|
iBuy Power Computer Review
The Area 51- 7500 from the moment the huge
black box shows up at the door, to Some surprising and useful
information for those PC gamers out there, Wal-Mart has an option to
build your own system by way of the folks at iBuyPower. The service is
highly customizable and in the end a gamer will have a true custom
system to suit their needs.
iBuyPower is a company that seems to know what makes a good rig. All key
components are solid; consumers get to put the system together on the
Wal-Mart site or at the iBuyPower web site. There are choices for almost
every bit of the system, from mother board to graphics cards and even
the case itself.
When looking at a computer for purchase, things that should be
considered are what your needs are first and foremost whatever your
needs are, building your own system or in this case really, choosing
what you want and letting the company build it for you is ideal. In the
end you can decide on a power house of a system or something just in
between a good all-around computer with the capability to play games
with high settings, and if you’re into music and video editing…this is
the perfect solution.
Choosing your own bits and pieces, you know exactly what you are getting
and what to expect.
Since the system is getting shipped to you, after unpacking you may want
to take the time to make sure nothing is loose inside.
For our new gaming system for Impulse Gamer United States, we chose a
six core system, with a terabyte hard drive 8 gigs of RAM to keep us
coasting through some of these games coming along we so need to review.
With an NVidia card that has HDMI output, our games look spectacular.
Choosing your own system components makes sense especially when you want
to watch wear your money goes these days.
If we break it down it goes like this: System case, this is where you
make the choice to show externally just what your tastes are. There are
plenty of case styles to choose from to make a statement to the world.
Think of it as the body of the gaming beast you are creating.
Next you choose the mother board and processors.
There is a mix here, from Intel on to Phenom II processors, better yet,
everything from single core on up to monster 6 cores of processing
power. Next is the operating system and of course these days the flavor
of choice is Windows 7. Then the choice falls to what kind of drive you
want to place in your machine. You can stick with a DVD drive or a Blu
Ray drive, or get a mix of both for more versatility.
After the drive of course and especially if you’re going to be watching
Blu ray films on your computer, the memory is going to be something that
will have to have enough of to drive it all and give the machine the
boost it needed to run those hot game and movies. Making the choice
between 2 gigs of RAM and up, it is not much of a choice really,
grabbing the 8 gigs seems like the way to go, but you do of course have
the choices. If you want to go all out with the system memory, grab the
16 gigs of memory.
Now so far the picking and choosing of our gaming system is going along
great, and I am actually blown away by the choices. Mainly because it
makes it all feel that much more of a customized system, because you get
to choose so many different aspects of the system. Oh sure other places
let you customize some things as well. But it is a real treat to be able
to do it all the way down to the mother board and at such incredible
values.
Now what was a total surprise and joy was when we get down to the
graphics cards, no shrinking violets here and no, no name video cards
here either. The big power house video card companies are here. Video
cards from NVidia and Radeon video cards. Some of the big video cards
that support full 3D gaming are represented in the choices.
The bottom line, when it comes to your gaming dollar, building your own
PC using the Wal-Mart option for Build your own system from iBuyPower
makes a lot of sense, especially since they do not seem to be skimping
on the computer parts and choices. The system comes with a generous
amount of panel connectors too.
1 x PS/2 keyboard port, 1 x PS/2 mouse port, 1 x coaxial S/PDIF Out
connector, 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector, 6 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports, 2 x
USB 3.0/2.0 ports, 2 x IEEE 1394a ports, 1 x RJ-45 port, 6 x audio jacks
(Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line
In/Line Out/Microphone).
Even if you get the system through one of iBuyPower’s partnerships or
from their own site, the folks at the iBuyPower company build your rig;
test it so it is ready to go right out of the shipping box. Well almost
ready to go out of the box. Something you will want to know if you go
this route. Make darn sure you follow the unpacking instructions and the
instructions before you plug it in and turn it on. While the shipping
box is just that a box, within a box with no extra packing protection
around the computer….the real protection is actually some packing
material inside the case itself. Form fitted in some cases around the
video card and mother board. So you will have to open the case and
gingerly take this material out before turning the system on for the
first time.
Running the game and testing it out on things like DCS A10: Warthog, and
Rise of Flight, and even Operation Flashpoint Red River went very well
indeed. The system ran everything with full graphics. The only thing we
noticed is that when the cooling fans kicks in, you know it, our system
sounds like a mini jet taking off.
Music and movies played well without a stutter, while editing movies on
things like Sony Movie Studio Platinum went on without a hitch. We did
get a system warning when rendering movies and clips in full HD with the
movie suite that at least one of the six cores was fully engaged by the
software rendering the movie. We take that as because, well it was full
HD.
iBuyPower is a solid way to go when you’re in need of a system. Check
them out at their own site, iBuyPower.com, or if you are in a country
that has Wal-Mart online, check out the Wal-Mart site to see if
iBuyPower has what you need.
Have fun, play games
Edwin Millheim United States Editor Impulse Gamer |
