I'm sick and I need help

[Gusington]

My standard is to buy a rig every 5 years.

[Skoop]

If you build it yourself, you can save a ton of money or spend the same but get even more over the top parts.  My system I built last year had 2500.00 for just the gpu alone...the 25gig RTX titan.

[FarAway Sooner]

Trek, I'll echo your enthusiasm about a recent acquisition of a Dell S3220DGF 32" 1800R.  I also got mine through Best Buy four months ago for $399 ($379 after applying the 5% Best Buy credit card discount), and it's the first time in years I've had a monitor upgrade that I was really thrilled about for less than $500.

I used to build my own rig, back in the day.  As work got busier and I had two young kids, I decided to outsource that and just swap out components as I go.  It's still cheaper, but I'm definitely happy with last year's high-end components, as opposed to the really cutting edge stuff.

Of course, upgrading my PSU a few months ago, I somehow managed to fry BOTH my SSD and my HD.  Totally bricked them.  So much for on-site back-up technologies...

It's a shame that the NewEgg rep treated you that way, JH.  Fraud is an increasing fact of life in the mail-order business, and profiles like yours (newly opened account, no CVV info available yet, etc.) probably have much stricter protocols for what they can't work out than mail-order businesses that have a larger share of low-dollar transactions.  Electronics and AV businesses are a magnet for fraudsters.

Even if her hands were tied, there was still no reason for the NewEgg staffer to treat you that way.  Maybe she was having a bad day, maybe NE is struggling to train new reps in a remote-employment capacity, or maybe NE is hiring poor staff these days.  Maybe even all three at once? 

I know it's no consolation to you--you just wanted a Mustang Convertible fancy new rig.  These things are seldom about us, even if they feel very personal.  I hope you love the new system you do get!

If she'd been more sympathetic but still unable to help you, do you think you would have chosen to just wait 2 weeks to make the purchase happen if they could have given you a lock on the order?

[Jarhead0331]

If she'd been more sympathetic but still unable to help you, do you think you would have chosen to just wait 2 weeks to make the purchase happen if they could have given you a lock on the order?

Most likely. I was only mildly annoyed at the time I got to her. She totally put me into red line territory. I mean, what you mentioned totally would have placated me. "Sorry sir, I really understand your frustration. How about if we just lock in your order until you receive your card and are able to supply the necessary information..."

Problem solved.

[FarAway Sooner]

Yup.  Those are the kinds of lost opportunities that service team managers and senior management tear their hair out about.  Again, it comes back to hiring the right people, and giving them the right tools (systems and training).

Some businesses (e.g., American health care insurance providers, Oracle, etc.) build their model around building a captive audience and then giving them crappy service to minimize expenses.  For everybody else, you've got to treat your customers well!  Their loss, as well as yours...

[JasonPratt]

So, what does 6500 bucks get you? Diamond shafted cooling fans with 24 karat prisms to offer you a light show in your room?
I hope this price isn't just for a tower and its contents, because that would be either a total ripoff or the prices in the US for hardware are crazy at the moment.

Just for the tower and its contents, no light show, plus shipping across most of the US (and I think a 3 year warranty, which I never needed). That was back in December 2012.

6500 seems rather excessive, but fitting for the title's thread however! 😊😊

Heh! By the time performance requires me to trade up, I fully expect it'll be around $680 a year or less, hassle free peak performance, and expert customer service for when I make a rare goof of my own: never once in 20 years (possibly more like 21) has any of my three Falcons ever failed me, and I've upgraded gfx cards exactly once during that time (a few years ago).

To be clear, that's three sequentially owned computers, with nothing else bought in between to replace them. There was never any need.

Right now, MachVs aren't available, being in the middle of a long-term redesign and testing phase, so I can't quote a comparable cutting edge system from them. A very top-line performance Talon would currently run $16,500ish, freight included, 3 year warranty standard now. (This includes some things I wouldn't bother with like two 8TB SSDs when a lesser set or even one would be fine, plus some gaming extras I might or might not include myself, and a top-line monitor that I don't need and wouldn't buy, but not including a bunch of extra data drives, nor professional grade GPU(s), nor extra monitors, nor paint jobs or other extra-cost aesthetics.)

