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Advice on Gaming Computer Companies
So today my computer died. I get the dreaded beeps when I attempt to turn on the tower. Its a very sad day for me. That computer is probably 95 in computer years. Its served me well. But anywho, I've been checking some companies and I'd like your opinion on them.
Digital Storm...Falcon Northwest...Cyber Power
Pros and Cons please.
Comments
I bought my desktop from cyberpowerpc.com. I believe Ibuypower.com is owned by the same company. (you'll see if you go to their website)
Free lifetime tech support. Great price. Had some issues with 2 gb of memory missing, and they shipped another 2 GB memory to me quickly.
Can't beat it. I still have it. Plus you can get it financed through Bill Me Later.
Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas
monarc333 is the best probably
Put one together yourself it is esier than you think.
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
If you buy a computer from a company aimed toward selling them to gamers you will often end up spending $500 to $3,000 more for the same computer than from someone who doesn't aim at gamers.
Not true. Maybe if you build an Alienware or Voodoo PC.
Try building one at cyberpowerpc.com. You will beat Dell's price by like 1,000 dollars.
Radix Malorum Est Cupiditas
I'd favor building your own unless there's some reason why you really can't. "Haven't done it before" isn't a reason why you can't. "Couldn't fix it if someone else unplugged it" is a reason why you can't. If you've plugged in USB, Ethernet, and monitor cables to the outside of the case, you can plug in SATA cables, PCI Express cards, and DDR3 memory modules in the inside of the case. If you don't know what parts, we can help here with that--and none of the companies you list will offer good guidance there.
Nah I can build me own. Im just curious about the reputation, capability and quality of the company. I've experienced the disaster that is alienware. So I'm very cautious about gamer only companies. I was hoping to get some info about the above qualities from ppl who have brought from them or have some insight. BTW I'm looking at a comp between 1-2k
Cyber Power PC will sell you a cheap junk machine for a low price tag, or let you pay more for something nicer. You have to be careful what you get from them, but they can offer good deals if you can't build one yourself. It's still not competitive with what you can build yourself, though.
Digital Storm and Falcon Northwest charge huge price premiums to assemble things for you. That's fine for a rich person with a huge budget who doesn't mind paying $1000 more than necessary to get something that is certain to work well. It doesn't sound suitable for your needs, though.
If you're in the United States, I could pick out parts for you. You might want to narrow the budget a bit further, though.
What parts exactly do you need? My default assumption is a new processor, motherboard, memory, video card, optical drive, power supply, hard drive/SSD, case, and OS license. If you also need a new monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, or some other odd peripherals, your budget doesn't go as far.
Finally, you should wait about four hours, as the video card market will shake up greatly then.
I have purchased computers from Falcon-Northwest for about 10 years. I have had exceptional service and support from them in that time even though I have rarely needed it. You can spend a good chunk of change if you are not sure of what you want but the folks there will work with you if you tell them you are on a particular budget.
Cyber Power....I would say to stay away. A friend of mine purchased one from them not long ago and it was a total lemon of a PC. They were not much help to him in regards to service and support either. After speaking with them for almost 3 months, they had him send his PC in to be evaluated and repaired. When it returned to him, it worked for about a month before turning into a large paper weight. He then proceeded to purchase a second computer from them and had almost exactly similar results but in much shorter time. He has determined that Cyber Power is not the way to go. I think they also go by another name, but I would avoid them like the plague.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Whats happening with the Vid cards?
Yea I got that feeling from falcon and digital too. My budget is around 1500ish. I hoping to have amazing grphx, powerful processor speed and large ram. Fortunatley I dont need wasteful software like norton, MW office or w/e their selling. I'd want a blank slate, which helps me with my pricing.
Yea that customer service from Falcon I've heard a great deal about. Very impressive. Alienware left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Like really bad. Its fueled my search for a qualty PC company that doesnt cost 5k.
With your budget you can either get a decent pre made PC or a high end self build PC.
I know what I would do but the choice is yours.
