Digital Storm Lynx gaming PC review

What a time to be alive for a hardware writer!  The Digital Storm Lynx boasts a handful of the finest gaming PC components, all practically impossible to find right now, but here hard at work producing killer performance. Inside this machine, you'll find the AMD Ryzen 5800X and Nvidia Geforce RTX 3070, making their special teamup for under $3,000.

This Digital Storm Lynx runs in at just under/over $2,500. Still, Digital Storm has dozens of different Ryzen configurations, along with Nvidia and AMD's latest GPUs, with about a 20-25 business day lead time for orders. You can even go a bit wild and order a system with dual Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics cards if you have $4,000 burning a hole in your pocket and a penchant for pro-level 3D rendering. 

However, the reality is that one super-hard-to-find RTX 30-series card should be more than enough for your gaming needs. Don't get greedy, now.

The Lynx case is a tremendous full-sized offering, whose slatted front panel grille gives off strong 'gamer panini press' vibes. It's most definitely an interesting look while still cutting a rather imposing figure for a PC case. I am a fan of the top and bottom dust filters. Even the silly slatted front panel seems to provide decent airflow while staying on the quiet side during heavy gaming. 

A solitary pair of thumbscrews separates you from the Lynx's innards, with the tempered glass panel offering a good view of the RGB lighting issuing from inside. The included remote control lets you adjust the RGB LEDs (except on the RAM) with plenty of presets to choose from. I tend to stick with one solid color, although you get that freedom if you prefer more frantic modes. Ideally, I control all my RGB through software since I find remotes pretty unreliable though the remote provided gave me no issues. 

The Ryzen 5800X is a great (albeit pricey) CPU that excels at gaming when paired with the impressive RTX 3070, particularly at 1080p and 1440p. CPU intensive games like Total War Saga: Troy and Shadow of the Tomb Raider manage to crack triple digits, which goes to show that it can absolutely take the fight to Intel's Core i7s and come out on top. 

On the productivity side, we were impressed by the Geekbench score of 10,003 along with a respectable PCMark report card. This means if you want to do more than game, the Lynx won't let you down.   

The RTX 3070 can do a pretty good job if you're willing to tweak your graphical presets a bit. The same can be said for ray tracing if you are dead set. We hit about 75 frames in 1080p with RTX turn on in Metro Exodus, which was surprisingly high. For the sake of testing, we crank everything as high as possible, but the reality is that most people will fiddle around with settings to get things just right. Cranking on DLSS did wonders in Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War for boosting up frame rates, too, proving it's not just a panacea for ray tracing performance.

Cyberpunk 2077 is still proving to be a heartbreaker for anyone trying to get a decent framerate without using DLSS for a boost. With my presets set to Ultra and ray-tracing on, I was able to get an average of 40fps at 1080p and 32fps at 1440p. 4K was pretty much at an unplayable 17fps. 

Of course, if you decide to use DLSS, expect a boost of 25-35fps. In my testing, Cyberpunk, 2077 was a definite outlier (I'm sure it will continue to be barring any major updates) considering how well the RTX 3070 dealt with systems hogs like Metro Exodus ray tracing on and no help from DLSS. 

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The only marks against this system are the lack of wireless connectivity and Bluetooth support. This is a bit annoying if you rely on Bluetooth for your controllers and accessories or if your router isn't readily accessible. I also noticed that there's no USB 3.0 Type-C port either, which is surprising. Expect to spend a couple extra hundred dollars on a configuration that'll check those boxes. So, don't be surprised if your final checkout price ends up closer to $3,000.

This Digital Storm Lynx is a great 1080p machine with admirable 1440p performance. The Ryzen 5800X/RTX 3070 combo in this config is the right choice if you don't mind skipping out on high-end 4K gaming but plan on picking up a 1080p or 1440p display with a high refresh rate. The lack of wireless, Bluetooth and USB Type-C connectivity is a real bummer on an otherwise impressive system, though the $2,500 sticker price is a bit too high for folks to rush out for it.