Are Walmart Gaming PCs actually THAT bad?

[Uttamattamakin]

13 minutes ago, MandoPanda said:

Ehheemmm.

 

https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1069730347762348032

 

A statement from wal Mart would be confirmation they have been "pulled".  Going to wal mart and seeing them taken off the shelves would be confirmation that they have been "pulled".

[ZacoAttaco]

RIP

Walmart PCs

Beloved Tech Meme and Joke

We hardly knew ye

Rest in Peace

2018 - 2018

[Razor Blade]

1 hour ago, Uttamattamakin said:

 

I agree with you...but remember this is LTT forum.  The people here are not always practical and pragmatic about computers.  IF you call a computer "OVERPOWERED" to this crowd ... it better be the real deal.

For the average joe going to Walmart to buy a computer for their kid who could probably get buy with a good chromebook these were "overpowered". 

On the appeal of Wal-Mart.

 

It is sort of a one-stop store.  We drive up there in our big US Gas Guzzlers and can grab a weeks worth of groceries, clothes for the season, and computers.  (In some states even Guns and I'd swear at least one wal mart in the state of Illinois sells cars.  )   It is sort of the 21st century version of the "general store" every town had in the old west.   It's a US American thing.

IF I had a 14 year old and wanted to buy a computer that s/he could work on I'd have bought the OP1.  Then if they fried the motherboard I could just buy a new cheap one for them to fry.

Walmart is a global company. There are even super centers (supercentre) in Canada as well. It is just a department store (though many are quite large and diverse in what they offer) nothing more complicated than that.

[Canada EH]

1 hour ago, Fez_Boy said:

much better value and quality.

Depends on your view of value.

Some people value their time, others do not. Some people just like to deal with a store, and will pay more for that safety net then having to try and learn how to put lego's together (the pc). You are right though, you get more for your money building your own, but most people just like to buy in the store.

[Uttamattamakin]

6 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

Walmart is a global company. There are even super centers (supercentre) in Canada as well. It is just a department store nothing more complicated than that.

He asked about they cultural aspects of this.  To a person from Poland, as he said he was, it didn't make sense.

 

When trying to explain things you have to try think like a Martian  (or a Nobel prize winning physicist.)

 

 In short try and stand outside the system you are studying.  To a person not from North America it can look really strange that Wal-Mart selling PC's was a big deal. while Best Buy selling a crummy pc never got a peep.  (Look it up Best Buy sells /sold it's own brand of windows tablet for years never saw a review anywhere.)

Wal-Mart clearly holds a special place in our hearts in the US and it's 10 future states also known as Canada.

[MandoPanda]

20 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

A statement from wal Mart would be confirmation they have been "pulled"

Do you really think they want to attract more shame? They have silently pulled the sales pages and google searches for the sales pages go to the general search for gaming computers on Walmart.com.

[Uttamattamakin]

Just now, MandoPanda said:

Do you really think they want to attract more shame? They have silently pulled the sales pages and google searches for the sales pages go to the general search for gaming computers on Walmart.com.

There is a saying.  Journalism is printing what people don't want published.

I'd add to that ... printing what is verified to be truthful that they don't want published.

 

Before Linus Tech goes full tilt on this they have to at least call  Wal-Mart for a quote.  If they get none after making a due diligence effort they should go wild with this.  

[This_guy1998]

2 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It is sort of a one-stop store.  We drive up there in our big US Gas Guzzlers and can grab a weeks worth of groceries, clothes for the season, and computers.  (In some states even Guns and I'd swear at least one wal mart in the state of Illinois sells cars.  )   It is sort of the 21st century version of the "general store" every town had in the old west.   It's a US American thing.

IF I had a 14 year old and wanted to buy a computer that s/he could work on I'd have bought the OP1.  Then if they fried the motherboard I could just buy a new cheap one for them to fry.

This product being crap didn't surprise me. I actually work at one here in the states. Honestly, I think Walmart's Home Office thought they could pull a fast one and get uninformed people to buy these PCs. Electronics has a 14 day return policy.

 

I felt bad because on the Black Friday sale this year, a mom came in to buy a computer for streaming for her son and she picked up a $90 Windows Tablet and asked me, "Will this work for streaming for my son." I asked her what kind (had a funny feeling), she called her son and it turned out I was right, and then I pointed her in the direction of the $600 laptop with a 1050ti and such. The look on her face changed quickly when I broke the bad news (wouldn't be surprised if she didn't buy it). To be honest, she got lucky and asked someone (me) who knows a thing or two about electronics (I am also a IT major in college atm). If she would of asked anyone else (even a good chunk of electronics associates are uninformed surprisingly, I work L&G/Seasonal (I enjoy it)), they would of sold it to her. Then come Christmas the son would be disappointed and stuck with a piece of crap because the return policy would be gone.

