NRG Storm

A beast of a machine, but at what cost? A lot...

If you’ve got money to burn, then there’s no doubt that the NRG Storm is the leader of the gaming PC pack. There are very few things that you could throw at this machine that might phase it – though we did find some, of course – and it has an excellent set of features and peripherals that will please even the most discerning enthusiast.

And you know what? It looks like a $6,000 machine, too. With a blacklight and UV reactive cooling fluid – did we mention it’s watercooled? – this is a machine that actually deserves a side-window. In a darkened room, accompanied by the slight bubbling of the cooling apparatus this is a machine to be respected before you’ve even sat down to game.

From the 1000 Watt power supply to the 790i board with DDR3 RAM, it’s a well specced machine too. You’ll need that power, too, when you consider that the Storm sports twin GX2s in SLI – that’s effectively quad SLI right there. To help keep those pixels pumping, the CPU – an already feisty QX9650 – has been overclocked to 4.2GHz. Still, the Storm is easily the loser in the pure bang for buck stakes. The law of diminishing returns is a harsh mistress.

Like the Tornado system, you’ve got a terabyte of storage in RAID 0. On top of that you’ve also got a Blu-ray drive and spacious 24in Benq monitor so that you can enjoy HD media in its proper glory. The only thing you’ll be missing is sound...

On the other hand, you do have more performance than God – the Storm even manages 15fps in 8x AA Crysis. Still, there are some issues worth nothing. For one thing, the Storm returned a lower minimum result in 4x AA Crysis testing than some of the less powerful and cheaper systems. Its average performance in Crysis is of course through the roof, but we think there’s likely an issue with the quad SLI settings that leaves a few frames bloodied and bruised in the rush to be rendered. We also noticed some random screen flickers when under load – whether that’s more quad issues, or possible problems with the stability of the CPU we’re not certain. They’re not going to stop you enjoying a game, though.

There’s also a lot of room in the case for future upgrades or adding other drives and gear, but the presence of the water cooling block may make that a more difficult proposition. Water cooling is great, trust us, but you’re going to have to dismantle the Storm eventually so it’ll pay to be certain you know what you’re doing. Regardless, the Storm is a wonderfully put together system – neat and tidy.

Still, you really need to justify a machine at this price point. When you consider that for the cost of this one PC you can buy three of the Trinity entry, it certainly makes you think.