Final Verdict - $1500 Gaming PC Secret Shopper pt4

[Easty1]

On 12/25/2018 at 11:24 PM, LMG Ivan said:

In fourth and final episode, we take a closer look at all the machines and finally benchmark them

 

 

Alienware R7: http://geni.us/d5Jj
HP Omen: http://geni.us/Af4t
iBuyPower i5 Configurator: http://geni.us/0BgZ
Origin PC Chronos: http://geni.us/1pEFO
Maingear Vybe: http://geni.us/qI9q4

Outstanding review, as a consumer it has been invaluable in increasing awareness of the issues that can occur, and performance by price.  Please keep informing us and continuing these reviews.

[Qwerty2323]

I dont get what is issue of bashing iBuypower. My dad, mom and almost any other relative would never even try opening pc. I am just saying almost everyone I know except couple people would try fixing or pluging wires for their own pc.

Same with phones almost no1 knows what is 64 gb of storage and so on...

[Nicnac]

My takeaway here is this:

You're always gonna run into issues with a pc that you will have to solve sooner or later.

Buying from an OEM is not going to protect you from this.

You might as well build your own rig every time.

[Jotoco]

This feels like being a really good guy/gal and then your partner leaving you for another person because of looks, even though that other person is a jerk. 

 

 

[SPARTAN VI]

Delighted to see Maingear really champion customer support, even if their configuration wasn't top dog. Unfortunately, their configurator for Ryzen machines caps out at DDR4-2933 memory. For some reason DDR4-3200 is relegated only to their Intel offerings of the same price bracket? Yet we know from past benchmarks that Ryzen scales relatively well with faster memory.

[Hunter259]

On 12/26/2018 at 5:38 AM, Majestic said:

-snip-

 

1. Intel's TDP is for all cores at base clock. Turbo boost very much can exceed this number.

2. Mattering on the amount of cores being used it could boost past 4.3 and stay at or under 65w even though that really doesn't mean anything.

 

HP likely limited the turbo boost settings in bios to keep their kinda wimpy VRM safe.

[warmmilk]

am I the only one that thinks they should contact Origin, both customer support and their sponsor rep, to explain the paperweigh spec of their recommended system? 

 

I mean put yourself in the shoes of the customer in this situation if this was real.  first the awesome sister, buying her brother a $1500 gaming system... thats not a gaming system but and overpriced pretty basically streaming pc... it can't even really be a media pc thanks to the tiny storage capacity.  So you're this awesome sister doing this awesome thing for your brother, that turns out to be a completely useless waste of money.  and then the brother... you have this awesome sister that blew $1500 on an awesome gift for you, but you have to tell her she got ripped off and all you can really do on this $1500 paper weight is watch youtube video's...  I mean its worse than a console and is 3x+ the price...

 

in my opinion, this is a much bigger offence than iBuyPower's crap customer service, at least iBuyPower's system is an actual gaming system.  and I really think Origin should be ridiculed much more for this in the videos... but its just being excused as "well of course it sucks, look at the spec".  But the spec is job #1 of customer service, which makes Origin customer service much worse than iBuyPower.  I know Origin sponsors LTT, but that has never stopped LTT from ripping anyone a new one.  They dropped Tunnel Bear like a cancerous hot potato cause they didn't like them anymore...

[Majestic]

4 hours ago, Hunter259 said:

1. Intel's TDP is for all cores at base clock. Turbo boost very much can exceed this number.

2. Mattering on the amount of cores being used it could boost past 4.3 and stay at or under 65w even though that really doesn't mean anything.

 

HP likely limited the turbo boost settings in bios to keep their kinda wimpy VRM safe.

1. I know, but it's outside of the TDP spec. So any OEM with a mainboard designed for that TDP won't really hit high clockspeeds.

2. Yes i'm aware that under 65W TDP it can boost higher than baseclock on one or two cores, I don't see the relevance. 

 

It's not limiting, it's according to spec. Just like they've always done, it's only now that Intel shifted the envelope that it's noticeable. A 84W 4670K boosted just fine to 3.6ghz all-core, eventhough it was a 3.4 base CPU, at <84W. This was the case from well before Sandy-Bridge all the way up to Kaby-Lake. Now all of a sudden all their models exceed their stated TDP under load conditions without controlling them for TDP. This, again, was the whole point of the con-lake controversy. Intel couldn't compete at those lower TDP's anymore, so they just put the blame on OEM's and AIB's for any lowered performance when they don't wish to violate the specs. Meanwhile the AMD chips for the most part abide by whatever they're labelled. The Ryzen 5 1600 that gave Intel a run for it's money was a 65W TDP chip, and the average power consumption was below this number when running Cinebench or rendering applications. Intel's reaction to this were the chips that started deviating from the norm. For all the shit you guys gave Jim for his video's, you sure as shit didn't pay attention during that video.

