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IbuyPower Gaming PC Review

IBuyPower Gaming PC Review

By: Larry Ray

Track Junkie Racing

Where Sim Racing Lives!

 The Review

   I was recently in the market for a gaming PC. Now my criteria for the gaming PC was to be fast, render high end graphics to handle the latest video games like Battlefield 4 and sim racing games like IRacing, Rfactor 2, F1 2013 and the like. It also needed to be upgradable in the future. This PC had to have all that and still come into a budget of $2000 shipped to my door. I did slightly go over budget with $2044.40 being my total, but I can live with it considering all the free gear I received including Word and Excell. Well I was fortunately able to do it thru IBuyPower with their custom pc builder website. You can find IBuyPower at http://www.ibuypower.com/ .

As you know there are many choices to buy a PC’s from, but I needed a real hardcore gaming PC. Not just a off the shelf gaming PC you get from Best Buy or online at Dell. Those places offer great PC experiences as I have bought many from them in the past, but this time I really needed to fit a budget and get the most for my dollar along with it being upgradable in the future. As soon as I started navigating thru IBuyPower website I knew I liked it as it listed out great buys of prebuilt pc’s and gave me options to customize my pc like no other I have used in the past. Now these options were not the lacking options you find at other websites that offer i3, i5, i7 processor options with SDD hard drives or 7200 rpm hard drives. IBuyPower goes much further than that.

With IBuyPower I was choosing normal options like the Processor (i7, i5, i3), Video Card, Hard Drive, Blue Ray and such. But what separates IBuyPower from the normal mainstream PC store was how deep I got to dive down into each option. I didn’t have one choice of processor, I had three choices. I didn’t have to get a quad core i7, I could choose a 6 core or 8 core processor. I didn’t have one choice of video cards to choose from. I had all the choices of video cards that are made in the past 2 year and even the latest cards that came out like the ATI Radeon R9 290X or the Nvidia Titan. I not only chose ram size I wanted I could even choose heatshielded ram that looks great and helps with heat dispation over the standard selection. I got to even choose the motherboard and power supply I wanted to insure easy future upgrades. For hard drives I could choose my operating system to boot up on the faster SDD and have a 7200 RPM 1TB hard drive for my other documents and data. If I run out of hard drive space I can easily add another SDD or reg hard drive to it. Even when I was looking to water cool or not I had the choices in front of me. The options were almost endless. 

                      

With these options was also verbiage to educate yourself on what to buy to fit your needs. Now you owe it to yourself to read over the options to see what’s going on. Don’t worry though if you’re new to PC building or just don’t know what components work with each other. IBuyPowers website will flag you when something isn’t compatible and even tell you what to choose down the list to make your combination work. For instance I choose a high end 4gb memory video card. The system flagged me saying I needed a bigger power supply for it. That's great right? I thought so too.

 

Some people ask how a big PC ships to my door undamaged and how is their quality control. Well they got that covered. Your custom PC is built and boxed up in quality materials of foam. It’s actually boxed up in the original PC tower case and then put into a bigger box that has foam padding all around it. Also if you opt for your video card protection they include a sealed foam pouch inside the case that wraps itself around the video card keeping it from bouncing around in the shipping trucks. You must remove it before turning on. Now the only disappointing thing was I had to pay for the foam pouch to be placed inside. I feel this $5 worth of foam should be free as it’s also saving IBuyPower from the hassle of returned PC from the overzealous delivery drivers. The option wasn’t to much at $19 for peace of mind, especially when you’re considering the cost of the PC.

For Quality Control IBuyPower seems to be on top of things. A bonus is they update you along the way with your build. I received the following updates which I really appreciated.

1/9/2014 0:00 Shipped Shipped: FEDEX xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

1/9/2014 0:00 Processing The order has been packaged and is awaiting shipment

1/8/2014 0:00 Processing Burn-in inspection/testing is complete and has been sent to Shipping.

