iBUYPOWER PC Any good?

[Koby]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=83-227-392&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=2#scrollFullInfo

Is this PC worth it? I haven't ever heard of anyone having an iBUYPOWER PC before.

Or do you think you could help me pick out parts for a better one?

[lemmingllama]

From what I can see, I would say that this computer would be a fairly decent one for the cost. It doesnt look like it would have a lot of upgrade potential though, and people are complaining since they partitioned off 150 odd gigs of hard-drive space. But it should run fairly well and be good for most gaming

[RikuoAmero]

First off, what are you going to use this PC for? High end gaming? Mid to low end? Web browsing? Video editing?

For the price, its a decent pc, although its been a while since I've seen a PC that didn't have at least a 1TB hard drive. If all you want is web browsing/office work, then this PC will do you grand. If you want high end gaming, then you'd be better off building your own. If you go that option, I'll walk you through it. Let me know if you'd like any help with that.

[Koby]

From what I can see, I would say that this computer would be a fairly decent one for the cost. It doesnt look like it would have a lot of upgrade potential though, and people are complaining since they partitioned off 150 odd gigs of hard-drive space. But it should run fairly well and be good for most gaming

The HDD issue was a simple manufacturing issue that takes under a minute to correct according to reviews.

Why would it not have upgrade potential?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html <- Doesn't list the FX-4100 CPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html <- Lists the Radeon HD 6670 decently.

@Rikou, mostly looking for a decent machine to get back into video encoding and such. Though could possibly use it for gaming too. Mind you, I don't play a lot of games on PC's really besides free-to-play games or hacked private servers like PSOBB, WoW, etc... so yeah but would also like it to be able to play 1080p video and have a high resolution setting for bigger screens.

How much do you think it'd cost roughly to build a better PC than that?

[RikuoAmero]

The HDD issue was a simple manufacturing issue that takes under a minute to correct according to reviews.

Why would it not have upgrade potential?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html <- Doesn't list the FX-4100 CPU.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html <- Lists the Radeon HD 6670 decently.

@Rikou, mostly looking for a decent machine to get back into video encoding and such. Though could possibly use it for gaming too. Mind you, I don't play a lot of games on PC's really besides free-to-play games or hacked private servers like PSOBB, WoW, etc... so yeah but would also like it to be able to play 1080p video and have a high resolution setting for bigger screens.

How much do you think it'd cost roughly to build a better PC than that?

Hmm. Dunno. First, tell me the most demanding game (in terms of systems resources) you plan to play on it e.g. Skyrim, Crysis 2, and what settings you'd want (and monitor size and resolution) To give you an idea, I spent about €2200 (although some of that cost was actually wasted, as I bought things I didn't need and had to replace the CPU cooler) and I can get Crysis 2 on highest settings at about 45+ FPS.

For pure video encoding and your free to play MMOs, you won't need a powerful PC.

Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna plan out a build for you, based on the answers you'll give to these questions.

1) What's your budget limit?

2) How big of a chassis do you want? In my case, I knew beforehand I was gonna use two graphics cards, so I got a full sized ATX tower.

3) What kind of features in the chassis will you be looking for? Do you want one that comes with lots of fans (like my Antec DF-85, it came with 7 fans already built in). One with space for multiple hard drives, multiple disc drives (and if so, how many?)

4) Do you have a preference for AMD or Nvidia graphics cards? In my case, I went Nvidia purely so I could use PhysX (which actually looks great in Batman Arkham City)

5) Do you want to boot off of a Solid State Drive (if you're unsure what they are, all you need to know is they are physically smaller than a hard drive, are more expensive per gigabyte (for example, my 120GB SSD cost me roughly the same as a 1TB hard drive) but are at least four to five times faster to read/write from. My gaming rig takes on average 40 secs to boot, compared to about 2-3 mins on my last machine).

6) What operating system are you familiar with and would feel most comfortable using? Win XP, Win Vista, Win 7, or a variant of Unix/Linux? (If Unix/Linux, look elsewhere for how to use them, I've only ever used Linux myself briefly and that was on my PS3 before Sony patched out Other OS)

7) What kind of connectivity are you looking for? Do you see yourself using USB 3.0, Firewire, Bluetooth etc? What's the minimum number of USB 2.0 ports you'll need?

8) Should I throw in a sound card?