Cyberpower computers will not break anymore often than ordering from HP, Dell, Alienware etc. The thing is that their warranty and customer service is garbage so you do take somewhat of a gamble dealing with them. I did a lot of research on all the big players out there for computers about 1.5 years ago as I decided I just wasn't going to build my own computer.
Digital Storm is great but I remember it being pricey. Falcon Northwest is one I'm unfamiliar with. Go to Reseller Ratings but be wary of planted reviews if you see bad reviews coupled with great ones.
In the end, the cheapest place I felt comfortable ordering from was HP and that would produce a $900 compared to the $600 I spent when I decided that $300 was worth the labor of building my own computer. The great thing is that building this one was a lot easier than my first two due to everything just "plugging in" very intuitively and easily. My recommendation is to build your own.
build your own, you'll save hundreds of dollars and its so easy a caveman can do it.
i built my fisrt pc back in 99 and i didn't even know what a motherboard wasor a video card ect, i've built every one ever since while my friends bought dell ect and my pc was better and cost 3 to 400 dollars less.
if you can plug a lamp into a wall you can build a pc.
I'll bet he got a cheap junk power supply and that's what fried it. That's one of the ways that Cyber Power PC offers you the opportunity to buy cheap junk, or to pay more for something better. They let you pick your power supply and do have some good ones available, but the defaults are usually awful.
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What's happening with video cards tonight is that AMD is launching the first cards of a new architecture. They're selling a Radeon HD 6850 for $180 that is significantly faster than a GeForce GTX 460 1 GB that would have cost $220 a week ago. They're also selling a Radeon HD 6870 for $240 that looks like it is faster than a GeForce GTX 470 that would have cost $300 a week ago. Nvidia has slashed prices on their cards to $200 and $260, respectively, but that's still too much. The GeForce GTX 470 is also a noisy power hog that is a major threat to fry itself, and I wouldn't want one at any price that would be remotely near what AMD is offering in performance per dollar. (That problem is unique to the GTX 465, 470, and 480, and Nvidia's lower end cards don't have it.)
Once Cayman (the high end cards of the new architecture) launches in about a month, it's pretty much game over for Nvidia until Kepler (Nvidia's next architecture) launches in about a year. They can either lose on performance per dollar at retail by enough that there's little sense in buying an Nvidia card, or start a price war with AMD cards that perform similarly while costing only 1/2 to 2/3 as much to build.
I'll assume that you're keeping old periperhals. If you need new peripherals, they don't cost that much, other than a monitor. On your budget, you've got some options. (All prices include shipping and are before rebates.)
Optical drive: $17
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106289
Reads and writes both CDs and DVDs. It's cheap and it works like a modern drive ought to.
Power supply: $70, including shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151091
Good brand, good energy efficiency, good voltage regulation, all the connectors you need, and plenty of wattage. The biggest downside is that 18 A +12 V rails aren't appropriate if you want to give the processor a huge overclock. If you want to go that route, try this instead:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006
Case/operating system combo deal: $170
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.437504.11-119-196
If you're going to put out a lot of heat, you need a big case with lots of fans. This case also has room for two side fans if you need more airflow pointed right at the video cards, but I don't think that will be necessary with external exhaust video cards. You can monitor temperatures for a while and see. And you also need an OS license.
Video cards: $496 total, including shipping, for two of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102909
Ordinarily, for someone looking for a high end gaming machine on your budget, I'd recommend waiting about a month for Cayman (Radeon HD 6950 and 6970) to launch. If your old machine were merely on the slow side, you could wait a month. But if your old machine died outright, you probably don't want to wait.
On your budget, if you want exceptional graphical performance, you're looking at CrossFire or SLI. This is the faster of the cards that just launched today, and it's a great deal. There are only four other modern cards that are at least this fast.
1) A GeForce GTX 470 offers about the same performance, but costs more, and pulls about 100 W more at load (each), meaning they'll will end up costing a lot more once you pay your electricity bill, add more case fans, and get a stronger power supply. The reference GTX 470s can also run dangerously hot, and while some non-reference coolers can handle the cards just fine, those are an extra $100 or so each. The Radeon HD 6870 is by far the better value.
