Digital Storm's gaming rig shows that Core i5 can trump i7

By Tim Stevens posted Dec 17th 2009 9:39AM

Since the dawn of computing, gamers on a budget have been flaunting their ability to best higher-spec'd systems courtesy of a little extra cooling and a lot of time fiddling with BIOS settings. So, no real surprise here that an Intel Core i5 processor can keep up with a Core i7 when properly configured. What issurprising is that you can get one suitably configured with a warranty. The provider in this case is Digital Storm, the system is the Core i5-750, and the warranty is three years. HotHardware put one through its paces and found that, if anything, it was too aggressively overclocked. But, with a few minor tweaks (which hopefully will be made standard for future iterations) the machine was stable, fast, and rather noisy. It managed to keep up with Alienware's Core i7 Aurora ALX in most benchmarks, despite being about $2,000 cheaper. That kind of savings should buy enough thermal paste to last you at least 18 months.