[SOLVED] Buying a New PC

[AmeedMv]

Hey guys. Haven't been on the forums for a while since I built my old PC. Unfortunately it died and I'm looking to buy a new one this time because building one is not something I can afford at the moment as many of you may know.

Please note this is for gaming, graphic design and some amount of 3d work and video editing as well. My previous build had a GTX 970 so I'd love a 2060 although I know a 3070 would definitely be a hundred times much more than that. Sadly I do not have the time or money for either, as work depends on me having a PC to work with.

So to start off, I have checked out the following sites:

• NZXT (Starter Series, Pro is one of my options)
• Maingear (out of budget recently, due to chip shortage and gpu market I think?)
• Ibuypower (Horrible Reviews and even worse reviews from people like Gamer Nexus)
• Cyberpower (same as Ibuypower, horrible)
• ABS Master Gaming PC Series (a little absurd for $1000 with an i5 & a 2060 but it's within my budget and I can spend the extra dough on a monitor and shipping costs.

Okay. That last part might need a bit of clarification. Since I don't have any of my peripherals from my old setup, I still have to buy a monitor, headset and mouse/keyboard. So I'm looking for the best prebuilt recommendations within the US, whivh will need to be shipped overseas. And that is the reason why packaging matters. One thing I've noticed about cyberpower/ibuypower is that they do not pack their PC's properly.

If anyone has used or had experience with an ABS build or has any other recommendations, please feel free to let me know. I might have made some mistakes with what I wrote, if so please correct me.

Any and all help is appreciated! Thank you!

 

[jay32267]

Take it for what it's worth.....
I have two friends that bought two Ibuypower systems 3 years ago and no problems.
I bought a Cyberpower 4 years ago and no problems.
I bought an AVADirect machine last year and no problems.
Packaging was sufficient on both the Cyberpower and AvaDirect machines.

 

[logainofhades]

I would never recommend Ibuypower or Cyberpower. Seen far too many issues with them, with regard to build quality, and using junk power supplies. What exactly died, on the old machine? Gamer's Nexus has been doing some prebuild reviews and only one, so far, has been "good".

 

[Eximo]

iBuyPower has more of a reputation for poor builds (expensive and slow)
CyberPowerPC does seem to have occasional lapses in shipping, but if you go through their website and pick out the parts yourself, and are willing to re-build it when you get it, good source for parts.
ABS is Newegg? They seem alright, but are quite new at this.
Maingear is simply pricey, they offer good builds, but only the top end. Their markup on lower end and mid-range hardware is too much. (Same with Origin PC or Falcon Northwest, these are premium brands, and you pay for fancy support, t-shirts, and custom chassis)

Replace the CPU cooler and you can be up and running with a name brand computer. MSI will have used their own off the shelf boards and GPUs, if they ship internationally:

https://www.newegg.com/msi-codex-r-10sc-004ca/p/N82E16883152845?quicklink=true

 

[AmeedMv]

I would never recommend Ibuypower or Cyberpower. Seen far too many issues with them, with regard to build quality, and using junk power supplies. What exactly died, on the old machine? Gamer's Nexus has been doing some prebuild reviews and only one, so far, has been "good".

Yep, and the only one that has been "good" so far is the ABS one they got from Newegg, which kinda got me leaning towards them. For the price and the point where we are at with GPU prices and overall market prices, seems like a safe way to go. Any PC with an RTX card would help me because I tend to do GPU biased 3D renders quite often.

As for my old PC it died during the height of the pandemic, mobo+cpu fried due to an electric issue. FUBAR. Sold the parts for cheap as I needed the money back then. Been a while since.

 

[AmeedMv]

iBuyPower has more of a reputation for poor builds (expensive and slow)
CyberPowerPC does seem to have occasional lapses in shipping, but if you go through their website and pick out the parts yourself, and are willing to re-build it when you get it, good source for parts.
ABS is Newegg? They seem alright, but are quite new at this.
Maingear is simply pricey, they offer good builds, but only the top end. Their markup on lower end and mid-range hardware is too much. (Same with Origin PC or Falcon Northwest, these are premium brands, and you pay for fancy support, t-shirts, and custom chassis)

Replace the CPU cooler and you can be up and running with a name brand computer. MSI will have used their own off the shelf boards and GPUs, if they ship internationally:

https://www.newegg.com/msi-codex-r-10sc-004ca/p/N82E16883152845?quicklink=true

As I am not currently in the US, it isn't quite easy for me to order specific parts at the moment. Which is why I'm going the prebuilt direction + the whole chip/GPU shortage and all.

And out of those who I mentioned, with the exception of Maingear, Newegg/ABS is the only "brand" that has delivered properly on their promises. The components in their prebuilts are good and sometimes even better than their competition, ofcourse Maingear being the exception in this case.

