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Custom Built PC Sites

L

Lulabyte

n00b
Joined
Aug 3, 2005
Messages
11
Hello!

I am currently in the market for a new gaming PC, and while I understand it's much cheaper and more fulfilling to build one from scratch, because my generous folks are getting this for me as a gift, they prefer that I go through a custom built PC company that provides a warranty. I will not look this gift horse in the mouth! However, I am looking for some website/company recommendations. I have had horrible experiences with Alienware in the past, so that's definitely out. And I'd prefer not to go with Dell in general. I've been looking at CyberPower PC and that looks promising. I like how you can select between different cases for their different rigs and even get laser engravings. Their customer service seems to get a bad rap, however.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've been in the desktop market and I'm a little overwhelmed. So any recommendations (or warnings) that you may have would be greatly appreciated! I'm trying to keep the system under $2,000 and the games I'll mostly be playing will be The Sims 3 and Skyrim, which currently run terribly on my Dell XPS1530 laptop.

Thank you!
 
Well this prolly wont help but all the parts you buy come with manufacturers warranty.......ohhhh the system you could build for 2k....
 
dj LiTh said:
Well this prolly wont help but all the parts you buy come with manufacturers warranty.......ohhhh the system you could build for 2k....
Click to expand...

I know, right? You certainly don't have to tell me twice! I used to build my own systems and quite enjoyed it. But I will abide by my sweet parents' wishes and go through a company that provides a warranty and fix-it options. Actually, I've been looking at Puget Systems for the past hour and really like what I see, especially after reading so many negative reviews about CyberPower's customer service. It seems I'll be able to build a very nice system from them for under $2,000 which makes my parents (and me!) very happy. :D
 
I highly recommend Puget Systems as well.

Now as for what parts/PCs to choose from them, please answer these questions so that we can help you better:
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
6) Will you be overclocking?
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? etc.
 
Puget is a quality builder,no doubt about it. But their prices are a bit on the high side the last I looked. I ended up going with Max Force PC,same quality work,3 year warranty,wide choice of components and overclocking,all at very reasonable prices.
 
I see lots of ads for Digital Storm. However i know nothing about them as i build my own. Just another option
 
Origin is highly regarded. They $1,800 RTS (ready to ship) system is only $100 over Newegg prices (for the components alone): http://www.anandtech.com/show/5146/origin-pc-offers-readytoship-system

I know very little about ibuypower.com, besides the fact that iBuyPower's pricing really isn't much higher than Newegg. For example, the Chimera 4-E2 is $22 over newegg cost for the same components (had to downgrade from 2600k to 2500k on the Chimera since 2600k is unavailable on Newegg). And that includes buying Windows. http://www.ibuypower.com/info/chimera4.aspx#p=p1
 
Both Ibuypower and Cyberpower have a pretty dismal reputation as far as quality,reliability,and customer service goes. I think the general opinion of them
here is avoid them both like the plague.
 
well if u don't like alienware or dell you'll be happy to know that dell bought out alienware...so now you only have to hate one company :D


Ibuypower and Cyberpowerpc are the two big ones I know of...I've heard mixed things about them but their prices are pretty fair IMO.

Also, I built my last PC (minus a GPU) for $500 so you're going to be looking at a pretty impressive rig.
SLI/crossfire GPUs and an i7 or 6-core AMD with 16GB of RAM and a SSD should be very doable...maybe 3 monitors for eyefinity too?
 
I know people who've had good experiences with iBuypower/Cyberpower, and also read plenty of bad reviews about them. But the thing is, their prices (not counting deals) and component selection are pretty fair. There really is nothing stopping you from ordering a system with the parts you want for almost the same cost as parts, get the warranty, and open it up to check/fix build quality in case their are problems.
 
Just run the parts list by us before you buy anything! My recommendation:

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
Memory: 8GB DDR3
GPU: GTX 560 Ti or better OR Radeon 6870 or better.
 
EuphoricRage470 said:
Just run the parts list by us before you buy anything! My recommendation:

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
Memory: 8GB DDR3
GPU: GTX 560 Ti or better OR Radeon 6870 or better.
Click to expand...