2) A Radeon HD 5970 is two GPUs in CrossFire on a single card. It will tend to perform worse than two Radeon HD 6870s in CrossFire, cost about $100 more, and the reference cards have an issue where the GPUs are properly cooled, but the VRMs aren't, so they can overheat.
3) A Radeon HD 5870 is probably a better card than a 6870, but not much better, and they cost about $100 more each. But the 6870 gives you about 90% of the performance with 80% of the power consumption, 70% of the price tag, and better features, making it the better value.
4) A GeForce GTX 480 is maybe 30% faster than a Radeon HD 6870. But for the price tag and power consumption of one GTX 480, you might as well get two Radeon HD 6870s. The reference GTX 480s run dangerously hot, too.
That brings is to $753 so far, and we still need a motherboard, processor, memory, and storage. There, I'll give you some choices.
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The motherboard and processor go together, really. I'll give you three choices, depending on whether you want to go with Socket AM3, LGA 1156, or LGA 1366. It would be ideal to wait about three months for Sandy Bridge, which will beat all of them, but I don't think you want to wait three months if the old computer died.
First up, Socket AM3, which is the AMD option. Here, we have a $335 processor/motherboard combo deal:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.534725
With two video cards in CrossFire, you want an AMD 890 FX chipset, which is the best chipset on the market. It sports SATA 3 built into the chipset, and 42 PCI Express 2.0 lanes, which is enough to give 16 to each video card and have some left over for whatever else you might want--or have a USB 3.0 port steal some. The PCI Express x16 slots are appropriately spaced to leave some room between the cards so that one card doesn't physically block the air intake fan of the other.
The processor sports six Phenom II cores running at 2.8 GHz. If you're only using three or fewer cores and need more performance, the processor will overclock them to 3.3 GHz on the fly. The Phenom II X4 processors do not have this option, so on those, the clock speed you see is al you get.
Next is the LGA 1156 option. Here, we have a $415 processor/motherboard combo deal, before a $20 mail-in rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.534721
This one has the best processor of the bunch. The Core i7-870 is nominally stock clocked at 2.93 GHz, but will overclock all four cores to 3.2 GHz at once, or overclock a single core as high as 3.6 GHz for badly coded, single threaded programs. Furthermore, it offers about 20% better performance per core per clock cycle than the Phenom II X6 linked above. It also uses the least power, with a TDP of only 95 W, as compared to 125 W for the Phenom II X6 1055T, or 130 W for the Core i7-950.
Unfortunately, it's paired with by far the worst chipset of the three, and hence the worst motherboard. A P55 chipset has a meager 16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes. That's plenty for running one video card, but for two, it splits as two PCI Express 2.0 x8 slots, each of which only get half the bandwidth. In some games, that won't matter a bit, but in others, it could hurt graphical performance by 10% or so. The motherboard also lacks SATA 3 and USB 3.0, though if you're already using all of the PCI Express x16 2.0 lanes for the video cards, there isn't much left to swipe for those. There are six PCI Express 1.0 lanes, I guess, but those are slower.
Finally, we have the LGA 1366 option. The processor to get is simple enough, at $295:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115211
It has a nominal stock clock of 3.06 GHz, but if you need more power, won't turbo boost a single core past 3.33 GHz or all four past 3.2 GHz, making it a little slower than the Core i7-870 above. The 130 W TDP means it has the highest power consumption of any processor listed.
Unfortunately, most of the LGA 1366 motherboards seem to have PCI Express slots spaced to be appropriate for three video cards, not for two cards with an external exhaust airflow. You want the two PCI Express x16 slots that you use to be three slots apart, not two. Two motherboards that fit, for $165, or $230 before a $30 mail-in rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157163
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131403
The first motherboard is by ASRock, which isn't really a bad brand, but isn't a very good one, either. The second is by Asus, a better brand, but it's a lot more expensive. Both have Intel's high end X58 chipset with its 36 PCI Express 2.0 lanes, but neither have SATA 3 or USB 3.0, making both motherboards fairly light on features.
