CyberPower Custom Build @ [H] Consumer

Chris_Morley

Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
Joined
Jul 5, 2000
Messages
3,609
We just felt it was a below average system from a below average company that delivered a below average experience. The bottom line is that it left us wishing we had purchased our system from someone else.
Read all about it here!
 
How unfortunate to run into so many problems. You guys sure know how to pick em ;)

It's always disappointing to read a negative review, but in this case I appreciated you trying out the experience for your readers and saving them from similar mishaps. Thanks for doing another great, well written review.
 
Chris what is the UL number off of that Turbolink PSU?
 
Chris_Morley said:
I can't find it.

Ok thanks for looking. Guess that isn't really that surprising though....most turbolinks are Deer products.
 
I agree with the review. The extra money spent on a more expensive OEM usually guarantees you peace of mind when it comes to build quality.
 
This review pretty much hits the spot. I am surprise you guys didn't get a worst experience. Two of my friends had the pleasure of buying from Cyberpower . It was a very sour experience for them.
 
Ouch. :( Well in any case it'll be interesting to see what a company representative has to say about all this... :)
 
Interesting read.

Again, its not too far off from my experience with dealing with them.
 
Nevertheless, this one is the highest scoring Intel desktop in the H consumer reviews so far... congratulations!
 
jon67 said:
Nevertheless, this one is the highest scoring Intel desktop in the H consumer reviews so far... congratulations!
Has nothing to do with the fact it's an Intel machine. Our highest scoring laptops are Intel.
 
jon67 said:
Nevertheless, this one is the highest scoring Intel desktop in the H consumer reviews so far... congratulations!

Our early Gateway desktops did rather well in our program - both had Intels.
 
I dont know comparing your write up to that of the Dell and other machines this one seemed to have similar issues as others but u seem to be more negative in your wording then in other reviews.

imo
 
Interesting review. Hopefully they get the chance to rework some things and you can evaluate another system.
 
dajet24 said:
I dont know comparing your write up to that of the Dell and other machines this one seemed to have similar issues as others but u seem to be more negative in your wording then in other reviews.

imo

Can you supply some specifics please, so we can try to understand your generality stated here?
 
dajet24 said:
I dont know comparing your write up to that of the Dell and other machines this one seemed to have similar issues as others but u seem to be more negative in your wording then in other reviews.

imo

Maybe because this company had the lowest quality support (which seems to be important in buying from an OEM).

At least with Dell if you hassle them enough you will eventually get service, not some smart-ass response like "That is a Microsoft issue" !

Anytime you get a technician who would rather make up excuses or blame others you are not getting the best service, but a bad attitude.
If I were reviewing that technician at the end of the year he would be GONE! He could of atleast said he would try and help, or that he would get back to you if he heard about a solution. Better yet, he could have appologised that you had to re-install the OS to fix his company's foul up.

Dell's xps400 was not worded any more light-heartedly that this one. In-fact, going back and looking at both sets of closing comments, I would say they are about the same.
 
Sounds about right to me. They really do make just all around inferior systems. It really takes away from the experience when the company seems so bass ackwards.
 
I tried Cyberpower a few years ago with the same experience, if not worse. I later found out that Ibuypower is a related company, as both are owned by cousins or something. They share 2Net, who is truly aweful, and they have similar products/prices/quality/ads. I'd love to see an Ibuypower just to compare to this system. Even though the price is low, you don't even get what you pay for, so there is no value.

Also, doesn't ABS use 2Net? That company (2Net aka ZNet) would make a good story on their own. Velocity used them a few years back and dumped them.
 
When I read these system evaluations I always feel as they were written especciallly for me. They aren't too techy, and they tell me a lot about how a company works.

If you look in my sig you'll see that I'm overdue a new system and I've been following these evaluations with growing interest. In fact, I've been spelling them letter for letter since the first.

