Digital Storm shoehorns a liquid-cooled GTX 1080 into a really small chassis

Digital Storm may have a reputation for building big and burly desktops, but its new Project Spark goes in the complete opposite direction, at least in terms of size. Measuring about the volume of a shoebox, Digital Storm worked its wizardry to cram some high-end gear inside, and then topped it all off with a hardline liquid cooling system.

More precisely in regards to the size, Project Spark measures 6 inches deep by 4 inches wide and 12 inches tall. An average shoe box would be 14 x 10 x 5 inches, while former NBA star Shaquille O'Neal wears size 22 kicks that come in a box that would dwarf the Spark.

"We've always wanted to design and build a PC that raises the bar in terms of performance-per-square-inch and cooling," said Harjit Chana, Digital Storm's Founder. "Advances in motherboard design have finally allowed us to make this goal a reality for our customers."

Of course, there are other small form factor gaming PCs on the market, including Digital Storm's own Bolt and systems like Falcon Northwest's Tiki. Project Spark, however, is the company's smallest enthusiast-class PC to date.

The custom built enclosure houses an unnamed motherboard based on Intel's Z370 chipset. Users can cram up to three M.2 SSDs and a 2.5-inch SATA drive into the system. It also uses an MXM module to deliver discrete graphics options ranging from a GeForce GTX 1060 to a GeForce GTX 1080. (Note that the use of MXM graphics inherently limits the upgrade potential, unfortunately.) Paired with a Core i7-8700K processor, Project Spark has the potential to run circles around rigs that are much bigger in size.

Implementing hardline liquid cooling should help keep temperatures in check, which is obviously a big concern when it comes to small size PCs. However, it's not clear how much that tacks onto the cost.

Digital Storm says Project Spark will be available in the second quarter of this year, starting at $1,299 for a base model outfitted with a GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. Obviously, there's a price premium involved in going this small with liquid cooling, but for what you get the premium isn't that large.

YouTube

Watch On

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).