Power Supply   EVGA® SuperNOVA P2 1200 Watt
ASUS® ROG Strix TRX40-XE
AMD Threadripper™ 3990x 64-Core - 2.9GHz to 4.3GHz
Asetek® Liquid Cooling 680LS 280MM {plus a standard fan set for the tower of course}
G.Skill Ripjaws V 128GB (8x16GB) - 2666MHz
EVGA® GeForce® RTX 3090 24GB
Creative® Sound Blaster AE-9
Operating System Drive   SABRENT® Rocket Q 8TB - M.2 SSD - PCI Express
Data Drive - M.2 SOCKET   SABRENT® Rocket Q 8TB - M.2 SSD - PCI Express
SATA   CableMod® SATA Power & Data
External Optical Drive   Pioneer Slim Portable 6x - Blu-ray - Writer
64-Bit Operating System   Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
USB Rescue Drive
Warranty   3 Years Parts & Labor
Logitech® G910 Orion Spark - Mechanical
G.SKILL RIPJAWS MX780-RGB Laser Gaming Mouse
Asus® PG35VQ G-SYNC 35" monitor - 3440x1440 - 200Hz {they offer a larger curved one but I doubt it would fit on my desk}
Logitech® Z625 2.1 speakers
Logitech® G935 Wireless Gaming Headset
APC SurgeArrest® Performance 11-Outlet

If I dialed back things I have no real need for (because I already have those things, or don't need some extras), I could (arguably) improve performance on the SSD (though it would need the boost, being both the data and OS drive), and still drop the cost to $10K (freight included) with peak performance maintained.

There's probably no need for a MachV unit anymore, come to think of it. ;) The Tiki and Fragbox builds each very effectively fill the niche the Talon used to fill, and the Talon upgrades to MachV quality now (which it was already close to).


Or if I dialed back to just under top tier, I could get 95% of the same performance (or maybe better), for around $6900 freight included.

Power Supply   EVGA® SuperNOVA P2 1200 Watt
ASUS® ROG Strix TRX40-XE
AMD Threadripper™ 3960X 24-Core - 3.8GHz to 4.5GHz
Asetek® Liquid Cooling 680LS 280MM {plus a standard fan set for the tower of course}
G.Skill Ripjaws V 128GB (8x16GB) - 2666MHz
EVGA® GeForce® RTX 3080 10GB
Western Digital® Blue™ SN550 500GB - M.2 SSD - PCI Express
External Optical Drive   Pioneer Slim Portable 6x - Blu-ray - Writer
64-Bit Operating System   Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
USB Rescue Drive
Warranty   3 Years Parts & Labor

That's probably a 10+ year computer again, allowing for one new gfx card six or seven years down the line; and if I had any need to upgrade I'd be looking at this.

Could I get those parts and a whitebox myself? Of course. Cheaper? Substantially, I expect. Could I put it together myself? Probably, although it would give me a migraine! (Even changing out a top fan when I forget to clean it for too long, gives me a splitting headache.)

Could I make it run as fast and solidly so as FNW does? Absolutely not. Nor would I get their customer support for years and years, which I would undoubtedly need plenty of in this situation.

[Yskonyn]

So 19,500 bucks (approx) over 20 years?
That's almost a thousand bucks per year. No way I spend that on my PC and I always have a high-end system which runs rock solid.
I spend 1000 over every 4 years or so.

But you make a valid point about wanting top notch hassle free customer care. I know my way around hardware and build everything myself, but if you do not paying a fee for some insurance to keep it running over its lifecycle is what I would do as well.

Still, they don't fool around with their prices! The day I tell my wife I have ordered a PC for the price of a used car would be the day we sign divorce papers.

[jamus34]

Going on what Pratt posted there's really no need for the gigantic towers anymore unless you want to bling it out.

I love my Silverstone Fortress case but it's outlived it's usefulness. I no longer need a huge amount of expansion ports (I would say the max I would need is three, and can probably get by with two) I don't need a gazillion drives as I can get by with a small sub TB M.2, a 1-2 TB SSD game drive and a 6TB platter general storage drive. I could theoretically cut that out too if I ever get off my arse and get a NAS box like I've been wanting. Also might get an external dvd/cd writer but I barely use my physical drive any more too. Can't quite cut that cord though as I do still enjoy music.

When I build my next box I'll probably spec it for an AIO water cooler and able to fit a 3090, even though I only plan for a 3080. That should allow me a much small case that I can realistically put on my desk or a shelf again.