[alphaproject]

Oh yea these are junk...... not even close the worth of it.

[Uttamattamakin]

3 hours ago, This_guy1998 said:

I felt bad because on the Black Friday sale this year, a mom came in to buy a computer for streaming for her son and she picked up a $90 Windows Tablet and asked me, "Will this work for streaming for my son."

Yes it can be very hard to explain to some people that computers are not like shoes (or even cars really).  The difference in price makes a HUGE difference in performance between $500 and $90.   

I would note ... their laptops seem to still be on sale.    Though the web page directs to a general page for their desktops this one still shows them as being a thing they might/do sell.

https://www.walmart.com/cp/3600045


Makes me wonder... if a lot of them had the disconnected graphics card issue and there were a surge of returns.

[GumblesGrambles]

On 12/2/2018 at 4:47 PM, Hunter259 said:

TIL 4 = 10. Every bit of a modern SSD is saturating SATA. Period. Full stop. There's a reason why the NVME drives are faster in every single benchmark. It's called extremely higher bandwidth allowing for it combined with NVME also has lower overhead than SATA which helps for all those random read and writes.

 

Yea no, 4k random read/writes aka 99% of windows/app access is double digits to low triple digits.  NVME straight line performance doesn't apply to most use cases, very few people spend their time wiping through raw 4k video files during editing every day.

[Hunter259]

6 hours ago, GumblesGrambles said:

 

Yea no, 4k random read/writes aka 99% of windows/app access is double digits to low triple digits.  NVME straight line performance doesn't apply to most use cases, very few people spend their time wiping through raw 4k video files during editing every day.

Quote

combined with NVME also has lower overhead than SATA which helps for all those random read and writes.

 

[Finnen]

14 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

He asked about they cultural aspects of this.  To a person from Poland, as he said he was, it didn't make sense.

...
Wal-Mart clearly holds a special place in our hearts in the US and it's 10 future states also known as Canada.

1

Thanks for the explanation! Yeah, I was more into the cultural aspects of Walmart. I always tried to compare it to some local shops but couldn't really fit it anywhere. I mean, in Poland we also have big "general" shops too, mostly with foreign capital, like Intermarche (French), Netto (Denmark), Kaufland / Lidl (German), Carrefour (French) or really cheap ones like Biedronka (managed by Portuguese company Jeronimo with a local department here). But they mostly offer groceries with some occasional sales of popular books, small products for the kitchen or mobile accessories. Sometimes there are "gaming products", but they mostly include cheap mice, keyboards, headphones from local brands (aka POS with RGB lighting put on top of it) or some cheap Chinese mobile accessories. 

 

But, as I said previously, most people know that buying anything other than food in such places is asking for trouble, so these shops rarely put such products as their standard offer, it's a more of a season-based sale (like cheap keyboards/tablets/laptops/phones from a local company Hykker - these products usually cost 50% of a normal price for such device, so you know what to expect). I can't even imagine these big "markets" selling a full blown-out gaming PCs like Walmart (or any other very specific hardware that you expect to be of high quality). For that, we have more electronic shops, like Media Markt, Media Expert or RTV EURO AGD. I was just surprised that Walmart has such a wide variety of products. Even guns and cars, you say? Oh my, they truly seem to sell everything! It REALLY is a General Store like in games!

[Velcade]

15 hours ago, ZacoAttaco said:

RIP

Walmart PCs

Beloved Tech Meme and Joke

We hardly knew ye

Rest in Peace

2018 - 2018

F

[This_guy1998]

13 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Yes it can be very hard to explain to some people that computers are not like shoes (or even cars really).  The difference in price makes a HUGE difference in performance between $500 and $90.   

I understand that. I have an older co-worker that works in a department next to me and she said electronics are throwaways even after I explained the difference between a cheap and expensive PC (this came up because she was looking for a new laptop, I told her about a year or so ago "around $500ish will get you something decent that last awhile, I spent $1,100 on mine but my use is different because I am a IT student.")

 

I have relatives that will ask me for advise on a new PC (usually laptop) and I will say around $500, make sure it has a i3 or i5 (there are a lot of laptop with celerons and Pentiums out there) if it Intel or AMD go for Ryzen 5 or 7 (there are also APUs and FX still around).