As for MSI Codex R, I did some research and while their case design is like a high-end car, what's inside worries me too much. A subpar mobo with below average cooling. Also people seem to run into BSODs and other headaches with this build. Specially with their SSDs and RAM it seems.

 

[Eximo]

As for MSI Codex R, I did some research and while their case design is like a high-end car, what's inside worries me too much. A subpar mobo with below average cooling. Also people seem to run into BSODs and other headaches with this build. Specially with their SSDs and RAM it seems.

Just a thought since it was in your price range, and had an i5 and RTX 2060 like the other one you were looking at.

I do recall some issues with poor SSDs with one of the pre-builts reviewed recently, a cheap ADATA model.

I would almost count on replacing the included memory in most pre-builts. Either single channel, or just slower chips.

Gamer's Nexus was the review I saw that gave ABS a moderate approval for not being terrible, but I think this year was the start of the service, remains to be seen how long they will keep this up before cutting corners.

 

[AmeedMv]

Just a thought since it was in your price range, and had an i5 and RTX 2060 like the other one you were looking at.

I do recall some issues with poor SSDs with one of the pre-builts reviewed recently, a cheap ADATA model.

I would almost count on replacing the included memory in most pre-builts. Either single channel, or just slower chips.

Gamer's Nexus was the review I saw that gave ABS a moderate approval for not being terrible, but I think this year was the start of the service, remains to be seen how long they will keep this up before cutting corners.

Yeah they(ABS/Newegg) seem to be the only ones that can be trusted in regards to what comes with the PC. Although, on the software side, they too have a rampant issue of Windows Activation, but it can be fixed pretty easily with command prompt.

Other than that every other option is one of those "premium" prebuilt sites like Maingear, NZXT etc.

However this purchase is going to happen near the end of August, so here's hoping that those sites will lower their prices or atleast I'll get a good deal on a PC with a RTX 2000 or 3000 series GPU inside.

 

[DSzymborski]

Honestly, if you're not buying for a month, I wouldn't worry about it until a month passes. The scene is changing so rapidly in availability and pricing that specific advice will likely be no longer applicable!

Discount prebuilts tend to be universally awful simply because the prices aren't going to leave much room for competence. Which is why even when a prebuilt is the same price as an identically priced custom, the prebuilt tends to be a bad idea. In normal times. They don't really save one the trouble of building a PC because they tend to come riddled with so many problems that you need to have the skillset to build a PC just to maintain the prebuilt.

Newegg has an advantage here similar to Micro Center in that since they're primarily retailers, so that their "prebuilts" can be kind of just a value add rather than their main revenue driver. So it's not surprising to see a Newegg or MC built one being more competent.

Really, if you want to truly avoid the problems of a prebuilt, you have to go to a proper boutique builder. There's a good reason you see very little complaining about Falcon Northwest or Maingear or the high-end builders.

 

[Fatblabs]

Hey guys. Haven't been on the forums for a while since I built my old PC. Unfortunately it died and I'm looking to buy a new one this time because building one is not something I can afford at the moment as many of you may know.

Please note this is for gaming, graphic design and some amount of 3d work and video editing as well. My previous build had a GTX 970 so I'd love a 2060 although I know a 3070 would definitely be a hundred times much more than that. Sadly I do not have the time or money for either, as work depends on me having a PC to work with.

So to start off, I have checked out the following sites:

• NZXT (Starter Series, Pro is one of my options)
• Maingear (out of budget recently, due to chip shortage and gpu market I think?)
• Ibuypower (Horrible Reviews and even worse reviews from people like Gamer Nexus)
• Cyberpower (same as Ibuypower, horrible)
• ABS Master Gaming PC Series (a little absurd for $1000 with an i5 & a 2060 but it's within my budget and I can spend the extra dough on a monitor and shipping costs.

Okay. That last part might need a bit of clarification. Since I don't have any of my peripherals from my old setup, I still have to buy a monitor, headset and mouse/keyboard. So I'm looking for the best prebuilt recommendations within the US, whivh will need to be shipped overseas. And that is the reason why packaging matters. One thing I've noticed about cyberpower/ibuypower is that they do not pack their PC's properly.

If anyone has used or had experience with an ABS build or has any other recommendations, please feel free to let me know. I might have made some mistakes with what I wrote, if so please correct me.

Any and all help is appreciated! Thank you!

idk about nzxt because i got an rtx 3060, team tforce delta 16 gigs ram, 16000 dpi mouse, a gaming mouse, a gaming keyboard, asus prime z590-v (motherboard), 1 tb of storage (ssd), liquid cooling (dont wanna check the model too lazy rn lol), evga 600gd gold psu (a lil cheap psu, but its fine) for around $1670 (from cyberpower) including shipping and tax. thats like 70-80 dollars over the price for the starter pro (nzxt). honestly it really just depends on who’s building your pc for cyberpower. you could be unlucky tho (now they have quality checks on the pcs but we’ll see).