 Nearly two years ago, we asked if there was a place in the market for pre-built, compact gaming PCs like the Digital Storm Bolt 3. And I guess, given the rise of machines like the Corsair One and MSI's Trident, well, it's safe to say that yes. Yes, there is. So, when Digital Storm called us up and offered to ship us their new Bolt X for an exclusive early look, how could we say no? Cooler Master's 25th anniversary edition, Cosmos 2, features a unique dual curved tempered glass side panel. Check it out now at the link below. From the outside, the Bolt X is pretty similar to the Bolt 3 we reviewed back in 2015. It retains the clear edge-to-edge acrylic side panel, the strange placement of ventilation holes on the other side panel, and the separate upper panel where the 240 millimeter cooling radiator hides. Like the Bolt 3, the Bolt X is available in both the brushed aluminum fingerprint magnet finish of our older unit and the shiny, exotic paint finish of our Bolt X. Digital Storm also lifted up the base of the case, providing a little bit more clearance for air intake on the bottom. One odd thing that you might have noticed by now is that there is no front I.O. Not even a power switch to accompany the RGB front logo. No, Digital Storm instead opted to put it on the side. Aesthetically, this clean look works really well for us, but the option for a front optical drive is also gone, and whether cables sticking out the front or out the side is best really depends on your desk layout. But enough boring stuff. Let's get inside. It's impossible to miss the immaculately run custom sleeved power cables and all Hardline water cooling setup with red dyed liquid to match the exterior. Our unit has both the GPU and video card water-cooled, which ended up giving us a bit of a surprise when we fired up our benchmarks, more on that later, but it's also available in a less expensive CPU only config. There is no question that Hardline looks great. Mwah! But as a tinkerer, if I was buying a BoltX, I might not configure it this way for a couple of reasons. Flexible tubing doesn't look as good. I know, but it gives you quick and easy access for troubleshooting or upgrades. While Hardline requires you to dismantle the whole loop in order to get at virtually anything other than the RAM and drives. One saving grace with this particular machine though, is that as long as you're careful about it, you actually could probably pull the whole assembly out through the top panel. So unlike the main gear Omen X with Hardline, you could swap a failed component like a motherboard without a plumbing certificate from the local community college. But we still think that the happy medium is Hardline for the CPU only, for easy graphics card upgrades in the future, or soft tubing all around if you want the extra performance. And on that subject, there's plenty of that. Our Asus ROG Strix Z270i gaming is equipped with an Intel Core i7-7700K and 32 gigs of DDR4 3000 RAM. And as for the GPU, well that my friends, is what a water-cooled GeForce GTX 1080 Ti looks like. And the whole thing is running off a Li-An-Li 750 watt 80 plus platinum modular power supply. So then, it should come as no surprise that even without the 5 GHz factory overclock option, our BoltX killed our 1080p gaming test suite. But what might be surprising is just how well it killed it. We gathered all of these results at stock speeds for both the CPU and GPU. Meaning that the performance difference over our test bench here was purely driven by the efficiency of Digital Storm's Hydrolux water cooling loop. No part of our system ever dropped from Max Turbo, which was totally what I should have named my son. Max Turbo. Anyway, sorry. Even synthetic tests including a combined load of FurMark and AIDA64 didn't manage to make it throttle. Which is great results in a doomsday scenario for any unified cooler. And it doesn't really get terribly loud while gaming either. With the fan spinning up to a light whoosh under normal loads, and only really ramping up higher when under those synthetic loads I mentioned before. We wanted to give you accurate numbers for the noise levels, but unfortunately the studio is presently a construction zone, so yeah, that's not happening. But bottom line, is it worth the price tag? Well, it's tough to say. Not because we don't have the results, or because we're waffling on making a recommendation, it's actually because we don't have a price tag yet. Digital Storm won't be releasing the BoltX to the public for another couple of months, and while the preliminary pricing that they've given us says it will be starting at 1500 US dollars, their starting configuration for the Bolt3 at that price suggests that a BoltX, as shown here, will cost a pretty penny more than that. But maybe that's the point. What you'll be getting with the BoltX is a machine that absolutely crushes it in terms of performance, and with headroom for some overclocking thanks to its excellent cooling setup. It is far from the smallest gaming rig we've ever seen, it's even bigger than the last generation Bolt, but it's still not unreasonable, so if you've got the cash and you want a water-cooled gaming rig done right, I think the BoltX has got you covered. Ting is a mobile carrier that cares about your satisfaction. It truly is an unusual thing, isn't it? So when you call them, you don't speak to a robot, you get put through directly to a person, and it doesn't cost extra, in fact, you pay only for what you use, with the average Ting bill coming in at just 23 bucks a month. And if you're stuck in a contract, they will also cover 25% of your cancellation fee, up to 75 dollars. So check them out today and take advantage of their lower mobile data rates. 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