I fell like [H]ard|ocp has a special mission going: let's make damn sure Astra buys a decent computer this summer!
 
my roomate bought a cyberpower system about 4 months ago. $2600 for a nice box: 4800+ dual core, 7800gtx, 2G ram, 10k HD, watercooled CPU, etc etc.

the build quality was so-so, but the system itself has been rock solid (we cleaned out the OS, removed all crap, updated drivers, bios, etc) and nothing has broken yet (besides couple of minor crashes initially) he hasn't needed to call tech support, which i guess is a good thing. :)

anyways, my impression is the same as the review: i'd feel kinda let down w/a cyberpower box. if i buy, it'll be from somewere else. given a choice of a kia or acura, i'll take the latter.

shane
 
kinda sucks i was going to buy a pc from them. thanks for the review. I have now changed my mind
 
DNA Doc said:
Our early Gateway desktops did rather well in our program - both had Intels.

You're right, I forgot about the Gateways, and also the first system review with the not so stable overclocked 840EE VM did better than CyberP.
 
Astragoth said:
If you look in my sig you'll see that I'm overdue a new system and I've been following these evaluations with growing interest.


Just pop an X800GTO from newegg on your rig and upgrade to K8 when Vista is out.
 
lovemyPC said:
It's always disappointing to read a negative review

I find the negative reviews to be the most interesting. For instance, when researching a product that I want to buy but don't have much experience with, I will often go to Newegg for the reviews, and specifically look for the negative reviews (3 stars or less). After weeding out the ones that are obviously user error, I can get a reasonable picture of what I can expect from buying the product. After all, what's more useful... a zillion reviews saying "OMG this hardware roxxors so awesome it works great!!111!" or a few dozen that say "I had BSODs until updating the firmware and downloading new drivers."

JOESKURTU said:
some smart-ass response like "That is a Microsoft issue" !

Guess what? It is NOT a Microsoft issue. If you purchased Windows in a retail box, then it IS a Microsoft issue, but OEM software is not supported by Microsoft, but by... guess who... the system builder!
 
Zap said:
Guess what? It is NOT a Microsoft issue. If you purchased Windows in a retail box, then it IS a Microsoft issue, but OEM software is not supported by Microsoft, but by... guess who... the system builder!
You know what, you're absolutely right, and that point should have been specifically stated in the article. We'll make sure to clarify that next time around.
 
This review hits the nail right on the head with Cyberpower. I purchased a PC from them about 3 years ago. I had numerous problems with them from the start:
1) I had ordered the Rounded Cables option, which would create optimal airflow via carefully placed cabling. When I first opened the box, I indeed saw the rounded cables. However, they were neither carefully placed, nor created optimal airflow. This created some upgrading frustrations, as I had to take apart the majority of cabling just to install a new hard drive, and their USB cable placement covered one of the PCI slots.
2) About a year after I had the PC, my CDRW failed to work. I emailed tech support and they said they'd need to send me a new one, but I'd have to send in mine and include my address in 2 locations: on the box itself and on a note with other information inside the box. Now, I had changed addresses within that year, so I carefully noted the new address. After a few days, they recieved my broken CDRW and sent me an email saying they have sent a replacement... to my OLD address. After several emails telling them it was the wrong address (their tech support line never answered the phone for me), they did not change the shipping location, simply saying "We sent out your replacement already." Needless to say, after about 2 weeks I gave up, realizing I would never see it.

Now, 3 years down the road (warranty expired), I'm having several problems with this PC: random freezing/crashing, heat issues, parts dying off, etc. And I take pretty good care of my PC's.

I would not ever recommend anyone to buy from Cyberpower, it isn't worth your time, and for the money, you can find better quality PC's elsewhere.
 
Astragoth said:
When I read these system evaluations I always feel as they were written especciallly for me. They aren't too techy, and they tell me a lot about how a company works.

If you look in my sig you'll see that I'm overdue a new system and I've been following these evaluations with growing interest. In fact, I've been spelling them letter for letter since the first.

I fell like [H]ard|ocp has a special mission going: let's make damn sure Astra buys a decent computer this summer!

