Wallmart kills OVERPOWERED Prebuilt PCs - [UPDATE - They're back!... Now with a $400 discount!]

[NumLock21]

16 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

i can live withgout usb 3.0... garbage mobo's (especially VRM's) are worse in my opinion..

 

i agree about the psu's.

Walmart PC buyers will care less about VRMS on a motherboard. It's the reason why I find it odd as to why Steve would even criticized about it, It's like reviewing a family car and then criticizing it because it lacks the quality of an F1 racer. Sometimes we techies get too focus on the technical end, that we seem to forget who those PC are targeting at. Those Walmart OP gaming desktop PC, isn't design for the DIYers and enthusiast.

[NumLock21]

16 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

80+ what?

 

14 hours ago, Spotty said:

Still had the pages open for the DTW2 and DTW3, and looking at the product images on the website I noticed that the DTW2 and DTW3 use different motherboards. The DTW2 which has an interior shot of the PC shows off a Gigabyte H370M DS3H motherboard. This gives them USB3.0 and Type C support, so there's no more stupid USB type C add in card at the back. They also have 4 DIMM slots with 2x16GB dual channel memory configuration.

 

It's still not a great motherboard, but for the chipset alone it's a far better than the H310 board used in the DTW1. They should have used that H370 motherboard on the DTW1 as well, but it's obvious they wanted to save a few bucks where possible.

 

The PSU cables that are visible are sleeved, so they're using a different PSU (probably a different Great Wall unit).

 

It's a shame that GamersNexus didn't receive their DTW3 unit, as I feel like it would have been a different situation. The motherboard change fixes a lot of the issues that many people had with the system (lack of front USB 3.0, the stupid Type C adapter, no HDMI/DP on motherboard out, 2 DIMM slots, single stick memory, etc). There would still have been issues like the PSU and the stupid 4 partitions on the HDD, but it would have been a lot better than what it actually was.

  Hide contents

Overpowered DTW2 - Front USB 3.0 Ports (Blue ports)

 

 

Overpowered DTW2 - Inside (Note the PCIe cable is actually installed in this one )

 

 

DTW3 - Rear IO (With Type C USB and HDMI & DisplayPort display outputs)

 

If Steve had received his actual build that he paid for, his views on it might be different.

 

 

And sorry for the dp

[Taf the Ghost]

16 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

Sending tech jesus the wrong model thou... Talk about bad luck, if they took YouTube any serious I don't think it's thaaat far fetched.

GN's piece on the WalMart PC went viral and I think hit the YouTube trending section. *That* would have gotten Corporate's attention, which is likely what killed the entire deal. That level of bad Brand attachment would be unacceptable, and it's not like WalMart doesn't sell Dell, HP and other SI systems.

 

The worst part is that the systems were 5 bucks in parts from being competent. Even the cheap Gigabyte B360 boards would have solved nearly all of the problems. Whoever the contractor was, they built so far down to a price they ran themselves out of a contract.

[Taf the Ghost]

23 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Walmart PC buyers will care less about VRMS on a motherboard. It's the reason why I find it odd as to why Steve would even criticized about it, It's like reviewing a family car and then criticizing it because it lacks the quality of an F1 racer. Sometimes we techies get too focus on the technical end, that we seem to forget who those PC are targeting at. Those Walmart OP gaming desktop PC, isn't design for the DIYers and enthusiast.

Because with that terrible of air flow/ventilation, a 4-5 hour gaming session might burn out the motherboard.

[NumLock21]

4 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Because with that terrible of air flow/ventilation, a 4-5 hour gaming session might burn out the motherboard.

that terrible air flow isn't going to burn out the motherboard after 4-5 hours of gaming.

[germgoatz]

well that took long lol

[3 Lions]

Even if they try to re-launch them at a later date, these pre-builts have had their reputation irreparably damaged. 

[Bananasplit_00]

17 hours ago, Fez_Boy said:

They still have the laptops, https://www.walmart.com/ip/OVERPOWERED-Gaming-Laptop-15-144Hz-Intel-i5-8300H-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1050-Mechanical-LED-Keyboard-128-SSD-1TB-HDD-8GB-RAM-Windows-10/682079574

Is it just that I have no clue what a good laptop deal is or is $700 for a quad core I5 and a 1050 not that bad of a deal in a laptop? 

[TigerHawk]

8 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

Is it just that I have no clue what a good laptop deal is or is $700 for a quad core I5 and a 1050 not that bad of a deal in a laptop? 

its on sale for 699.99, it was 999.99. At 700 bucks its pretty good. At 999 original price, not so much.