 

Intel also abused the fact that reviewers wouldn't likely use these OEM machines for their reviews, and thus they'd get favorable numbers on, what are in fact, overclocked chips. Meaning you void your warranty in effect when running them on AIB boards at overclocked speeds, and on OEM machines these chips are far less impressive with the customer being non the wiser.

 

And Linus pretending to not know this is the case, really is infuriating. It's quite obvious he was a salesperson before this, because he's still a salesperson now. He's not a shill, I don't think Linus can really be bought. But he's careless and shameless, and for an audience his size that's a problem for me. 

[Hunter259]

7 minutes ago, Majestic said:

1. I know, but it's outside of the TDP spec. So any OEM with a mainboard designed for that TDP won't really hit high clockspeeds.

2. Yes i'm aware that under 65W TDP it can boost higher than baseclock on one or two cores, I don't see the relevance. 

 

It's not limiting, it's according to spec. Just like they've always done, it's only now that Intel shifted the envelope that it's noticeable. A 84W 4670K boosted just fine to 3.6ghz all-core, eventhough it was a 3.4 base CPU, at <84W. This was the case from well before Sandy-Bridge all the way up to Kaby-Lake. Now all of a sudden all their models exceed their stated TDP under load conditions without controlling them for TDP. This, again, was the whole point of the con-lake controversy. Intel couldn't compete at those lower TDP's anymore, so they just put the blame on OEM's and AIB's for any lowered performance when they don't wish to violate the specs. Meanwhile the AMD chips for the most part abide by whatever they're labelled. The Ryzen 5 1600 that gave Intel a run for it's money was a 65W TDP chip, and the average power consumption was below this number when running Cinebench or rendering applications. Intel's reaction to this were the chips that started deviating from the norm. For all the shit you guys gave Jim for his video's, you sure as shit didn't pay attention during that video.

 

Intel also abused the fact that reviewers wouldn't likely use these OEM machines for their reviews, and thus they'd get favorable numbers on, what are in fact, overclocked chips. Meaning you void your warranty in effect when running them on AIB boards at overclocked speeds, and on OEM machines these chips are far less impressive with the customer being non the wiser.

 

And Linus pretending to not know this is the case, really is infuriating. It's quite obvious he was a salesperson before this, because he's still a salesperson now. He's not a shill, I don't think Linus can really be bought. But he's careless and shameless, and for an audience his size that's a problem for me. 

Huh? MCE was on both AMD and Intel systems and would vastly exceed the extended power limits on both systems. That has since been rectified. Intel never changed how their TDP has been rated. It has stayed consistent since Nehalem. MCE and systems like it had been a thing for YEARS. It was just not nearly as noticeable until Intel dropped the base TDP and upped the core count. The only place you would ever see a stock Haswell drop below turbo due to TDP limits would be an AVX load. Of course if you had a MCEesq system in place you could get around that.

 

HP designed a shitty VRM that would only be good for an extremely low turbo. Linus even mentions that he doesn't know why they are limiting in this way just to not speculate in an already 20min+ video. HP knows what the board would need to do 4.3GHz all core turbo. This is their fault for not designing it correctly. It's also very possible HP was being lazy and the board CAN do it but they have incorrectly setup the power limits which has been true for a quite a few of their products, including my Spectre 15t.

[Majestic]

3 minutes ago, Hunter259 said:

Huh? MCE was on both AMD and Intel systems and would vastly exceed the extended power limits on both systems. That has since been rectified. Intel never changed how their TDP has been rated. It has stayed consistent since Nehalem. MCE and systems like it had been a thing for YEARS. It was just not nearly as noticeable until Intel dropped the base TDP and upped the core count. The only place you would ever see a stock Haswell drop below turbo due to TDP limits would be an AVX load. Of course if you had a MCEesq system in place you could get around that.

 

HP designed a shitty VRM that would only be good for an extremely low turbo. Linus even mentions that he doesn't know why they are limiting in this way just to not speculate in an already 20min+ video. HP knows what the board would need to do 4.3GHz all core turbo. This is their fault for not designing it correctly. It's also very possible HP was being lazy and the board CAN do it but they have incorrectly setup the power limits which has been true for a quite a few of their products, including my Spectre 15t.