And then there's the sticker shock: $460 with the ASRock motherboard, or $525 before rebate with the Asus.
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Next comes memory. For most gamers, there is a right amount of memory to get, and 4 GB is it. You'll probably replace the computer before you need more than that for gaming use. The AMD processor doesn't support anything over 1333 MHz anyway, making that the right speed to get. Here you go, for $65:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146748
A Core i7-870 can run memory at 1600 MHz, but it doesn't make much of a difference, and seems to be at too big of a price premium now, so I wouldn't bother. It used to not be much of a price premium, which is odd. Maybe video cards are stealing all of the 1600 MHz DDR3 these days.
On the other hand, if you get an LGA 1366 motherboard with an X58 chipset, that has three memory channels, so you really should fill them all. That takes $100 for a 6 GB kit:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226063
Do note that if you get a system with two memory channels, a 6 GB kit will mismatch them, so you'll actually get worse performance than with 4 GB. The 6 GB kits are only for LGA1366/X58 setups.
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Finally, there is storage to consider. This varies wildly by how much space you need. On your budget, you really should get a solid state drive, so that you don't pay $1500 for a painfully slow computer. Basically, an SSD makes it so that you don't have to sit and wait for the computer to grab things off of the hard drive before it will respond. The best ones are about a hundred times as fast as hard drives in 4k random reads and writes. Here's my usual link to explain why you need an SSD:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-special-sauce-sf1200-reviewed/6
See the VelociRaptor, down toward the bottom of two of the graphs? That's the fastest consumer hard drive on the market today. And yes, longer bars are better.
Basically, except for big downloads, if you click for a computer to do something and it doesn't immediately just do it, you're probably waiting for it to read from or write to a hard drive. If you had an SSD instead of a hard drive, you wouldn't have to wait like that. Booting the computer, loading programs, zoning from one map to another, and so forth would take only a small fraction of the time that it did on your old system. Browsing the web wouldn't constantly pause while it caches files in the background.
Speed is the big advantage of solid state drives, but there are others. First, they barely use any power. Load power consumption figures can be deceiving, because solid state drives are nearly always idle. If they need to read or write something, they just go do it and then go back to being idle, rather than taking a while like a hard drive. Second, an SSD has no moving parts, and hence no moving parts that can break. Thus, if you drop it on the ground while it is running, it doesn't matter--unlike a hard drive, which might well die. This is important in a laptop, but not so much in a desktop. Third, solid state drives are completely silent, rather than having the annoying hum of spinning hard drive platters.
But then there's the big drawback: the price tag. Solid state drives cost around $2/GB, as compared to less than $0.10/GB for hard drives. Still, even if you need 1 TB of storage, you don't need a 1 TB SSD. You can get a small SSD for the OS and main programs, and then everything running off of the SSD will be fast. And you can get a big hard drive for movies, music, pictures, and so forth, where speed doesn't matter.
If you don't need that much storage space, you can also just get an SSD and no hard drive. That's what I do, but I don't have a ton of pirated stuff sitting around. Anyway, two options on an SSD, of different capacities:
60 GB for $128, before a $15 mail-in rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226151
120 GB for $236, including shipping, before a $30 mail-in rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227590
If 120 GB is enough capacity for you, I'd just get the 120 GB SSD and call it good enough. If you need more than that, then get both an SSD and a hard drive of whatever capacity you need.
www.avadirect.com
Period.
End of discussion.
Best deal, best customer service, best warranty, best bang for buck, best range of options and customizability.
Had mine for 4 years, best machine I've owned.
Plan on getting another one too in the next few months.
Check reviews, and awards on the website. It's the best company you've never heard of.
Hey I really appreciate the work you put into that thread Quizzical. I'll def look those over, check them out. Thanks!
Hogwash. I've heard of them.