[Guest]

Thats actually quite a shame. If the builders had paid a little attention, more competition, especially at a lower price point (and if they kept the $200 decrease) would have been very beneficial. This is probably very momentary, and they will release a new line with listening to the reviewers. They did look quite appealing, especially as they had a very budget case. Just a little more attention and they would have been perfect. 

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Thats actually quite a shame. If the builders had paid a little attention, more competition, especially at a lower price point (and if they kept the $200 decrease) would have been very beneficial. This is probably very momentary, and they will release a new line with listening to the reviewers. They did look quite appealing, especially as they had a very budget case. Just a little more attention and they would have been perfect. 

10USD more on a motherboard for a mATX board with 4 RAM slots and better I/O on the back. Kills the need for the USB-C port on the back. 1cm more of space for air on the front and RAM setup in Dual Channel. That's all that they needed to do.

 

Granted, we'd have called them "blinged out Dells", but, eh, they'd have been "okay" for what they are and the price.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

10USD more on a motherboard for a mATX board with 4 RAM slots and better I/O on the back. Kills the need for the USB-C port on the back. 1cm more of space for air on the front and RAM setup in Dual Channel. That's all that they needed to do.

 

Granted, we'd have called them "blinged out Dells", but, eh, they'd have been "okay" for what they are and the price.

Well, no problem really with the motherboard or anything like that. As long as it has fine thermals then its not too bad, after all it was a very cheap case. Dual channel isn't really necessary in this age of DDR4 either, not missing out on much (but would be nice and cost the same!). Its more the PCI-e cable not connected and the major issues. To be honest if the case was sold separately for a fair amount, I'd buy it. Great looking case under $50?

[Speed Weed]

OverPowered vs IBuyPower vs CyberPower

 

Who will be the victor? The answer will be reveal maybe on the next episode! 

[Taf the Ghost]

4 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Well, no problem really with the motherboard or anything like that. As long as it has fine thermals then its not too bad, after all it was a very cheap case. Dual channel isn't really necessary in this age of DDR4 either, not missing out on much (but would be nice and cost the same!). Its more the PCI-e cable not connected and the major issues. To be honest if the case was sold separately for a fair amount, I'd buy it. Great looking case under $50?

GN tested the case. In their test bench, it had the worst thermals of anything with fans. 8700 will still max turbo itself, so if someone put it against a wall, you're going to get massive throttling to melted VRMs. That's why just a little more space so those fans could breath would solve that issue. 

 

Dual-channel is necessary for any 6 core CPU and up. Both for bandwidth and some strange things seem to happen in sustained latency under multi-core load in single channel. (Both for Intel and AMD. Might be some sort of Burst Bandwidth issue.)

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

GN tested the case. In their test bench, it had the worst thermals of anything with fans. 8700 will still max turbo itself, so if someone put it against a wall, you're going to get massive throttling to melted VRMs. That's why just a little more space so those fans could breath would solve that issue. 

Oh I thought the thermals were fine. That must have been one of the major issues, thats what you get when you listen to YT vids while playing games!

29 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Dual-channel is necessary for any 6 core CPU and up. Both for bandwidth and some strange things seem to happen in sustained latency under multi-core load in single channel. (Both for Intel and AMD. Might be some sort of Burst Bandwidth issue.)

Thats interesting to know. I'll look up some benchmarks for this. 

[Hellion]

So much ignorance in this thread. Not that I condone buying one of these or ever would buy a prebuilt machine but some of the reasons provided here as to why these systems are bad show a complete lack of understanding.

 

I'm not going to read the entire thread because frankly I don't have time but just based on the first page alone... The motherboard VRM really doesn't matter in this case. These use non "K" skew CPU's and therefore can't be overclocked.

 

Despite "Great Wall" not being widely known in the consumer space doesn't make it a "no name" brand. A lot of the more popular companies use them as an OEM to source their basic teir units and quite frankly based on the "show your setup" thread, the component most of the users here skimp on first is the power supply, much less investing in a platinum/titanium certified one.

 

By far the largest issue these have is the case. The solid front panel glass trend is ridiculously stupid opting to sacrifice function for form. Any system that runs excessively hot for a prolonged period of time will have a shorter life span. This bandwagon trend needs to die and this Walmart brand is not the only one guilty of this. Lack of fan filters will also shorten the life span as dust eventually builds causing additional issues.

 

The other nitpicks like the USB I/O or lack of cable management are semantics for the most part and could be easily corrected with a few cable ties, an adapter (most of you are familiar with these since you choose to buy phones not supporting headphone jacks) or a $10 add in card.

[YaBoiWill]

I think they'll probs relaunch them in a month, but will have listened to the reviews and public, 

Better MOBO,

Better airflow

Dual channel ram

USB 3 on front panel

Ramdom cables not going over the GPU

GPU plugged in

Sending the right system to the right person 
Powder coated PSU, maybe less ketchup and mustard as well

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, RorzNZ said:

Oh I thought the thermals were fine. That must have been one of the major issues, thats what you get when you listen to YT vids while playing games!

