iBUYPOWER, Newegg Team Up For Live Configurator

By Kevin Parrish
published

On Tuesday, iBUYPOWER and Newegg announced a live configurator, a new way to customize a gaming desktop on Newegg. Customers can pick what they want and have the computer shipped right to their door. What's more, new desktop owners will receive customer service via iBUYPOWER and Newegg.

"iBUYPOWER completely eliminates the learning curve for assembling the ultimate gaming PC," said Soren Mills, Chief Marketing Officer of Newegg North America. "We're excited to offer this great new service to our customers, and we believe this will help people create and use the systems they truly want."

Currently, iBUYPOWER has an Intel-based desktop configurator. Customers can select the chassis, the CPU and motherboard combo, the memory, the hard drive, the video card and power supply, the optical disc drive and the operating system.

The default configuration has a $607.93 price tag, which includes the ARC 647 case, the ASRock H81 motherboard with an Intel Pentium G3240 processor, generic 8 GB of RAM, a generic 1 TB 7200 hard drive, a 350-watt power supply, an AMD Radeon HD R5-230 video card, a generic Blu-ray Disc combo drive and the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows 8.1.

At the most, customers will spend $2,308 on this particular gaming rig. That configuration includes the iBUYPOWER Chimera 4S case, the ASRock Z87 PRO3 motherboard with a liquid-cooled Intel Core i7-4790K processor, and 16 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws X Series DDR3-1333 memory. Also included is a generic 1 TB HDD and 240 GB SSD, an 850-watt power supply, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 with 3 GB of VRAM, a generic Blu-ray writer and Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1

"Saying that this is an exciting new feature is a big understatement," said Darren Su, vice president of iBUYPOWER. "We decided that the best way to address the needs of the customer was to combine the strengths of both companies."

To configure iBUYPOWER's Intel-based gaming rig using the live configurator, head here. Customers can get 10 percent off using promo code "AFGD77" before July 9.

Follow Kevin Parrish @exfileme. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Kevin Parrish
12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thundervore
    So customers get to spend over $2000 on a "gaming rig" that they could have easily put together themselves for less than $1500 where they can do much more .

    Nothing says uber fast like a Cheetah made out of flames on the side of a iBUYPOWER Chimera 4S case, maybe some lighting bolts for legs will make it faster /s
    Reply
  • lunyone
    Hmmmm, this looks like a small typo:
    a 350-watt hard drive, an AMD Radeon HD R5-230 video card

    Didn't know there was a 350w hard drive, it must be "Smokin' Hot!" Lol
    Reply
  • Adamw0611
    Was just thinking I need a 350 watt hard drive!
    Reply
  • Adamw0611
    It needs 2 8 pin connectors and has a windforce cooler
    Reply
  • lunyone
    13678330 said:
    It needs 2 8 pin connectors and has a windforce cooler

    So it's plugged into the PCI-e slot, so it could draw the additional 75 watts from the PCI-e slot? Lol!
    Reply
  • kijutsu
    iwillNEVERbuypower. I bought one fo their laptop a few years back and broke down 3 times in 6 months. The last time it broke I told them to burn that garbage. I turned around and bought an HP laptop. Broke down twice in 4 or 5 years and both time a guy came to my house to get the computer and it didn't cost me a dime!

    I'll never buy an ibuypower again but my next laptop will most probably be an HP.
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    What they should offer is a service where they charge you $100 to assemble a computer for you, install the OS, AVG Free edition and drivers. Then you pick any part you want from Newegg at normal prices. All the configurator will do is make sure you don't choose and incompatible parts and make sure you have all parts needed for a functioning PC. For the OS you pick Linux, FreeBSD or Windows (with a true OEM licensing fee such as a small manufacturer would pay).

    At $100 they'd be making great margins. Since labor would run about an hour to an hour and a half at about $20 per hour. I know techs wouldn't make $20 per hour but you have to factor in all the mandatory employment taxes and insurances hidden from the worker that the employer has to pay.

    More complex configurations such as RAID, custom cooling, additional software would be done for an additional fee.
    Reply
  • drapacioli
    I've never had a problem with Newegg, but I have never had an ibuypower pc that DIDNT experience a catastrophic motherboard or power supply failure within 2 years (and my family together has owned at least 4 before we quit using them) . Count me out of this one, clearly their qc is bad or something.
    Reply
  • Draven35
    The Baseline machine for Tom's workstation tests is an Ibuypower machine. We've had it for over two years.

    BUT, its built using workstation components, so YMMV.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    The entry-level (read: reasonably priced) ibuypower machines use REALLY cheap components, and that's why people tend to have issues. You can configure them to use more reliable components, but then you look at your resulting price tag and you're back in line with everyone else in terms of price. Really, sometimes I want to be lazy and let someone else build me a desktop for once... but then I plug in good quality components into one of the major builders configurators and I end up being driven to just build it myself again.

    With that being said, this is an interesting alliance, and Newegg does provide good customer service. Also, is that why they were having web site issues earlier today? :P
    Reply