New Computer Specs Recommendations

[Thandal]

^Doesn't that take the fun out of building a rig though ? I never build one, but i would like to to experience it. then again i had repair classes to do it so there's that.

 

Besides the time savings, (which is not nothing!) the biggest advantage over DIY other than price, (which is almost ZERO with the Vanquish II) is that there's someone besides you standing behind the machine if it doesn't work. I don't know how many hours and dollars people have lost because they made one small mistake when trying to put their own rigs together from parts. Buying a pre-built from a reputable company means getting a warranty!

[soupdragon1234]

 

Besides the time savings, (which is not nothing!) the biggest advantage over DIY other than price, (which is almost ZERO with the Vanquish II) is that there's someone besides you standing behind the machine if it doesn't work. I don't know how many hours and dollars people have lost because they made one small mistake when trying to put their own rigs together from parts. Buying a pre-built from a reputable company means getting a warranty!

 

 

Your parts should have a warranty too, if you have any sense. If it doesn't work first time off, well thats half the fun of posting on forums asking "why doesn't it work?" and realising you've made some silly mistake like forgetting to plug a gfx card or cpu power connector in. :blush: :laugh: Construction problems are rarely fatal. I did have a faulty gfx card with a short that blew out the PSU but thats the only one I can think off, and that was only because its was a cheap PSU that didn't have proper circuit protection.

 

A couple of crossed over wires on a cheap LED strip light recently was enough to cause a short or a fault but I know better now and choose PSU's from reputable companies that know how to build protection in their circuitry that shuts down instantly on detecting a fault, so no damage done there. (Moral of the tale is: don't buy cheap no-reputation parts, period)

[TheMastersSon]

My two main problems with pre-configured systems are that they're usually limited in overclocking ability, and the corporate dictate of using the cheapest possible components to maximize profit margins, which are next to nil for PC hardware. To give a recent example, I'm currently assembling a gaming system:

 

Asus Hero VII/i5-4690K/Corsair Dominator Platinum 1.5V 2133C9 memory/Samsung SM951 SSD

 

We looked for this combo as a pre-configured system, and the closest we found was:

 

MSI or Gigabyte motherboard/i7-4790k/basic (slower and less desireable) memory/cheap-ass SATA hard drive

 

You may find good stuff in a pre-configured system, but you'll rarely find the best stuff. IMO that's the main reason to DIY.

[Vagrant0]

 

You may find good stuff in a pre-configured system, but you'll rarely find the best stuff. IMO that's the main reason to DIY.

You also don't have to deal with the butt-load of pre-loaded software that drags down performance, is annoying to remove, and often finds ways to hide in the read-only portions of the system partition. While not malware in itself, it is close enough. The main problem with this sort of stuff is that most people have no need of it, don't know what it is, but are afraid to remove it, cluttering up a system and making it harder to recognize actual malware.

 

The advantage about DIY is that nothing gets on your PC without you having intentionally installed it.

[kalikka]

 

^Doesn't that take the fun out of building a rig though ? I never build one, but i would like to to experience it. then again i had repair classes to do it so there's that.

 

Besides the time savings, (which is not nothing!) the biggest advantage over DIY other than price, (which is almost ZERO with the Vanquish II) is that there's someone besides you standing behind the machine if it doesn't work. I don't know how many hours and dollars people have lost because they made one small mistake when trying to put their own rigs together from parts. Buying a pre-built from a reputable company means getting a warranty!

 

That's complete BS about the DIY setups not having a warranty. All the parts in my rig has a minimum of 2 years warranty, and the power supply has 5 year warranty.

Almost all the pre-built setups (Asus, HP, etc.) only have 1 year warranty which can become invalid from as simple thing as opening the PC casing.

 

The biggest gripe about pre-built systems is that the heart of the system is full of "Crapxons". And by heart I mean the power supply and its capacitors.

All my previous pre-built PCs died from a single cause: The power supply died after disconnecting the power. Reason for this was that after the old and shoddy capacitors cooled down they stopped working.

 

The best of both worlds (DIY and pre-built) is achieved when you buy the PC from a PC-hardware store that sells components and offers assembly services. So you can design your own DIY setup that a professional assembles (professional == random dude who is responsible for the damages if something goes wrong).

Edited April 12, 2015 by kalikka

[soupdragon1234]

 

You also don't have to deal with the butt-load of pre-loaded software that drags down performance, is annoying to remove, and often finds ways to hide in the read-only portions of the system partition. While not malware in itself, it is close enough. The main problem with this sort of stuff is that most people have no need of it, don't know what it is, but are afraid to remove it, cluttering up a system and making it harder to recognize actual malware.

 

The advantage about DIY is that nothing gets on your PC without you having intentionally installed it.

 

Thats my gripe with my laptop, the amount of garbage that came bundled with it was insane and took an age to uninstall/get rid of it all. And every bit of it bar one was trialware that wanted you to cough up not inconsiderable amounts of cash for something I really didn't want after a months "free" use.

 

And everytime I need to format/revert to factory default by recovering from the restore partition I have to go through the whole thing all over again. :pinch:

Edited April 12, 2015 by soupdragon1234

[TheMastersSon]

We had the same experience recently with new cellphone service. We wanted and needed a simple flipphone, the AT&T location didn't have any so they gave us a smartphone. An hour of swooping later, to disable and/or uninstall the 41 tracking apps, "free" offers and other assorted nonsense, we were ready to toss it in a garbage can. One as far as possible from our home. Fortunately another AT&T office had a Rugby III.

[Thandal]

There's ZERO crapware with Digital Storm rigs. Nice, clean install. :thumbsup:

(Can you tell I really like mine?)

[dave1029]

My problem with Digital Storm and others like it, is that they are just ridiculously more expensive. And usually, not always, something bottlenecks the system. For instance, they may put a bad ass awesome GPU, but not give a CPU that is near the performance of the GPU. I just use a local PC shop down the street. I do all the research, tell them these are the parts that I want, blah blah blah, and they charge me a $70 flat fee and do it. The only reason I don't build it myself, is because if the parts come in faulty, or something breaks during instillation, no skin off my bones. It's basically an insurance cost.