$2500...which company should get it?

Another vote for Maingear. They are the only Boutique I would consider right now considering price/support.
 
My first suggestion would be to build it yourself. Second suggestion, if you must go the other route is Digital Storm. Excellent customer service. Go to the forums there and someone there will help you get the best bang for the buck.
 
- Maingear
- Digital Storm
- Velocity Micro

pick one there pretty much the same
 
I know there can be varying opinions on something like this. Plus, with me being a newbie on this board, maybe I my opinion won't carry as much weight. But I just received my new rig from AVA-D about 2 weeks ago, and I will say that the workmanship, the customer service and PC itself, is impeccable. It's the PC in my signature. That's all I can say-- they really did me right, and I'll definitely be using them again.

Dave
 
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I almost picked Puget as well, but didn't because I had a little more flexibility with AVA-D. But from what I could tell they seemed to have a great reputation. BTW, my rig was in the exact price range as what you're looking for.

Dave
 
Elios said:
- Maingear
- Digital Storm
- Velocity Micro

pick one there pretty much the same
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Maingear and Digtal Storm have good ratings,but Velocity Micro has really has really dropped in popularity since their early days. I've seen a lot of complaints about the quality of their builds.
 
michael.pa2 said:
It looks like Vigor went the way of Monarch. According to customer posts at RR,all their employees got so fed up with management they quit.
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I hope AVA doesn't go the way of Monarch. My last PC was from Monarch. I never had one problem with it, so fortunately I never had to send it back for anything.

Dave
 
Well, here are the 10 companies I am looking at:

Max Force
Puget
AVA Direct
Maingear
Velocity Micro
Digital Storm
Overdrive PC
Magic Micro
Alienware
Cyberpower PC

I might substitute Cyberpower with Ballistic (from the other thread) after I check them out, even though they are brand new.
Overdrive is crap but there isn't much else out there unless I check out Dell's.
Any other boutiques I should add to the list?

iBuyPower is a sub of Cyber, I think, so I didn't include them.

And what happened to the Vigor workforce?
 
Yeah I would do a custom build with parts off these forums. OCN has some people with manufacturing cpus which are great overclockers and better than any retail cpus. That would be best bang for buck way to go. People are always selling great working tech for cheap
 
If you don't want to try the DIY route, why not go for a desktop replacement?
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP8120

Much sexier than a boring pre-built PC, the specs are insane for a notebook at $2.5k and you will have a much better chance at selling it in the future than with a normal desktop.

Desktops pretty much lose 50% of their value after the first year, and unless you build the system yourself there will always be something about pre-built that will bother you (what's with all the blue lights? why so big? why such a low overclock? etc. etc.)
An sli enabled laptop like the sager will satisfy your gaming needs, will be easy to transport and will sell well.
 
In your situation I would stick with Maingear. Besides Falcon Northwest they are the only current Boutique PC vendor that I associate with a true high-end PC. IMO, all the other companies you listed are either:

too obscure - Puget, Max Force, Magic Micro, Overdrive PC
too value (cheap) oriented - iBuypower, Cyberpower, AVA Direct
too mainstream oriented - Alienware, Velocity Micro

I miss the good ol days when Voodoo PC, Falcon Northwest and Alienware were at the top of their game, circa 2000-2004. Now look at us now. HP reduced Voodoo to almost nothing. Dell has completely stripped Alienware of its soul and now its nothing more than a fancy Dell. The only player left is Falcon Northwest and I commend them for remaining true to its core and not selling out.
 
Thats a nice laptop. Sager is aces.

What I am really looking for here, though, is where you guys would spend your money if you HAD to spend it at a boutique and WHAT you would put into your machine.
 
Liquid_Cooled said:
In your situation I would stick with Maingear. Besides Falcon Northwest they are the only current Boutique PC vendor that I associate with a true high-end PC. IMO, all the other companies you listed are either:

too obscure - Puget, Max Force, Magic Micro, Overdrive PC
too value (cheap) oriented - iBuypower, Cyberpower, AVA Direct
too mainstream oriented - Alienware, Velocity Micro

I miss the good ol days when Voodoo PC, Falcon Northwest and Alienware were at the top of their game, circa 2000-2004. Now look at us now. HP reduced Voodoo to almost nothing. Dell has completely stripped Alienware of its soul and now its nothing more than a fancy Dell. The only player left is Falcon Northwest and I commend them for remaining true to its core and not selling out.
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I'm wondering if you could get a decent machine from Falcon Northwest for $2500 or under.
 
I'd probably go with maingear if I HAD to, although I hate the gigantic size of their cases.
The Shift looks like it's the best pre-built system out there.

Personally, I'd go for a Sager, but that's just my preference for size talking.
 
mashakos said:
I'd probably go with maingear if I HAD to, although I hate the gigantic size of their cases.
The Shift looks like it's the best pre-built system out there.

Personally, I'd go for a Sager, but that's just my preference for size talking.
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When did sagers support get good? And agreed, their notebooks are the size of desktops.
 
I've never heard bad about Sager. Admittedly, I have never seriously researched them out enough to check into their customer service but I have never heard negative from this forum.
 
staticlag said:
I'd advise him to get rid of all his Razer stuff. Because of its poor design its pretty much assured to cause system hangups and freezes, especially during boot.
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and id advise that your advise is bs since ive been using razer products for the last 2 1/2 years and have never had a problem.. even if my razer lycosa keyboard looks like shit it still works perfectly fine.. ive never had a problem with my razer lachesis from day one even though they released a firmware update for the 1% of people that actually were having problems with the mouse..
 
BlackholeShawn said:
I'm wondering if you could get a decent machine from Falcon Northwest for $2500 or under.
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$2400 will get you an i7 860 with a P5P55D-E Pro, a 5870, an X-Fi Fatal1ty, and an X25-M 80GB. Sure, you can get a better deal building but that's not that bad if you're considering the extreme high-end "pay for the name" builders.
 
Check out Digital Storm, but use their Special Deals config. to build your system. They have a lot of support on their forums.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
and id advise that your advise is bs since ive been using razer products for the last 2 1/2 years and have never had a problem.. even if my razer lycosa keyboard looks like shit it still works perfectly fine.. ive never had a problem with my razer lachesis from day one even though they released a firmware update for the 1% of people that actually were having problems with the mouse..
Click to expand...

+1

some ppl are speaking from the wrong anatomical region...
 
My vote is for Maingear Shift, just got one, if you haven't done it yet, get in touch with Chris there, you won't be sorry.
 
For what it's worth, I ordered 15 i7 860 boxes from Puget a few months back to replace some of our P2/3/4 office machines. Typically I DIY the machines around here, but I needed more of them faster than I could get them together, so I called around to a few places. I had some very specific requirements (chief amongst them an Intel motherboard and one of several brands of power supply).

Maingear asked me to e-mail them a parts list to look over; I did, they never got back to me. Puget, on the other hand, did awesome; the machines were a little bit pricier, (obviously) than DIYing it, but their sales staff was great about discussing what my options were, and they were excellent about doing something a little bit out of their normal lineup for me. They couldn't do exactly what I wanted (I wanted 400w Corsairs instead of 450s, smaller hard drives, a lower-end ATI card that they didn't stock, and SD fans) but they got close enough, and I'm very happy with the result. I've had absolutely zero problems with the machines, and the documentation that came with them was excellent.
 
Maingear, Falcon, Puget ect; these are all very good companies and you can't go wrong with any of them. They all sell top of the line computers and have great USA based service and support.
 
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