[Gusington]

I hate huge towers but for gaming they are somewhat necessary. I've always wanted the smallest tower I could get - but the rig I am about to move on from is probably the biggest yet :/

Hoping the next one can be 2/3 the size.

[JasonPratt]

So 19,500 bucks (approx) over 20 years?

Sadly, no, that's probably still only 10+ years. The cost difference between that and $6900 is bloodiest edgiest hardware (and more of it) vs almost-bleeding-edge performance, which is functionally indistinguishable from the tippy toppiest tier. (Plus getting all the other useful stuff for a computer like keyboard and mouse and monitor and speakers, but most people have those already. I'm still using the keyboard I got with my original Falcon 20 years ago, right this moment, for example. Don't need another one yet, though the right-shift key tends to stick sometimes.)

I spend 1000 over every 4 years or so.

Averaging $250 a year is certainly very good!  O0 

But you make a valid point about wanting top notch hassle free customer care. I know my way around hardware and build everything myself, but if you do not paying a fee for some insurance to keep it running over its lifecycle is what I would do as well.

There's also the advantage of not needing to re-set up my system (hardware and/or software) every few years. Basically I'm paying for someone else's expertise, and I can put my mental ergs toward something else. But obviously, anyone with the aptitude and enjoyment of building a stable and performance rig should be doing that: save money doing something you love, amen!  (And it'll be damn well better than a Dell, or whatever those cow computers were from that box store now out of business -- dang what were those? They used to give me migraines trying tech support them for family and friends of family. I suspect my brain has burned the neurons out of my head which stored details about them, trying to save me from the trauma.  :hide: )

Still, they don't fool around with their prices! The day I tell my wife I have ordered a PC for the price of a used car would be the day we sign divorce papers.

Or for a new Kia!

Besides, that's what sim pits are for. ("Sim" probably translates to "money" in some language or another... ;) )

[JasonPratt]

I hate huge towers but for gaming they are somewhat necessary. I've always wanted the smallest tower I could get - but the rig I am about to move on from is probably the biggest yet :/

Hoping the next one can be 2/3 the size.

They're really not necessary; the Tiki and Fragbox form factors demonstrate that. Those things are practically portable: the whole point to a 'fragbox' is to bring it with you to a LAN party, and a Tiki is basically a PS3 standup.

The stuff in my black monolith could probably fit in a much smaller box. BUT the upside to the larger box, is better cooling.

A little counter-intuitively, though, smaller computers physically tend to cost more for the same performance, laptops being a stereotypical example. The proportional cost increase for equivalent performance isn't nearly the same for 'console' or 'fragbox' sized systems, but it's there.

[Gusington]

To me, better cooling in a non-fragbox = necessary.

[JasonPratt]

Going on what Pratt posted there's really no need for the gigantic towers anymore unless you want to bling it out.

Yeah, I hadn't really noticed until I went to build a Talon, but the supersized boxes are kind of pointless now. They were getting near that way already when I bought that one: there was no reason really why the same hardware couldn't have been put in a Talon sized box.

My guess would be that Falcon may reinstate them quietly for professional purposes (like render farms), which need a lot of extra hardware and cooling in proportion, so would benefit from the size.

Also might get an external dvd/cd writer but I barely use my physical drive any more too. Can't quite cut that cord though as I do still enjoy music.

Now that the drive on my PS3 is dying, which was an EXCELLENT Sony Blu player, I'm glad I invested in a Blu drive for the Presence long ago. I've had to run some DVDs on it recently that the PS3 just won't play anymore. (It still plays Blus fine, but I have to suppose that day is coming so I should be preparing for the switch.) Plus with reliable open source software like VLC, I can buy non region-A/1 discs if necessary. I'd definitely be including an external Blu drive; I still buy series and films that way (and on DVD where unavailable on Blu), and I have an extensive collection of other things I still watch occasionally.

[JasonPratt]

To me, better cooling in a non-fragbox = necessary.

You've got more room in a larger box for any 'surgery', too (be that elective or emergency, so to speak). My headaches swapping out my new gfx card two or three years ago would have been much worse in a box I couldn't get my hands properly into.

[Gusington]

Yes - I don't appreciate the big box size as much as I should when it comes to taking out and putting in new parts. I haven't done it in a long time, but I still remember how annoying it could have been with more limited space.