I’m thinking that it’s about time to replace my current gaming rig - a 6-year-old Alienware - with something newer. I’ve gone onto the web and used the Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and iBuyPower sites to custom build PCs that are more or less the same. The iBuyPower rig comes up about $1000 less than the other two manufacturers - a significant difference.
I don’t know much about iBuyPower other than the reviews I’ve seen in my MaximumPC and PCGamer, magazines, and they usually seem to get good scores. I guess my main concern is reliability, given the much lower price of their machine compared to the other two (although, as best as I can tell, all the parts involved are name-brand, reliable sources).
I also don’t know anything about Falcon Northwest, so any info on them would also be appreciated. I’ve been happy with my Alienware, although it did suffer a catastrophic failure about 18 months ago that required both the motherboard and video card to be replaced. However, I bought it before Alienware had been completely engulfed by Dell, so I’m uncertain about that (plus, of the three rigs I mocked up, Alienware’s was the priciest).
I bought an iBuyPower about 2.5 years ago and just recently replaced it with another one. I had paid about $900 for it then, and it ran just fine until I got SWTOR and it just couldn’t do it very well - graphics card / CPU ran so hard it overheated (it probably had other issues contributing to the overheating, but nothing came up until I got SWTOR, it was running Rift just fine last December). Anyway, I was pleased enough with it that I bought another one (1,100 this time) and it is now running SWTOR on max settings with no issues. My brother bought one a few years back and had to return it twice due to some issues (once with the power button of all things, not sure about the other time) - but they did take care of the shipping and everything. This last go around mine came with the hard drive not connected to the power supply, but it was a quick fix for me. So, based on my small sample size, I would say that they are a good bang for the buck, but may have some qc issues.
We’ve got 3 Falcon NW machines here at Chez Walton.
I’m pretty happy with them. Mr. Athena and I both work from home, so our computers are extremely important to us; any day they’re down, we lose money (or clients…)
The Falcon machines have been reliable, and the support is great. Their agents are intelligent and knowledgeable, and do NOT read from a script. They support their machines even when out of warranty, though in-warranty machines get priority. What that comes down to is that you might wait a while for a callback; just two weeks ago, my hard drive died, and I waited several days for a call. Now, I did not leave more than one message, nor did I send an email. When I did get a callback, the support guy told me it had been one of the worst busy weeks ever, and offered a few hints for getting faster callbacks (email being one of them). In all fairness, this was for a machine that’s going on 2 years out of warranty and I’ve often called in the past and gotten a much faster callback. Heck, I’ve called in the past and a tech support guy has answered the phone - no “press 1 for tech support” and wait on hold for 30 minutes. He just answered and started fixing my problem.
As far as the machine itself, no trouble, other than the drive issue I just mentioned. Hard drives can fail; I don’t blame them for that. Part of the reason I like their computers is that they are really put together nicely. When you open them, things aren’t jammed in there so tight that you can barely see where things are, and it’s easy to upgrade or check that the cables are tight or do whatever you opened the case for to begin with. Replacing my drive was a breeze - there was no crazy rewiring, nor did I need to remove anything else from the case just to make room to pull out the defective drive and put the new one in. Anyone who’s ever worked on PCs knows what I’m talking about - those cases where everything is so damn tight that to replace or upgrade even a very simple thing requires removing 10 other parts just to get at the thing you’re interested in.
They also come free of pre-installed crap. It’s nothing but the OS and a couple game demos, and I’m pretty sure they’ll skip the game demos if you ask them.
The downside to all this? They ain’t cheap. At all. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone who doesn’t appreciate or need a really high-end PC with a great warranty. Will I buy one again? No question. I don’t know of any other brand that delivers this kind of quality and support.
Here’s a good example of the tech support you get from Falcon.
I sent them a quick email late Friday asking them about how hard it would be to add a second video card and third monitor to my 2-year-old system.
I got a response on Sunday, with links to video cards on NewEgg.com that might be appropriate, the pros and cons of going with another of the same video card that I currently have, and a request for a picture of my machine with the case off so they can take a look and see if there’s any potential gotchas that I’d have to deal with when installing the new card (like I may have to move the sound card.)
It was signed by a real person, and it was obvious there were no scripts in place or any sort of corporate speak. It was like the response you’d get from sending an email to your IT buddy friend who owes you a big favor.
Lest you forget, this is for a machine that’s nearly two years out of warranty.
I have had two of the Falcon Talons in the last decade and think very highly of them and their support. I can’t speak of ibuypower one way or the other but when I need a new computer and have the funds, it will be another Falcon.
Jim’s Son a Falcon Talon was the one I was pricing out - I think they have an even more uber-line that’s outside of the range I wanted to stay in. Glad to hear good things about it.
I know a guy who works at Falcon, actually. He has nothing but good things to say about the company-- they’re a small business, very attentive to customers, and their focus is primarily on very high end machines. (They have several regulars who are Arabian oil magnates, which might tell you something about their clientele’s financial situation.)
Are they $1000 better? They’re not from where I’m standing, but a thousand dollars is more than three weeks’ pay for me. It might be worth it to you, though.
