Hardware Buying a new desktop...

[Taleweaver]

Well...I've built my current PC about 5 or 6 years ago. While she's perfectly holding up in all my browsing and movie needs, newer games tend to have longer load times and not-that-great quality/framerates anymore. And I have one or two USB 3 USB disks but no ports. So I've decided to once again put up a budget (roughly 700-850 euro's max) and start window-shopping.


I started on the "great" setting of logicalincrements.com and tweakers.net's "basic gaming system of the best guy guide for september (note: Dutch link).

After some days of comparing and checking what I really wanted from my games (I'm not going to overclock and I don't really need the highest of resolutions or settings either), and checking it with a good online seller, I ended up with the following:

CPU: AMD FX 8320
GPU: Nvidia GTX 760
motherboard: Asrock 970 extreme 3
HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14; 1 TB
SSD: 120 GB Samsung 840 Evo
Case: Corsair 200R
Power: antec HCG-520
Memory: crucial ballistix tactical; 2x4 GB RAM
cooler: hyper T3X evo

The SSD is an obligation: since I swapped a normal SATA for an SSD on my current rig, the one at work seems to respond to my actions as if it's dragging through mud. And I know the cooler is overkill if I'm not going to overclock. I want her to be QUIET.


Anyhow...with that on my online shopping basket and still having the other stuff (keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, DVD-writer, windows) when I decided to tally up the costs (842.76 euro total) and compare it to what all in one builds had to offer.

It wasn't long until I stumbled upon this offer: a medion akoya P5333 F.
(note: I've linked to the English version, but it sells for 700 euro's in Belgium).

Hmm...

Yes. I know it's a bit less than my own setup (GTX660 vs 760, 60 GB vs 120 and i5-3350P tests slightly below the FX8320 as well). But nearly 150 euro's cheaper? Also: not that I need another keyboard, mouse or a windows (even if this one's a legit one), the DVD player is pretty nice. And that everything comes prebuilt, preinstalled and with a warranty of 2 years is nice as well.


End result: despite the research work on the former and not knowing that much (from an objective perspective), I'm leaning toward the latter.

Still...it's thread worthy material. Does anyone has an opinion on the rig? Medion is a rather known brand in these parts (I dunno where they sell exactly...could be Europe only), but it's hard to tell objectively where they stand quality-wise. Anyone with some experience with that?

I'm all ears.





Final note: I'm in kind of the same boat as R4ymond in this thread. While most of what's said there applies to my situation (and vice versa), it's probably better to keep the threads separated.

 

[Originality]

The problem with prebuilt systems is that they tend to cheap out on the parts nobody looks at: power supply and motherboard. If these parts are cheap, then it's possible they will be the first parts to die. And a cheap power supply can fry many more parts when it dies.

 

[Taleweaver]

Good point. But though it certainly happens, I wouldn't say a fried power supply happens more often on a prebuilt system (which we use at my job) than other issues. And as mentioned, I'm not looking for tweaking or overclocking.

EDIT: okay...I gotta admit I canceled the purchase pretty much at the last second. Main reason was creating an account and ordering the PC (one freakin' part) took much more effort than was needed and looked kind of amateurish (especially for a pc vendor). Then I did a quick google and found some horror stories of pc's being delivered broken or with cheap parts. And while I know that these stories are told more often than the "I'm perfectly fine with it", the rather lacking support from medion was scaring me (I've got a week vacation now. I want the thing ready and installed at least at the end of that week).

End result: I ended up buying the listed parts instead. Except that I went for 2TB rather than 1 (I can spare an extra 20 euro's...especially since the video card kind of dropped that same amount for discount reasons).