[Koby]

Hmm. Dunno. First, tell me the most demanding game (in terms of systems resources) you plan to play on it e.g. Skyrim, Crysis 2, and what settings you'd want (and monitor size and resolution) To give you an idea, I spent about €2200 (although some of that cost was actually wasted, as I bought things I didn't need and had to replace the CPU cooler) and I can get Crysis 2 on highest settings at about 45+ FPS.

For pure video encoding and your free to play MMOs, you won't need a powerful PC.

Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna plan out a build for you, based on the answers you'll give to these questions.

1) What's your budget limit?

2) How big of a chassis do you want? In my case, I knew beforehand I was gonna use two graphics cards, so I got a full sized ATX tower.

3) What kind of features in the chassis will you be looking for? Do you want one that comes with lots of fans (like my Antec DF-85, it came with 7 fans already built in). One with space for multiple hard drives, multiple disc drives (and if so, how many?)

4) Do you have a preference for AMD or Nvidia graphics cards? In my case, I went Nvidia purely so I could use PhysX (which actually looks great in Batman Arkham City)

5) Do you want to boot off of a Solid State Drive (if you're unsure what they are, all you need to know is they are physically smaller than a hard drive, are more expensive per gigabyte (for example, my 120GB SSD cost me roughly the same as a 1TB hard drive) but are at least four to five times faster to read/write from. My gaming rig takes on average 40 secs to boot, compared to about 2-3 mins on my last machine).

6) What operating system are you familiar with and would feel most comfortable using? Win XP, Win Vista, Win 7, or a variant of Unix/Linux? (If Unix/Linux, look elsewhere for how to use them, I've only ever used Linux myself briefly and that was on my PS3 before Sony patched out Other OS)

7) What kind of connectivity are you looking for? Do you see yourself using USB 3.0, Firewire, Bluetooth etc? What's the minimum number of USB 2.0 ports you'll need?

8) Should I throw in a sound card?

Erm, at this current time, it's likely WoW. I certainly don't intend to spend €2200 on it, as for the most part, at this current time it's main job would be encoding videos as quickly as possible.

1. Less than $1,000 lol. Although under $700 is preferred. The most expensive PC I ever bought was my $330 laptop on Black Friday of 2010, but my most expensive PC I own was given to me by my GMA who spent like $550 on it. So yeah, never had a really bad ass PC before.

2. Full size would be preferred. Enough room for additional drives in the future.

3. Would like it to be able to hold 2-3 hard drives at some point at least. At least 2 discs drives. As far as fans, IDK... just whatever will keep it running without overheating.. I'm not experienced with fans.

4. I tend to go with AMD, but I'm not really picky. If Nvidia is better, then go for it.

5. I know what SSD drives are, although not completely sure about why they're preferred. Depends on how much extra it'll cost, you see I'm not looking to spend over $1,000 on the initial build, but I could always get one later on as well.

6. I'm most familiar with XP, have used it forever, have multiple serial codes and the discs, etc. However as far as a new PC, I'd probably go with Win 7 if I had a choice.

7. A lot of USB ports. I don't have anything I know of that supports USB 3.0 but it would be nice to have for future things. I would like to get an external drive cage which would likely use 3.0 or eSata. As far as USB 2.0 ports, probably 6-8.

8. As far as sound, I've only ever used the speakers that came with a pre-built PC as well as the integrated sound. So never really looked at sound cards, or what the benefits of them are.

[Koby]

With the help of RikouAmero, I've now bought my new PC.

Specs:

CPU: AMD FX-4100 CPU (4x 3.60GHz/4MB L2 Cache)

Liquid CPU Cooling System [AMD]

RAM: 8 GB [4 GB x2] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - G.Skill Ripjaws X

GFX Card: AMD Radeon HD 6670 - 1GB

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 -- AMD 970

Power Supply: 600 Watt

Primary Hard Drive: 120 GB ADATA S510 SSD

Case: Xion Echo Gaming Case - Red

Case Lighting: Liquid Neon Thunder Pattern Light - Red

I'll show some pictures whenever I actually get it setup.

[G Bass]

Hm not bad. Let me know what you think of Bulldozer. I've heard they weren't too good (pretty much flopped), but I've never used it. So I don't know.

[bezelbubba]

I had one billing issue with a fleet of computers I bought off them years ago

other than that solid builds with pretty clean wiring. You can get off the shelf parts and do it yourself, but on rare occasions tehir packages beat the time/effort to build one yourself. You are paying for the work/support that goes into a build though to them insted of the do it yourself cheap way.