My machines are all Talons as well. The only reasons to go with a higher-end Mach is if you want truly cutting edge, or you want the 3 year warranty with free overnight shipping back to them.
Next time I buy, I may end up with the Mach primarily because of the 3 year warranty. But that’s because these are business machines and I can justify the extra expense for the extra support if anything goes wrong.
Oh, one BAD thing about Talon: their tech support hours. They’re open from 9 to 6 Pacific time, every day except holidays. For me, that means that I’m stuck waiting until noon minimum for a call back since I’m on the east coast.
They justify that because they say that they want to hire the best people, and if you’re a super good tech support person, you are good enough to not have to work the night shift. I can understand that. I just wish they’d open an east coast tech support office or something.
I’m very happy with my iBuyPower support and product, bought just after Christmas.
The only reason I needed to call support, and this was stupid, is that their email system kept sending out shipping notices even after the computer had already been delivered. Weird kink.
The computer itself was reasonably priced, well-built, and runs very well. I paid a bit extra for the case sound dampening and the silent fans-- I would recommend the silent fans, but I don’t think the case sound dampening foam does anything at all.
I also paid a bit extra for them to fill it with inflatable foam for shipping to reduce the chance of damage, honestly removing the foam that had worked inbetween the motherboard and some of the parts was probably more likely to cause damage than the shipping company was, so I’m not sure I’d pay for that next time.
The base $3800 MachV
My response $3400, with equal or better components 3 years support/warranty 8am-8pm (sorry not the overnight shipping thing, free shipping, sure, just not overnight)
I’m not a huge fan of liquid cooling systems but I can swap it in if desired.
*GeForce GTX 580 1536 MB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 2DVI/Mini-HDMI SLI Ready
*Blu-Ray Combo Internal 12XReadable and DVD-Writable Drive with Lightscribe
*LightScribe 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive IHAS424-98
ASUS SABERTOOTH X79 - LGA2011 - X79 - 8x DIMM - PCIe 3.0
Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000 Series Modular 1000W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified Active PFC Power Supply
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Windows7 Professional 64bit
Antec 900 Case
*Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s with NCQ 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal
higher performance/capacity components than the base MachV offers
and I can ship in a week or so.
and I am just a nice guy.
If you’re going IBuyPower, which I’ve had good experiences with, you might find a better price through Walmart online.
They have a “Build Your Own” IBuyPower bundle configurator, which doesn’t have nearly as many options as through the IBuyPower site, but if it has the options that you’re looking for, the chances are good that you can get a better price. Plus with Walmart’s free “Site-to-Store” shipping, you might be able to save a bit there, though that’s offset a bit by the fact that you have to pay sales tax, whereas you probably don’t have to pay tax buying direct.
ETA: Upon looking further, it seems that Walmart no longer has preconfigured, non-custom IBuyPower systems, which they did as little as six months ago. They do have a “CyberPower” brand, which I wonder if that might still be the same company under a different brand name. From my previous experience, the “Build Your Own” bundles did come at a slight premium to the preconfigured systems, so if you could find a preconfigured box that met all your requirements, you could save even more.
Damnit…of all the things to miss adding it up…CPU…
Intel Core i7-3930K 3.2 1 LGA 2011 Processor
same chip, will match price to Falcon while leaving all other components.
My initial reaction is to like them. I like their selection of parts, the customizer is very user friendly, the prices are exceptionally reasonable, and the computer runs quite well…
…for a couple years. I bought one computer three years ago, and one year ago I had to replace it. I bought another customized iBuyPower computer at that time, and while it’s still running well I get the sense that it may not live beyond another year. Even if I can get a solid gaming computer for $1000, I’m not too thrilled with having to buy a new one every couple years. I’m not ready to go full-on conspiracy theory and state that they intend for their computers to die after two years, but it makes me iffy about buying from them again.
(Admittedly, I do run my comps pretty hard, both in heavy-load gaming and in 24/7 operation, so that may wear them out faster.)
I also think their case fans are shit. I don’t know if it’s the shipping that damage them or if the fans themselves are crap, but on both computers the case fans that shipped died exceptionally fast and I had to replace them. Sure, it’s a relatively simple job, but a nuisance, especially when they take the time to bundle all the power cords nicely together and I have to peel them apart to get the fan out.
That said, you really can’t beat the price – even if you buy the parts independently and build the computer yourself, you aren’t saving much money at the expense of a whole lot of time and effort, and the IBP computers are certainly better built than anything I could do myself. They’re fantastic for budget gaming computers that are still reasonably powerful, but if you’re looking for something high-end, I’d definitely look to Falcon or Alienware.
My last two PCs have been from Velocity Micro, and I’m fairly pleased. There was a problem with the newest one - defective motherboard as it turned out, and one of the techs tried to give me a runaround, but his supervisor set things straight.
I just bought a custom IBuyPower bundled system as described above from WalMart and couldn’t be happier. It came quickly, was everything advertised, not filled with crapware and seems robust. I’d do it again and recommend it to a friend.
I’ve bought 2 pcs from ibuypower - one was four years ago, the other around this time last year. Both running fine - never had a single problem with either.
Shipping was fairly quick to Houston as well, though a bit pricey.