....He's got 2k to play with...thats on the lowend of the spectrum IMO
 
I'm in the market for a custom PC as well, after a lot of research I decided that I'm going to go with Maingear. They seem to be doing a Black Friday/Cyber Monday special right now so check it out.
 
Dear lord a 2K PC? Right now? Makes me tear up what could be done if you self build...
 
I would recommend Maingear PC also. I ordered my new $2K computer from Maingear on Friday which is going to replace an almost 4 year old Maingear, which I wrote about on these forums here.

Now, I understand I could have done a little better building my own, but I'm buying this rig for business-related graphics work which means I can't take time away from my business to fiddle with anything that would cause downtime, and thus cost me money. That means I needed a warranty from the manufacturer on the build, so if anything went wrong someone else would be responsible for fixing it while I continued to work on other machines.

That said, what I'm getting for my $2K seems to be pretty awesome to me.
F131 (system-F131-Stock)
Chassis: MAINGEAR F131 Chassis With One-Piece Aluminum Front Construction - Black with Acoustic Dampening
Motherboard: Intel® DZ68DB Featuring USB 3.0 and SATA 6G [B3 Stepping]
Processor: Intel® CoreT i7 2600 3.4GHz/3.8GHz Turbo 8MB L3 Cache GT1
Processor Cooling: MAINGEAR EPIC 120 Supercooler
MAINGEAR Redline Overclocking Service: Intel® Turbo Boost Advanced Automatic Overclocking
Memory: 16GB Corsair® VengeanceT DDR3-1600 (4x4GB)
Graphics and GPGPU Accelerator: 2x NVIDIA® GeForceT GTX 560 4GB Total GDDR5 in SLI w/PhysX [ENTHUSIAST]
Power Supply: 620 Watt Seasonic® S12II 80+ Bronze Certified Power Supply
Hard Drive Bay One: 120GB Corsair® Force GT SSD SATA 6G (w/ TRIM) [555MB/s Reads]
Hard Drive Bay Two: Pre-Wired SATA Backplane Expansion Bracket For Easy Upgrades
Optical Drive One: 8X Lite-On Blu-ray Reader and DVD Lightscribe Combo Drive with Software
Memory Card Reader: All-in-One 3.5" USB 2.0 Flash Card Reader & Writer
Audio: 7.1+2 Channel High Definition Surround Sound Supporting S/DIF Optical In and Out
Network Adapter: On-board Gigabit Ethernet
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Click to expand...
Maybe I'll even write another post about my experience for posterity's sake.
:D:p;)
 
I come across a lot of people that are looking for a basic system at an affordable price. Most of the time, the latest powerhouse PC isn't necessary for typical programs (Browser, Word Processing, etc) I typically send them to www.bcdelectrostore.com - They have Windows 7 systems for as low as $150!
 
Digital Storm, Origin, Puget got my vote. Not sure about Falcon Northwest or Maingear. Scratch that, Main Gear got my vote too.
 
My advice, Which i think you should highly consider. Try to sell them (your parents) on the price difference and build it yourself. Tell them it will be a sold 500-700 dollars cheaper (with some price fidgeting and little white lies) it could even come out to be close to 900 dollars cheaper Unless they aren't stupid (It would work on mine). You can buy warranties from an independent company (I think net gear or something like that) through newegg that extends your warranty on your parts the 3 year manufacture warranty can be extended close to another 3 years. Plus you will save money and have the joy of building and using a computer that you built. I just built, what I consider to be, a pretty decent gaming rig for right at 1200 so the potential is defently there with 2 grand Dude you could build a freakin' beast gaming rig.

If this is just for gaming definitely Don't waste your money on the i7 2700k or the new SB-E processors (not saying that these chips are a waste of money) But for a gaming rig they are over kill. Also If you parents aren't having the "build your own" argument then do not settle for any thing lower than a 2500k the K is important here. If you do not know this already the "k" processors are unlocked and you can overclock them with essentially changing 1-2 values in the bios. trust me running a 800mhz overclock by changing 2 values is pretty impressive designing (or just a sham, I can't decide).
 
I'll add a vote for origin, although I've found them to be a little pricey (which I think you'll get with most of the decent boutique builders).
 
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