Music to our ears :). Glad to know you're finding value in them.
 
Hey buji. If you don't mind exactly what mainboard did you get with your system, as well as psu, video card and ram modules? What parts are 'dying out'? It's still operational? Just a laggy PC? or you actually have parts besides your DVD that went out on you?
 
Chris_Morley said:
You know what, you're absolutely right, and that point should have been specifically stated in the article. We'll make sure to clarify that next time around.

why not update the article with fuzzy little parenthesis and italics (editors notes)? :D
 
Chris_Morley said:
You know what, you're absolutely right, and that point should have been specifically stated in the article. We'll make sure to clarify that next time around.
Yeah, it's great how if it's OEM Microsoft refuses to support it :p. I'm a tech support guy for a Boutique so I do understand that, but if one of our customers calls Microsoft, they could at least try to help with a very basic question. I've had customers tell me that Microsoft refused to talk to them, and I had no problem what so ever answering their question, but it irks me to know that they'll throw people around for no reason. Hell people call me for M$ support all the time, and I'm glad to help them but if you have an OEM Norton Anti-Virus 2006, you don't call the System builder for that. :rolleyes:
 
zone_86 said:
Hey buji. If you don't mind exactly what mainboard did you get with your system, as well as psu, video card and ram modules? What parts are 'dying out'? It's still operational? Just a laggy PC? or you actually have parts besides your DVD that went out on you?

Mainboard: MSI 648 Max-L SIS648
CPU: Intel p4 2.4GHz 533 FSB 512K
RAM: Corsair 1024MB PC3200 PC400 DDR (2x512)
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Sound Card: Creative Labs SB X-Gamer Audigy 5.1

It is still operational, and it's not a "laggy" PC. All my case fans died along with the CDRW drive. Games tend to freeze for no reason and I have to reboot, sometimes the PC just freezes even when I'm not doing anything. I don't feel like talking to their tech support (even if the warranty wasn't expired) because I know I'd get terrible service, just like the first time.
 
dajet24 said:
Well for all the negativity in the review you still gave it a rather exceptable 7/10

Were as say in the dell 400 review you gave a 4/10 and while i agree with your dell review, if things were as bad as you made me feel about the cyberpower i woulda expected a lower overall score is what i mean.

I've written both evaluations. Many of the problems were similar but different in degree.

One of the biggest problems we had with the Dell, at the time, was that we overlooked the checkmark for the Windows disc. (Quite frankly, we overlooked it because we thought a Windows disc was pretty standard on computers.) We could have solved the problems with bloatware the same way we could have solved the problems with the Cyberpower - by doing a reformat. Unfortunately, we did not have the ability to reformat, the way we did with the Cyberpower.

Secondly, in the Dell evaluation, it was clear that the technical support person had encountered the problems before - so it seemed obvious to us that Dell knew about the problems but chose not to fix it.

And while we didn't like being told "it's a windows problem," because it sounds like the tech doesn't know the answer but doesn't want to admit he doesn't know the answer - the Dell techs outright lied to us (or someone was lying to them) and contradicted each other over policies.

The other factor was that we evaluated the customer experience. The Cyberpower problems were annoying, true. But the Dell problems that we had -- the dell annoyances were incredibly, INCREDIBLY annoying. Tech support hold times. Bloatware popups. Getting given the run-around.

We also didn't think the problems we got with the Cyberpower were problems every computer user who purchased a Cyberpower computer would encounter. In some respects, that error message seems like a fluke. However, we were certain every problem we encountered with our Dell would be encountered by everyone who bought that model of computer from Dell.

To be fair, this was from back in December - ages ago in the world of computers - and Dell might be turning things around with the limited preinstalled software promises. I don't want to slam them again when we slammed them back in December - that's almost like double jeopardy. But having done both evaluations, as bad as my experiences with Cyberpower were, they did not come near the amount of problems we had with the Dell XPS 400... By the end, I could no longer stand to -touch- the Dell, if that gave you any indication.
 
it's not a "laggy" PC. All my case fans died along with the CDRW drive. Games tend to freeze for no reason and I have to reboot, sometimes the PC just freezes even when I'm not doing anything. I don't feel like talking to their tech support (even if the warranty wasn't expired) because I know I'd get terrible service, just like the first time.

