Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For many years, I built my own PC towers. It just made sense. Sure, you could buy towers pre-made from manufacturers like HP, Compaq, IBM, Dell and others, but if you knew what you were doing, you could put together something a lot better for less money. And I knew what I was doing. But around a decade ago, things started to change. At that point, the prices on pre-mades started to seriously drop (at least if you knew how and where to shop), to the point where--unless you needed something very specialized--you couldn't build these things for much less than you could buy them pre-built. So then, unless you had a lot of free time, it became less enthralling to spend the time to lasso up the needed parts and put the thing together. Add in familial obligations (news flash: kids require a lot of time) and suddenly, hey, if Dell's willing to build a PC for me for essentially no extra cost, I'll take it. But before I found (or lost) religion, I'd probably built at least 25-30 systems. Add another dozen or two to that number if you include the systems I helped friends build. So I know a bit about how this all comes together. CyberPower PC has been around a long time now. Historically, they've offered a pretty decent product made from mostly stock components. That differentiates them from manufacturers like Dell or HP, who have traditionally used proprietary cases and motherboards. This is important, because while those proprietary parts can be pretty nicely constructed, for driver support you are at the mercy of the OEM, and frequently parts and repair either evaporate quickly, or else are very expensive. By contrast, when you use off-the-shelf components, they are usually more widely used, and (provided the manufacturer stays in business) driver support is usually better (faster, longer). You can also, few years down the road, replace parts as technology progresses without having to toss or gift the entire hardware platform. Doing some quick calculations, it became clear to me that the CyberPower GXiVR8020A tower offers a pretty good deal considering the components that are used--it's priced close enough to what I'd have to pay to get those parts individually that it doesn't really make sense to build it myself provided I'm happy with the configuration. Breaking it down, in terms of parts: Processor: Intel Corp. BX80662I56402P Core i5 6402P Processor Motherboard: MSI B150M BAZOOKA (B150,S1151,mATX ,DDR4,Intel), 7982-004R (,DDR4,Intel)) Graphics Card: XFX RADEON RX 480 1266MHz 4GB DDR5 3xDP HDMI Graphic Card (RX-480M4BFA6) Memory: ADATA XPG Z1 DDR4 2133MHz (PC4 17000) 8GB (4GBx2) Memory Modules, Red (AX4U2133W4G15-DRZ) Hard Drive: Toshiba 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5 Internal Hard Drive (DT01ACA100) Optical Drive: LG Electronics Internal Super Multi Drive Optical Drives GH24NSC0B Wireless adapter: TP-LINK AC600 Wireless Dual Band USB Adapter, Support Windows XP/7/8/8.1/Linux/Max OS X 10.7-10.11 (Archer T2U) (retail box) Case: MasterBox 5 Black Mid-tower with Internal Configuration, E-ATX Support, and Nine SSD mount positions Windows Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64 Bit System Builder OEM | PC Disc High Power HPG-600BR-F12S 600 watt power supply CyberPower Gaming mouse CyberPower Gaming keyboard I have linked all the component with their Amazon listings for your convenience...You can check reviews and prices using those links. If you price those components separately at currently available discounts, you come up with something that approaches nine hundred bucks--or about a couple hundred more expensive than buying everything put together for you with this system. That's fantastic. Now a few points about that: A) Because you are buying this as a pre-built system, you get a warranty from CyberPowerPC on the entire shebang. If anything is broken or fails within the warranty period (1 year parts/labor + lifetime tech support), you can deal with a single vendor. That's a heck of a lot easier than having to deal with the individual manufacturers of the components. (Ever had one of those "what do you mean you threw out the receipts?!?" moments? Or how about this one: "You're saying I can't return it if I don't have the original packing materials??") B) While putting together a computer from parts is fun for some of us (if you're a geek--hand up), and it's not too difficult if you've done it (hand up again, dozens of times), maybe it just sounds scary or your time is too valuable. I've not factored anything into that total to account for your time. If you are a $1000/hour lawyer, add $1000-2000 to that build-your-own cost, in other words. Then the pre-built's looking awfully good, right? C) While almost everything in this system is off the shelf (good for the reasons already described), which makes it easy to price them, the "gaming" keyboard and mouse are manufactured for CyperPowerPC. (As best as I can determine, it appears they're probably made by AZZA for CyberPowerPC). That makes it hard to value them--but they're just OK, but not super high end. A little snooping at online auctions sites suggests that the resale value of these two components would be around fifty bucks total. So that's the number I've used. I'm not a serious gamer, so I asked some gamer friends of mine what they'd think of the "gaming" keyboard and mouse included. Their response was "that's better than what a non-gamer would