It's not really a coincidence that they dropped the base clock (i think you meant to say clock there), and at the same time removed the boost table information. It used to be, within TDP and without MCE, that they'd have 1C/2C/3C/4C boost turbo's. And MCE would just run it at max boost all-core, which was maybe 200-300mhz more. Now it's baseclock is, in the case of the i5-8400 F.E., 1,5ghz lower than MCE, and Intel doesn't anywhere specify what the boostclock should be per-core. So anywhere between 

 

It's not a shit VRM, it's a VRM designed for 65W TDP, and it doesn't at all need to run at MCE speeds. Again, you void warranty when you do this. Which might not be an issue for consumers, but for OEM's it is. I have no idea why you think 4.3ghz is what the 8400 is supposed to run at all-core.

[orbafloatin]

Hey Ryan,

 

This is the other Ryan from the comments page.  I'll take a look at this in more detail this weekend, and get back to you then.  Thanks for the invite and finally getting me on the forums

 

P.S. my initials are also RMT..... small world lol.

 

Edit: The only current dell i have is an inspirion gaming laptop and i'll look into if that has a similar issue.  Otherwise I can compare and try to dig into this some more, i'll give you an update this weekend.

[orbafloatin]

how did i manage to post this in the wrong frickin post. rip me.

[orbafloatin]

On 12/26/2018 at 8:23 PM, rmt902 said:

I don't necessarily have a question. I was really just following up on some comments on the recent video. I have screenshotted those for reference below.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

After reading what you said, I don't think the ram usage is mainly due to currently installed programs. Yes, I could optimize and uninstall items that I don't need and disable things from running at startup. But, this issue has been prevalent ever since I bought the machine. I really just want to know if the high usage is something I can control or if it is due to the DELL OS image/bloatware installation package that came with the computer (which is out of my control).

 

Ryan

Maybe start a seperate topic for this?  I'll be glad to dig into this later this weekend some more, i'll try to reach out to you then.

[LTTmurphy]

On 12/26/2018 at 12:24 AM, LMG Ivan said:

fourth and final episode

Episode 5 (officially considered, IIRC) should really have been done.

[Angad14]

I have an Alieware 15 R2 (Since July 2016), I actually seem to have the same RAM problem. When I format the device the idle RAM usage is at about 4GB but after 2 months, (i.e. Currently) it's at 6 GB. I just assumed this was normal since I do not have another device to check it against. I did a total of all the processes in the Task Manager and it's close to about 2 GB. Any information to fix this or to things that I could try to bring it down would be highly appreciated.

 

Some extra info, I got this device from Microsoft, so it's the Alienware signature edition, i.e. the only non Microsoft bloatware that it came with is Alienware Command Centre and the External Graphics Amplifier software. I manage to format the device almost every 3 months so with the ISO from Microsoft's site and then install drivers from wither Dell, Nvidia or Killer with some modules directly updating from Windows Update. Lastly, I have added an additional m.2 SSD as it had a extra port which is now my boot drive.

 

Off topic question, what was the software used for testing Stream quality in the video?

[straus]

I have an idea for you, something I tried with local computer dealers.

What I did was to sent a request for an offer for (in my case) ryzen bundle, meaning cpu+mb+ram. 

I specifically requested for a 2200G CPU with a motherboard that is running b450 chipset with at least 4 slots for memory and 2 PCI-E and 8GB of 3000MHz memory

The interesting thing was that i intended to insert their e-mail addresses in the hidden field so they don't know they are competing with the others, but made a mistake and sent a broadcast. So whatever, 3 companies replied that they don't trade with end customers, they mostly import for other dealers (I know that is not true, I've bought from them). From 1 of them i got an e-mail (replayed to all) that basically said that I'm simply creating hassle for 20 dealers and since I'm going to buy from only one, it is not fair. Then he told everyone else in the chain to not reply to me, because I'm cheap and nobody wants a client like me(can you believe this guy?)!

However in the next few days I actually received 3 offers with my parts and was able to choose a deal for me. 

At the end I didn't only got a good deal, but good service as well, by putting the dealers in direct competition.

So why don't you try this?

[aaradorn]

I think they should rate the pc's in a different way, The fastest, the Quickest, and the best support. I know alot of people who just care about the fastest system or the system that gets there the quickest. Support is secondary to a pc.