Prebuilt Budget Gaming Build under $1000 What do you think?

angelice

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Mar 22, 2013
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10,860
Ok, so I use this site for market/product research to understand what and how I should setup our new lines of PC's as they come out. I would like to ask a question about Our new line-up I want to know what intelligent, well informed, people think of our new line-up and the pricing of such. This Line is planned to launch in the next week or so but I thought I would see what people here thought of it, and the pricing.

I have made sure not to include any information that would suggest where to buy this etc. I would just like to understand peoples thoughts on it.

Our Baseline Mid Grade system will be as such.

Intel I5 (unknown model yet still considering) 3.0ghz or above most likely a K model as Free overclocking is a large part or our repertoire.
Asus or Gigabyte motherboard (will be sli and crossfire capable)
Full Tower Case. (this is one of the cases we plan to use we typically have 4-5 choices but this is the only one we have decided on for sure) http://raidmax.com/chassis/agusta.html
750W Corsair 80+ Gold/platinum Power supply
8gb DDR3 Corsair Performance Ram (upgrade to 16gb 80$)
1 TB Seagate Barracuda or WD black 7200 RPM Hard Drive
256gb Sata 3 SSD
Windows 7 Home Premium or 8.1 Home Premium
R9 280X Asus DirectCU 2
Matching Backlit Gaming Mouse and keyboard (50$)
995$ Plus Shipping
Upgrade to I7 1075$

Or Crossfire with I5 For 1295$
Upgrade to I7/Crossfire 1375$ (This would be a quad core i7 not hex etc.)

These come with choice of lighting, Professional cable managment/UV sleeving. Cold Cathodes Etc At no extra Cost.

This will include 3yr Parts/Labor Warranty, Free Lifetime Tech support, Free Upgrade Service, Antivirus Suite, Office Suite, etc.

I appreciate any and all thoughts and criticism if you feel this setup would be better with a different Card etc. Please remember this is supposed to be a budget build not a 4000$ build this is suited more towards the average gamer.

I have looked at other builders and it seems the lowest I can find for a similar system is 1400$ for the base system.
1700$ with crossfire
1800 with I7

So what do you think is this a good deal? Should I change the system configuration?(please remember this is a base configuration Nvidia Cards etc are available through upgrade.)

Any and all other criticism would be greatly appreciated, we work very hard to add value to our systems. We are a budget builder, as a small company our added value is that we don't have as much overhead and can do things cheaper. We work hard to keep our customers happy and make sure that they get a system that provides a value they can't get anywhere else let alone the customer service, tech support, and upgrade services we offer(we have a free upgrade plan that anyone that purchases a computer can upgrade the components on that system for up to 5 years for only the cost of components ... no labor charges) Those value adding parts are what bring customers to us and why they stay with us.\

Most of our sales are done through a different kind of configurator. You merely answer a couple questions, what games do you play? what settings do you run? what resolution is your monitor? Then based on your answers it suggest a base build. from there you just add things you like. Our website is built for the non-tech savy. its meant to help people who don't really understand what they need. We also have someone on staff at all times to help answer questions and help people who still aren't sure. (Actually even as the owner I still do that alot it feels good to help someone knowing they got a good deal on something that will actually be useful without them having to waste huge amounts of money on something they will never use.

Because of these things I would like to insure that anything I suggest is going to be the best value for their money so please let me know if anything else needs adjusted. (have thoughts ideas anything i can do to make my customers happy is always a good thing.)
 
This would be better for 992$:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($234.99 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.66 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($94.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($81.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: A-Data Premier Pro SP600 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB ACX Video Card ($329.98 @ NCIX US)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (White) ATX Mid Tower Case ($33.39 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $992.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-25 16:50 EDT-0400
 

angelice

Honorable
Mar 22, 2013
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We don't purchase Asrock motherboards as we don't have a source for them. and the gtx 970's are new enough that there don't seem to be any Wholesale sources for them.
You've also moved down considerably in terms of SSD, And HD. We were also planning to use full tower case's only as this system is meant to be upgradeable with many large configurations. (Multi-card crossfire/sli Large Raid configurations, things of that nature. This system is meant to be promoted as both a gaming, and Video editing system)
PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dKs4P6
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/dKs4P6/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($234.73 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($128.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($169.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($88.97 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 280X 3GB DirectCU II Video Card ($309.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Raidmax ATX-605BT ATX Full Tower Case ($109.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair RM 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer ($13.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($98.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1355.60
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-24 12:14 EDT-0400
 
This build would be better:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($234.99 @ NCIX US)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($28.60 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI Z97-G55 SLI ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($99.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 770 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($254.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT Source 530 ATX Full Tower Case ($79.90 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer ($15.98 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($90.26 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1123.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-25 19:51 EDT-0400
The 770 beats the 280X.
With the (mostly) low-end parts, you can rip your customers off :) by suggesting overpriced upgrades such as the Black drive in your 1300$ build.
 

angelice

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Mar 22, 2013
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Actually from all the benchmarking I've seen the 770 and 280x work about the same in games (back and forth no clear winner) until you move up to 1440p Where the 280x wins hands down (giving you a hands down win making playable frame-rates where the 770 is not).
 

angelice

Honorable
Mar 22, 2013
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10,860
Also I prefer to give my customers real value, I'm not trying to rip them off I want them to feel like they've gotten an amazing deal. (this works two ways to keep happy customers coming back as well as word of mouth advertising, word of mouth advertising is up to 60% of our new customer base in the last two quarters.)


I am not usually fond of crucial drives have they gotten better?

That case is actually one of the options we have considered.

We had actually heard several times lately that we should check into EVGA power supplies and may switch over.

Seems silly to save 7$ on ram to drop down to much slower performing ram.
That $1300 build also sells for $995 plus shipping, that is just what is roughly in the system(the basic specs some things are still changing.)

Although i greatly appreciate your thoughts on this and if you can explain why you chose the parts I asked about we may consider switching.
 

angelice

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Mar 22, 2013
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10,860
I'm not fond of MSI's quality control, the last batch we used had a 17% failure rate which is well above industry standard. However that's been some time ago, It is possible that if that motherboard has comparable features that it might be worth looking into. A major point is that we need it to overclock well. I will have to check into it and see if I can find some record of how well it overclocks.
 

angelice

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Mar 22, 2013
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yes however many motherboards (I believe including the one we were planning on using use a PLX bridge, to increase the amount of Pci-e lanes.) Because the motherboard that we were interested in says nothing about decreasing speed while using crossfire/sli however we may have just missed something?