Probably PSU or ram related - check your rails (rated +12v AMPs and actual voltages). Your SIS board needs the most current 1_21 SIS agp driver from the MSI site (or SIS) to act reliably in the newest games even with an older VGA card like the R9700P (not sure if you're a gamer but just in case). Could also be an IRQ/driver issue with your SB card too. Case fans are easy enough to replace. If they just 'died' on you (this has not happend to me on literally hundreds of builds) it could also be indicitave of a bad PSU possibly or just that it needs a more firm connection - providing you check and tried other molex connectors directly to the fans. If the fans were plugged into onboard fan controllers the board may have issues, but if you had confimed that you should have used tech support to replace the motherboard. Additionally, if you experienced these issues initially and tech support did not get you a resolution, unfortunatly with companies like Cyberpower you need to be very persistent to get resolution. They aren't as attentive to customers as the better building botique outfits. But your issues as stated sound easy to fix (to me). You should not have to live with your PC acting like that. Post in the general tech support forum here there are people that can help you out there. Many people that order Cyberpower and Ibuypower "base builds" EG: without upgrading the power supply and using (for instance an included with case raidmax PSU) many times have issues appear early, or later on. Read the review of the WidowPC here to understand how that can happen. The PSU that you would have thought would be a sent with type of config built was not sufficient to run that rig reliably (very low quality and low rated 012V rail), and can cause issues.
 
I bought a pc from cyberpowerpc (or ibuypowerpc I dont recall) about 5-6 years ago. This was pretty much the time that the athlon xp have been out for a good year or so. I purchased the athlon xp 2000+ system, not a complete one though. I just bought the cpu, motherboard, psu and case. The rest of the stuff I put in myself. I didnt have any problems except that one of the fan wires was cut. I had to soder it back to get the fan working. Otherwise I didnt have any problems. I didnt deal with the tech support though.

I also recommended the company to a friend of mine (thinking that the cut fan wire was just a fluke). He ordered a pentium 4 system (2.8 ghz, top of the line at that time, with a gf 4 ti 4600 which was at that time the fastest gpu out). He received the system with a very horrible cable arrangement job. He had to go to a friend's place to get the cables all organized.
 
i bought a pc from cyberpower a year ago. first, everything was not put together right so i needed to take it appart and reassemble it. that was the worst becasue i ordered a custom built pc so i didnt need to make it myself! then none of the drivers were installed. i had it so i callled customer support and they took it back no questions asked for a full refund. :confused:
 
dajet24 said:
Were as say in the dell 400 review you gave a 4/10 and while i agree with your dell review, if things were as bad as you made me feel about the cyberpower i woulda expected a lower overall score is what i mean.

I thought the scoring was kinda high for all the mishaps they went through in the review process, especially the one where the tech support guy says its a microsoft problem. Working in tech support myself, that is a real @$$hole response and does not make the customer feel good at all.

Reformatting of the computer is another huge downfall in my eyes. If you needed to install the OS yourself why are you paying them for anything besides sticking all the parts together in the case?
 
thats wierd i always read about bad cyberpowersystem reviews but ive ordered twice from them with nothing short of a great product for the price. seriously i have looked at alot of the system configurators on the internet and couldnt find one as cheap as cyberpower, though cheaper isnt always better thats what i was determined to find, the cheapest value. granted when i took my pc out of the box i did a good inspection and ziptied some molex wires and cleaned stuff up but seriously it wasnt anything to bitch about... i think anyone who recives a pc in the mail should not just take it out and plug it in but instead go through and check for loose screws in transit. ive had no problem with two times ive dealt with them. though i do agree their customer service kinda blows... hit or miss i guess
 
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