1/8/2014 0:00 Processing Quality Control inspection/testing complete and has been sent to Burn in.

1/8/2014 0:00 Processing Assembly of the computer has been completed and has been sent to QC.

1/8/2014 0:00 Processing The materials needed for the order have been gathered.

1/8/2014 0:00 Processing Materials are now being gathered to complete the order.

12/31/2013 0:00 Processing Payment has been successfully received/approved.

12/30/2013 0:00 Processing The order has been received and will be reviewed/processed by a sales rep.

12/28/2013 0:00 Submitted Order Submitted by Customer

I have one other great comment about IBuyPower. I was receiving many free downloads of games during their Christmas specials and somehow did not get one of my codes for BattleField 4. No problem as I emailed the customer representative that handled my order, (Which they assign to you and email the customer as soon as your order is received) and he got right back to me even though it was after their working hours for the day. He immediately handled the problem and noticed that they were out of free game codes for BF4, so instead he offered up 2 other free game codes which was Assains Creed 4 and Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Blacklist. I of course took it with a smile as they were also A+ games. Who doesn’t like free games?

So if you’re in the market for a great PC you owe it to yourself to checkout IBuyPower and what they have to offer. You won’t be disappointed. See below for my PC Specs for your reference and included pictures.

PC Specs:

1 x Case NZXT Phantom 410 Gaming Case - Black

1 x Processor Intel® Core™ i7 4930K Processor (6x 3.40GHz/12MB L3 Cache) - Intel Core i7 4930K

1 x Motherboard Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 -- 4x PCI-E 2.0 x16

1 x Memory 16 GB [4 GB X4] DDR3-1600 Memory Module - FREE Upgrade to DDR3-1866 ADATA XPG V2

1 x Video Card AMD Radeon R9 290X - 4GB - Single Card

1 x Case Lighting Cold Cathode Neon Light - Blue

1 x Power Supply 750 Watt - Corsair RM750 - 80 PLUS Gold, Full Modular

1 x Processor Cooling Liquid CPU Cooling System [Intel] - Standard 120mm Fan

1 x Primary Hard Drive 120 GB ADATA S510 SSD -- Read: 550MB/s, Write: 510MB/s - Single Drive

1 x Data Hard Drive 1 TB HARD DRIVE -- 32M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive

1 x Optical Drive 24x Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW Drive - Black - FREE upgrade to BLU-RAY Reader Combo Drive for Primary Optical Drive

1 x Sound Card 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard

1 x Network Card Intel Pro 10/100/1000 Network Card

1 x Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Professional + Office Starter 2010 (Includes basic versions of Word and Excel) - 64-bit

1 x Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty Service

1 x Advanced Build Options iBUYPOWER Specialized Advanced Packaging System - Protect your investment during transportation!

1 x Advanced Build Options Tuniq TX-2 High Performance Thermal Compound - The best interface between your CPU and the heatsinks

1 x Advanced Build Options Professional wiring for all cables inside the system tower - Achieve exceptional airflow in your chassis

1 x Advanced Build Options Professional wiring for all cables inside the system tower - Basic Pro Wiring

1 x Flash Media Reader / Writer 12-In-1 Internal Flash Media Card Reader/Writer - Black

1 x Free Stuff [FREE] Thermaltake eSPORTS CHALLENGER Gaming

1 x Free Stuff [FREE] - McAfee Antivirus PLUS 2014 - FREE with any System ($49 Value)

1 x Free Stuff [FREE] - GG Cruiser PC200-I Headset w/ large 57mm drivers for clear audio - FREE with any System ($29 Value)

1 x Free Stuff [FREE Game Download] - AMD Gold Reward - Select 3 Free Games - Free with purchase of AMD Radeon R9 280X, R9 290 and 290X Graphics Cards

1 x iBUYPOWER Labs - Internal Expansion [6-Port] NZXT Internal USB Expansion System