Digital Storm Bolt II Small Form Factor PC Review

Digital Storm Bolt II External & Internal Features

Digital Storm’s Bolt II is one slick looking chassis and the build quality is absolutely fantastic. The whole design is very simplistic and easy on the eyes. It’s honestly hard to believe that there is so much power packed into this slim chassis. The color of the Bolt II that we received for review is called Copperhead, which is a matte finish.

Should this color not be your cup of tea, Digital Storm does offer five other colors that should go right along with your home theatre setup.

Starting with the face of the Bolt II you don’t have a whole lot to see with exception to a slot load ROM drive (BD-ROM in our case) and a nice looking Digital Storm cutout logo, which does not light up.

Turning to the left side is where you will find four feet for laying the chassis horizontal and some ventilation for the video card. You’ll notice that Digital Storm put ventilation throughout to ensure this system stays cool. The feet are removable should you want to get rid of them for vertical positioning. I’ll be hooking this system up to my TV, so the feet will stay put and be a very nice way to provide extra ventilation to the video card when horizontal.

The rear end we find all of your typical inputs and outputs. You can’t help but notice that the power supply is very slim from this angle, and you’ll see a better shot of it after the side panels are taken off. On the line of side panels, they are both secured by dual thumb screws which won’t get lost when you remove them, as they will stay secured to the panel itself – nice touch!

The right side is where you can catch a glimpse of the goodies inside. There is a large section for ventilation for the 240mm radiator hiding behind. Also, if you didn’t catch it from the left side shot, there is a large gap on the bottom. This is for more ventilation, specifically for the PSU.

From the above picture, on the left side are some front panel I/O connectors. Working bottom to the top, there are two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, headset and microphone jacks, and a card reader for all different types of digital media cards with one additional USB 2.0 port.

The top (or left side if you lay it horizontally) you’ll find the power and reset buttons along with lots more ventilation!

On the bottom is nothing more than four rubber feet and a Digital Storm sticker with your serial number.

Before we jump inside, I’d like to show you how big the Bolt II really is, by setting an Xbox 360 controller and a 12 fl oz can of soda next to it. With this comparison, you will really grasp how tightly packed this system really is.

Digital Storm Bolt II Interior:

I bet you’re anxious to see what the interior looks like? Taking off the side panel was easy thanks to the two thumb screws on the rear. The panel simply slides off and you’re in!

The interior certainly looks tight, but Digital Storm did their best to make sure everything was serviceable inside and the wiring is pretty neat. There are two panels that are clearly marked “removable” so you can get at components. The left removable panel is obvious, as it is for removing the radiator and fans. The top right panel is to get to your hard drives. Inside our system, there is a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO and a 2TB Western Digital Black drive. This should be enough storage for now, but unfortunately with this size chassis, you’re limited to just two 3.5″ or 2.5″ drives, so choose your storage wisely!

Our system also packs an ASUS Z97IPLUS motherboard, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866MHz DDR3 RAM, and a brand new Devil’s Canyon 4790k. The 4790k is tucked underneath a Digital Storm branded water cooler, which turns out to actually be a re-branded Corsair H100i, so we already know heat dissipation shouldn’t be an issue.

Flipping to the other side is where we can catch a whole lot of interesting. On the top left we are packing an Nvidia GTX 780 Ti, which should be able to handle whatever we throw at it with ease. Digital Storm offers a Titan Black or Titan Z if your wallet is fat enough, but you will only be able to have a single video card inside this chassis.

On the bottom is where you can catch how big the PSU actually is in this system. Ours came loaded up with the 500w version, but for the more power hungry graphics cards, you can get a 700w instead.

Placed inside the system are a series of five thermal probes to monitor temperature.

Powering all of these probes and controlling the fans is the HydroLux thermal control board.

While back here I noticed one slight issue, albeit minor, but one of the hoses on the water cooler was slightly kinked up against a panel in the chassis. I felt it necessary to point this out, but I do not believe this will cause you grief.

Let’s move on and see how the system looks powered up and what software was installed by Digital Storm.