Help Choosing a Pre-built Gaming PC Please

Has it really been 6 months already? Damn.

Yup, got it built at the end of October, 2018.

Anyone have recent experience with ibuypower? They’re one of the few builders that don’t seem to add a markup for Canada, over and above the exchange rate.

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227917&Description=ibuypower%209400&cm_re=ibuypower_9400--83-227-917--Product

I had one for almost a month. It was fine — I ended up going upmarket but I had no issues with it at all.

I bought about 2 years ago, it’s still working well. No headaches with setting it up, no shovelware, I’ve been happy. Reasonable price for what I got. Comparable to what you linked for the price at the time.

Thiking about this right now- is this an ok deal or should I hold out for something better, risking tarriffs?

Not bad specs for the money.

My only caveat would be minor at best – the mobo has plenty of USB 3 ports, a USB C port, and a PS/2 port for old-school keyboards, but no digital sound output or USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, if that’s something you care about (and I suspect most folks don’t).

Given that a 2700 is half the system’s price by itself, it’s a deal I’d look at if I were in the market.

I’m replacing my 6-year old home theater/VR PC in anticipation of the Vive Index. I need a fairly small form factor. I had intended on building my own, but then I happened upon this one over at Origin PC:

https://www.originpc.com/Configurator/Load/cb3a5bc8-cb8b-4706-964d-5282e3b338e3

I priced things out, and the parts are on the order of $2,200, so the prebuilt is around a $200 premium for warranty/overclock/no hassles, which seems pretty good. Any thoughts on OriginPC or this build in particular?

Is it a good time to buy or wait for the Ryzen 3 processors, which are July 7 but likely hard to get for awhile?

I guess it comes down to personal need, how well you’re getting by with old system, and sensitivity to having the latest and greatest.

I haven’t yet played AC Odyssey, which I bought awhile ago but doesn’t run well enough on my older PC to fully enjoy. I’m also a bit tired of not having fully high / max settings on No Mans Sky, plus having low frame rates. The other games I’m playing are generally fine though. I

I have budgeted for a new system so I’m deciding between i5-9400 soon or Ryzen 5 3600 mid-late summer.

Hey guys, I could use some help. Last night the power apparently blinked, and my PC reset, somehow causing one of my GPU fans to run like a jet engine for a few hours. It’s all fine now (I unplugged and held the power button for 30 seconds) but I’d prefer not to have it happen again. That said, I likely should invest in a UPS for the thing, but I’ve no idea how to buy one (I got one when I built it, but I misread the numbers and it wasn’t powerful enough).

That said, which UPS might y’all recommend for this PC and a few monitors? Thanks.

Maybe one like this. They only go on sale once a year or so, if you can wait for a deal.

If you have some kind of power measurement device you can estimate your real power usage and size the UPS for an actual runtime you need. 1KVA vs 1.5KVA can be a lot of price difference and weight in a good UPS.

Yeah, I bought this one last year:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K8ZMT74/

And it totally wasn’t powerful enough. Anytime I’d use my video card the thing would wail to high heaven. I’m think a 900w might be better.

Are you saying your video card was loud when running on utility power and plugged into that UPS? Because the battery’s capacity shouldn’t matter if you’re not using it, and you should only be using it to safely power down your system.

No, sorry, with that 480W model I bought above, its alarm on it would go off whenever I used my video card to play a game.

900W may not even be enough with your big video needs, and you have monitors and peripherals which use a lot of power also. A pure sinewave one would give more effective power at the same VA, but also quite a bit more expensive. If you have to go up to 2KVA things get quite pricey.

If you can swing it, yes, the pure sinewave offering would be better. I have the 1500/900 linked above and a couple others connected to various equipment. Thankfully I’ve never had them go into service due to a power outage so can’t comment on how well they work outside of test scenarios.

I’d recommend thinking about what peripherals you actually need on the battery backup and what would be ok to have power off suddenly. Monitors for example I would be comfortable running under surge protection only which would free up some capacity/extend run time (my main monitor is listed at 90W on Dell’s site, so it’s not insignificant).

Yeah the PC, my switch and at least one monitor needs battery backup, not everything needs a battery backup like the MIDI units or whatevs.

Also worth considering other devices you may want on a UPS for protection or use continuity also:

  • network (modem, router, switches, APs)
  • networked storage, or other devices with spinning HDDs e.g. NAS
  • game consoles
  • any connected or “smart” devices you consider safety critical (IP phone, security cameras, Ring, etc.) or which you know have problems when power flickers

I usually have 3 UPSs running in different places, sized according to needs for my network, PCs, entertainment ctr, etc.

I’m using the UPS i bought above for my router, switch and modem, if that’s what you mean.