 

Last weekend it was slow so I walked around to other departments to chat and to see if they need help and I end in electronics and there was a sign apologizing about a error in their ad about a Chromebook because it had the wrong processor logo, but the price was the same. I asked the people back there that know a little about PCs about it and we all agreed that note is just going to cause confusion and less people will buy the Chromebook then. People honestly that buy computers at Walmart aren't going to understand the difference.

 

I also found out that we still have like 3 Black Friday Gaming laptops left, and that reaffirmed that people will buy cheap.

 

My dad will only buy cheap Smartphones and then I will laugh at him when he has problems (one phone the touch screen on one side wouldn't work sometimes (screen wasn't even broken)).

[Uttamattamakin]

On 12/4/2018 at 10:18 AM, Velcade said:

F

https://www.pcgamer.com/walmart-did-not-pull-its-overpowered-gaming-desktop-pcs-from-sale/

 

Rumors of the "OvaPowa'd" as Linus said it PC's demise were exaggerated.

[chuiu]

So, on the topic of USB3 connectors to the motherboard.  The last 3 PC's I've built the usb3 connector is always extremely loose.  To the point where its fallen out while I was moving my PC one time and I thought my USB3 ports were completely broken until a month later when I was dusting out my PC and noticed it had fallen out.  This was the one common complaint that I completely disagree with, because of my experience with these things being very loose.  Linus said they're so tight you feel like you're pulling it off the motherboard when removing them, I've never experienced that.  

[DezGalbie]

I'm gonna go ahead and say - these PCs aren't terrible for what they are. They're fine. They're adequate.

But you have to keep in mind the target market. They're not made for anyone on this forum. They're made for the 15 year old kid who has zero interest in learning how computers work. The kid who just wants something that will play his games at a reasonable quality and framerate and which looks shiny and has flashy lights.

That 15 year old kid is never going to look into how to overclock, or spend his time researching upgrade routes. He'll use that PC until it no longer runs his games well and then he'll buy another one.

For that kid certain things just don't matter. I know this kind of person. What difference does the lack of front panel USB 3.0 make when the only things that will ever be plugged into it are a mouse and a keyboard? That kid probably doesn't even know that there are different types of USB to begin with. The motherboard is cheap as hell and the CPU doesn't overclock but, again, that kid doesn't care at all. A premium motherboard would be wasted on him when he's not gonna use the extra features anyway, right? And the super cheap motherboard will most likely work great when not asked to overclock. So why throw that extra money away?

If you're talking about people who know how to build computers, people who want to play around with their system and get the most out of it then, yeah, these systems are a bad option. But even if they were cheaper and made with more premium parts they would still be a bad option for these people because if you've gone to the effort of learning how to build computers then you probably want to build your own rather than buying pre-builds anyway. It doesn't matter how good Walmart makes these pre-builds, we still would rather design and build our own systems because we enjoy it.

The biggest criticism I would level at these systems is the unplugged graphics card power cables. The target market probably isn't going to know how to fix that or have the confidence to go messing around with their new system when they first turn it on and realise it's not working. Walmart really need to make sure that kind of thing is taken care of before shipping.

[plurus]

https://www.walmart.com/nco/OVERPOWERED-Gaming-Desktop-DTW3-2-Year-Warranty-Intel-i7-8700-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080TI-512GB-SSD-2TB-HDD-32GB-RAM-Windows-10/451847834

 

$1700 now, and apparently frontpanel has 2xUSB3.0 now?

 

[MandoPanda]

On 12/9/2018 at 7:00 AM, plurus said:

https://www.walmart.com/nco/OVERPOWERED-Gaming-Desktop-DTW3-2-Year-Warranty-Intel-i7-8700-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1080TI-512GB-SSD-2TB-HDD-32GB-RAM-Windows-10/451847834

 

$1700 now, and apparently frontpanel has 2xUSB3.0 now?

 

Pics or didn't happen. 

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

Quote "An explosive 32GB of memory and a 2TB HDD / 512GB SSD ....."

it will explode!!! (if not can I refund it?)

 

[Spotty]

On 12/9/2018 at 9:00 AM, plurus said:

$1700 now, and apparently frontpanel has 2xUSB3.0 now?

The DTW2 and DTW3 always had front panel USB 3.0. They use a different motherboard (H370 DS3H) than the DTW1 (H310M) which comes with a USB C on the rear I/O meaning the USB3 internal port can be used for front panel I/O.

 

33 minutes ago, MandoPanda said:

Pics or didn't happen. 

DTW2 product images on the Wal-mart website before it was taken down.

 

Spoiler

DTW2 showing H370 DS3H motherboard

 

DTW3 showing USB Type C on rear i/o panel.