Thats interesting to know. I'll look up some benchmarks for this. 

On the Single vs Dual channel memory bit, I think a lot of the issues are something few in the Tech Space really remember: I/O lock ups. You need to have power-used on Windows 98 and before to have run into the Memory Management problems that came with OSes back in the days. While the bandwidth to the CPU might be okay in single channel, it's also prone to those frame-time spikes because something is either getting bandwidth limited or gets stalled.

 

It's a lot like that early discussion with "Ryzen seems smoother". Because it did, but it wasn't at the CPU level. It was a combination of Nvidia drivers and some sort of Display I/O lockup for a frame occasionally. Ryzen's load balancing within the CPU kept something from getting stalled for a few milliseconds, which meant the GPU was hitting some stall in the display adapter system. As a result, the GPU was occasionally not displaying a frame that the system was sending. That's why it seemed so much smoother.

[Spotty]

2 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Oh I thought the thermals were fine. That must have been one of the major issues, thats what you get when you listen to YT vids while playing games!

With the front panel on it was the worst or 2nd worst performing case they ever tested. With the front glass panel removed it was 30°c cooler. It was extremely choked at the front.

[mr moose]

14 minutes ago, Spotty said:

With the front panel on it was the worst or 2nd worst performing case they ever tested. With the front glass panel removed it was 30°c cooler. It was extremely choked at the front.

It was also only one test in one environment too, Linus's didn't seem to have that much of an issue with all cores loaded. 

 

With regard to the rest of the thread:

 

Honestly it embarrassing that so many LTT people have tripped over themselves to shit on this product and don't actually consider it for what it was.  So many assumptions about the PSU and the lack of USB C etc. 

[ravenshrike]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

It was also only one test in one environment too, Linus's didn't seem to have that much of an issue with all cores loaded.  

That was with the lesser CPU and lesser graphics card which means significantly less heat output internally. A 6 hour torture test would have given a better indication of thermal properties of the case, especially since there's no easy way to simulate getting choked with dust as those PCs invariably will be.

[Spotty]

18 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

That was with the lesser CPU and lesser graphics card which means significantly less heat output internally. A 6 hour torture test would have given a better indication of thermal properties of the case, especially since there's no easy way to simulate getting choked with dust as those PCs invariably will be.

They all use the same CPU, the i7 8700.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

It was also only one test in one environment too, Linus's didn't seem to have that much of an issue with all cores loaded. 

Gamers Nexus tested the case in the same environment that they test all of their other cases in. In that environment, it performed far worse than the other cases they have tested. Under torture test with the front panel on, the CPU was 73.4°C above ambient temperature. With the front panel removed it was only 45.3°C above ambient, a difference on the CPU of almost 28°C, indicating that the front panel is heavily restricting air flow and resulting in much higher temperatures.

 

 

 

 

Quote

The case, objectively, is the worst for thermals that we’ve ever tested. We haven’t seen anything quite this impressively bad.

...

We beat the thermal drum a lot, but this one really deserves it – even just a slightly opened-up front would help tremendously. A delta of 30 degrees Celsius by removing the front panel is impressively bad – not even the original H500P was that bad – and that shows how much the case is hurting performance. We throttled when under CPU + GPU loads, and clock-dropped when under gaming loads.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3408-walmart-gaming-pc-dc-dtw-case-review-and-thermals

 

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

Honestly it embarrassing that so many LTT people have tripped over themselves to shit on this product and don't actually consider it for what it was.  So many assumptions about the PSU and the lack of USB C etc. 

Gamers Nexus has posted photos to twitter of them testing the PSU, so we will find out whether it's shit or not once they publish the results of that.
Great Wall is the OEM behind some of the Corsair CX units (The CX is made by both Great Wall and CWT), so not everything they make is junk... But you can't judge a PSU by its brand.

[FIThrowaway2738]

FYI, these are apparently still available...

 

[Spotty]

The DTW1, DTW2, and DTW3 are now all re-listed on the Walmart website and available to purchase. Turns out this was fake news after all, sorry folks!

 

DTW1 - $1199
DTW2 - $1899
DTW3 - $2099

Spoiler

 

 

17 minutes ago, FIThrowaway2738 said:

FYI, these are apparently still available...

Thanks for the tip, I'll update the original post. I can't believe Walmart actually re-listed them...

 

(PS. Sorry everyone. I apologise for the #fakenews about Walmart ditching them)

[Canada EH]

11 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I've stepped foot in to Walmart. Though I don't buy electronics from them. Food yes, electronics no. 

LOL

True, their clothing even sucks!