You're right that they offer the biggest variety of parts, though. That's probably daunting for people who have no idea what all of the parts are, but it is very nice for someone who knows what he wants and can't find a company that will assemble it.
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If you get an SSD, I should warn you that not all SSDs are equal. Some are a lot better than others, and I mean orders of magnitude better than others. The important thing is the SSD controller. The Marvell and SandForce controllers are the best ones on the market, then Intel, then Indilinx. The Indilinx-based SSDs are cheap enough that there's no sense in looking for something cheaper and slower. If you want to pick your own SSDs somewhere, make sure you look up what controller they use. Toshiba, Samsung, and JMicron are the most widely used controllers that are best avoided. If you can't find out what controller it is, then don't buy it. Both of the ones I linked above are based on a SandForce controller.
Alternatively, you could simply decide to only buy from a company that doesn't sell any "bad" SSDs: Crucial, Intel, OCZ, Mushkin, and G.Skill are the brand names to look for. There are some long since discontinued SSDs by OCZ and G.Skill that were pretty bad, but those have been off the market for a year or so.
If you're interested in building your own gaming rig, check out the arstechnica.com System Guide - it offers budget, hot rod and god machine builds.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2010/09/the-ars-system-guide-september-2010-edition.ars
~Ripper
Two of those are far below $1000 if you exclude peripherals. The third is over $12000, which is a different sort of budget entirely. None are appropriate for the budget of the original poster. Another problem with taking a build off the shelf like that is that prices and parts have changed. The Radeon HD 6870 that I'm recommending just launched, for example.
I used to build all my pc's up and until this last time. My current rig I spec'd out at Cyberpower and with the fotm specials that they had cost me about $100.00 or so more then it would have cost me to buy all the same comps from Newegg.
The system is flawless and deadly silent... i7 core, 6 gigs ram, sli, and water cooled ftw!
Building yourself is usually always best even if you are a novice. Most people do not understand computers which is where prebuilts are aimed. It really does not take alot of effort to learn how to build one if you are interested. You just buy the right parts, then screw or plug them into the right spots, and install the operating system. Soldering no longer required if you don't want to solder it yourself.
Another thing to consider about Prebuilts is you are getting tech about 6 months old. They take a while to test different configurations, so you probably won't be able to get an HD6870 today, but you can if you build it yourself. Ontop of that you have the price premium.
On pre-built companies, there are 3 tiers. There is the standard companies like DELL, HP, and ACER. They don't really offer top range models and stynge on parts. You can get them cheap, but they are difficult to upgrade and you have no idea what the quality is.
Then there are the assembler companies. They pretty much pick parts like everyone does who builds their own, then builds them to the quality of a novice PC builder. They are an easy solution if you know how to build a machine yourself but just don't feel like it since they pretty much will do what you do. They also usually charge minimum premiums so its almost as cheap as building yourself. The parts they use will most likely be pretty common parts like ASUS motherboards, and MSI videocards. So upgrading them and troubleshoot can be done on your own. However, some degree of knowledge in how to assemble a machine is recommended when dealing with them.
Finally are the boutique sellers. They are EXPENSIVE, but they will do a good job on your machine. They typically only have a few models to choose and thourghly test machines. So after ordering you should expect it to be at their labs for a few days before they even ship. They will also probably offer a good warranty and customer service. You are also garunteed they will use high quality parts. They charge in the upwards of 200% over doing it yourself. These ones are like Falcon Northwest and Origin PC.
The problem with buying computers is that you get these cheap builds that come with a lot of prebuilt software. The majority advice is true.....Building your own computer means you get the highest worth of hardware. Most companies give you some hardware and then the rest of the money spent is through all sorts of preloaded software and operating systems.
First Rule, never buy PC's premade from anywhere BECAUSE u will lose ALOT OF MONEY.
2nd just buy it in parts and make it yourself, its as simple as the toddler square triangle and circle wood toy where u put the pieces in the correct holes. ITS THAT SIMPLE.
if ur in the US try newegg.com or if ur in australia use staticice.com.au
best advice for gaming PCs?? build your own. end of story.