have on their system, but it's not as good as what I'd buy for my own use if I were using my own money." In terms of ports and connections: 4 x USB 3.0 connections in the back 2 x USB 3.0 connections on the front panel 2 x USB 2.0 connections in the back PS/2 connectors for legacy keyboard and mouse (included keyboard and mouse are USB and don't use these, and any modern keyboard or mouse will not, either) 1 x HDMI and 2 x (full size) DisplayPort connectors on the included video card (supports multiple monitors) 1 x HDMI and 1 x DVI video connectors on the motherboard 10/100/1000 ethernet port Microphone and headphone jacks on back (standard minijack) Microphone and headphone jacks on front (standard minijack) Comments here: Note that you do not have any VGA connectors. To use VGA (primarily for older monitors) you need either a DVI->VGA connector or a Displayport->VGA adapter. The computer is shipped with a USB wireless AC adapter, but you can alternately use the standard wired gigabit Ethernet jack. The choice is yours. OK, let's break down the construction of this PC. Obviously, while the key CPU/GPU are first class modern components, a little cheaping out has occurred in two places: The power supply and the hard drive: The power supply is an inexpensive solution that provides decent specs. High Power power supplies are mostly provided to OEMs (you can't easily buy one off the shelf yourself), and are made Sirfa, which is known for mid-line quality. Someone making their own system would probably go for something with greater brand recognition and a reputation for reliability. That said, there's not a lot of evidence that this power supply will fail prematurely or not provide adequate reliable voltage. In terms of the hard drive, the configuration being sold includes a decent quality, decent speed 1Tb SPINNING hard drive. This would have been fine a few years ago. But no one building a modern powerful system these days would fail to use a solid state SSD drive as the boot drive--the performance of a SSD is simply far superior. On sale you can find a good quality 256Gb SSD for under a hundred bucks on sale. The appropriate configuration for a system like this should be a SSD boot drive, and then a quality drive for bulk storage. Unless you plan to do hardcore video editing off the bulk storage drive, a slower (5400rpm) drive for bulk storage provides the best compromise between speed, durability, and price. More specifically, a combination of a 256Gb SSD for booting and a 4-5Tb 5400rpm hard drive for storage would run you (on sale) well under a couple of hundred. And that's the better configuration. Since the system comes with a 1Gb 7200 (non SSD) hard drive, the cheapest reasonable upgrade would be to just buy the 256Gb SSD, migrate the boot partition to that drive, then clear the 1Tb drive and use it for storage. You could buy a larger spinning hard drive later and you'd be out less than a hundred bucks in the short term. As noted, the gaming mouse and keyboard are also better than nothing, but aren't up to the standards that a serious gamer would like. On the plus side: The latest (6th generation) I5 processor is more than up to the task of any application you might be expected to run at home. And the quite modern Radeon video card is capable of playing all modern games or normal monitors at good frame rates (reasonable to expect 100-120fps [or higher] on a standard 1080p monitor with normal settings, and even with the most gpu hungry games at highest settings you should be able to get 60fps). Lower frame rates probably won't be an issue unless you're using a graphics intensive game on a very high resolution monitor. Needless to say, if you're not a gamer, the video card is going to be good enough for anything you throw at it... The case used is a nice mid-line case. The red LEDs (see manufacturer's pics--yes, it looks like that when you turn it on) are cool if you are into things like that, maybe not as much if you are an codger-y old adult. The motherboard has a micro-atx form factor, while the case is rather large--large enough to support a full standard form factor motherboard. I personally wish the case were smaller, but if space is not an issue to you, that's not a huge problem. The motherboard offers four memory slots, so upgrading the memory without throwing out the memory that comes with the machine is easy. The motherboard supports up to 64Gb. There's only one accessible unfilled PCI slot on the motherboard, and that's a PCIex1 slot. (No room for a second video card, if that's of interest to you). Setting the machine up out of the box is pretty trivial: Take the machine out. Remove the side panel (two screws), remove the packing from inside the machine. Replace the side panel, insert the power plug, the (USB) mouse and keyboard, attach a monitor, and start it up. Windows 10 is pre-installed and will lead you by the hand. On the whole, I simply can't find any real reason NOT to buy this PC at the price if you want an affordable tower PC for gaming that features high quality modern components. You can't build one for less and this one comes with a one year warranty. I've noted the shortcomings of this system, with the one I'd call most significant being the lack of a SSD boot drive. For well under a hundred bucks (on sale), you can rectify that. You might also look into upgrading the power supply longer term, but that's not something I'd say is necessary out of the box.