. 11 months later it stopped working. We still have a 10 year old HP that is used ever day. Never an issue, all original parts. I called DS tech support and the person tried to convince me that it was related to lack of thermal paste. I'm no techie, but even I knew that this would not solve the issue, but I bought some and tried to start it up. Nothing, I called them back. They had me try a few things, using a different plug, reseating the memory cards(?) etc. Nothing. Not impressed so far. But then it was determined that the mother board died. After 11 months? This left me with two options (a) Send the computer back for repair and pay $300 shipping to replace a $60 mother board or pay $14 shipping and they'll send a mother board. I chose to get a new mother board. It arrived a week later, completely different configuration as the one that came with the computer. I had an IT friend install the new mother board. Nothing. Now I am given the option of a new mother board or again, shipping it back for $300. I opted for a new mother board, but before they sent it I'm asked to send images of the mother board and CPU. 3 bent pins. I've no idea if the new mother board was defective or not when shipped or if my tech guy did it, but my replacement was denied. I bought a new mother board and will have it istalled, but my DS experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted to buy American, but no more from Digital Storm Buy at your own risk. Tech support is a joke. read more

I purchased the Aura from Digital Storm and was impressed by the service I received. The customer service representatives took all my questions in stride and provided friendly advice. I was able to switch my order from ground shipping to pick-up within the same day and no issues. I did receive a different disc burner than the one I ordered but when I called in they located the correct one and sent it out straight away while also providing a box and label to return the wrong one. Not once did I feel like I was being ignored or a bother. My computer is absolutely lovely and I am looking forward to the weekend gaming gathering with my friends! I highly recommend Digital Storm for your computer needs. read more