$700 boutique build review, leap from sempron/5400rpm to i5/SSD

[Fire&Blood]

EDIT: It takes 10-14 business days from date of receiving the order to shipping. I can't explain why it slipped my mind to mention this when I first wrote this post. The upside is, they also run stability testings for 24 hours.

HEC 6C28B Black Mid-Tower Case
ANTEC HCG-520 520W Power Supply
INTEL DH67BLB3,
INTEL, Core™ i5-2400
KINGSTON, 4GB (2 x 2GB) ValueRAM PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz
CRUCIAL, 128GB M4 SSD,
SONY, AD-7261S Black 24x DVD±R/RW
No Operating System
WARRANTY, Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty

The motherboard box contains all the manuals and a few bar code cutouts and extra screws for the case.

Most careful packaging job I've ever seen. A built tower in the case box, surrounded by packing peanuts within another box. I prepped updates in advance but didn't need to, it shipped with BIOS, SSD and chipset firmware updated to latest versions. Came with a win7 build 3601 installed, assuming it was valid for a week or so. Nice touch to allow one to get situated, verify working order and such, I had a win7 u 64 waiting though.

I priced the parts for the build at ~$605 if I were to build it myself. Considering the rig cost $667 before shipping, I guess I could reason that I paid extra for really neat cabling and a 3 year warranty. Building it myself and utilizing used parts, I guess I could have gotten it done for $550 or so.

Quiet. So quiet it freaked me out. I never used a SSD based computer prior to this one so it will take some time getting used to. Obviously it's light years ahead of the 7-8 yr old Sempron. I only got this setup yesterday I didn't get to do detailed testing yet. Video playback is smooth and it thoroughly owns any flash content. Even tried a game, no discreet GPU but I launched world of tanks just to try it and while it was barely breaking 10 fps at times, I'm impressed how far both onboard video & audio have come.

 

[jpeyton]

Pics of cabling?

 

[Fire&Blood]

Sorry for the bad pic, only have phone at disposal at the moment.

I don't wanna praise them too early but put hiding the 6/8 pin cables is a nice touch. They put some thought into it, for example SSD is plugged into the SATA III port.

 

[jpeyton]

Very clean cabling. They did a good job of hiding the PSU cables on that non-modular unit.

 

[lehtv]

Sorry for the bad pic, only have phone at disposal at the moment.

It'd be better if you didn't take the picture against the incoming light, but rather from the same direction as the light

 

[Fire&Blood]

It'd be better if you didn't take the picture against the incoming light, but rather from the same direction as the light

Indeed, I'm downloading, installing, testing and tweaking it to my liking, once I am done I can take a better picture. When I snapped that one I was hiding cords and cables, so very little room for maneuvering and was pressed with time to start updating.

EDIT: I bought a used video card in the FS/T forum, by the time I'm done it should be here so installing it will be a good opportunity to take better pics.

 

[Rvenger]

Hey Rick,

What did you end up going with in regards to the video card?

 

[Fire&Blood]

Hey Rick,

What did you end up going with in regards to the video card?

I got the 5770. I should have let you know, sorry. I couldn't wait any longer so I got it. I hope you resolved your situation with the bad buyer.

 

[Rvenger]

I got the 5770. I should have let you know, sorry. I couldn't wait any longer so I got it. I hope you resolved your situation with the bad buyer.

Its all good, I will probably keep my HD 5770 anyways. Its a nice performer and the best thing was that I paid nothing for it. A friend gave it to me

 

[lehtv]

Is your real name Rick Astley btw? Cos the Rick Astley isn't James. Or is your real name James?

 

[Fire&Blood]

LOL, my forum name is a result of a internal joke with my friends. Long story short, it's combo of 2 extremes, Rick James being one and Rick Astley (Never gonna give you up aka rick roll) being the other.

 

[Jman13]

Wow....from a Sempron to an i5...must seem like you're hitting warp 9! I can't even imagine how big of a bump that must feel like. I built a Sempron system for my wife in 2005, and it got very light use, before being harvested for a media PC for my TV. The Sempron wasn't powerful enough to handle certain tasks I needed, however, so I bought a used Socket 754 Athlon64 to take its place...and that system was retired when we got our Xbox360, since I could stream movies from my main rig, and watch Netflix and Hulu on the Xbox.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

im still on a pentium D

waiting for the green light from my parts for an i5 build -_-

stupid grades

 

[Fire&Blood]

Wow....from a Sempron to an i5...must seem like you're hitting warp 9! I can't even imagine how big of a bump that must feel like. I built a Sempron system for my wife in 2005, and it got very light use, before being harvested for a media PC for my TV. The Sempron wasn't powerful enough to handle certain tasks I needed, however, so I bought a used Socket 754 Athlon64 to take its place...and that system was retired when we got our Xbox360, since I could stream movies from my main rig, and watch Netflix and Hulu on the Xbox.

Warp 9 indeed. The sempron 3100+ was an exercise in frustration over the past 2 years, though it was almost adequate in 2005. I have a 1080 monitor and opening sites like verge.com or watching videos was a lag fest each time. The day before I received the new one, the Sempron rig had a 40 sec HDD stall. Then the CD drive kicked the bucket. It was very aggravating to use it. Even more so since before the sempron, (~2005 emachine rig) I had a high end system that leaked cooling fluid while I was away. To top it off, I had just spent major $$$ (from my POV) for WIN7 U 64 when it happened. CPU dead, 1 7800GT survived, other one made it, PS died as well as both Raptors. The DDR RAM sticks miraculously survived, so I took the 256MB one out of the emachine and put my 2GB in there. In this state it was barely usable, I then sold the 7800GT, had to add more money (lol) to fill the AGP slot with a cheap 4650 and voila, I had a backup rig running.

It's amazing how responsive in everyday usage this rig is, and the way it handles video and audio without either discrete card is impressive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

im still on a pentium D

waiting for the green light from my parts for an i5 build -_-

stupid grades

That will be nice, if you could get an i5 rig. You would have a faster rig than me!

 

[T_Yamamoto]

That will be nice, if you could get an i5 rig. You would have a faster rig than me!

Yay! Soon I shall upgrade.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Cabling on the other side of the case before I took the 6 pin out to connect GPU.

 

[mfenn]

Did they do the cable management or is that something that you did after the fact?

 

[Fire&Blood]

Did they do the cable management or is that something that you did after the fact?

They did.

 

[MxChris]

Sweet video card

 

[T_Yamamoto]

They did.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Few more pics with the 5770 installed:

The +2 pin connector blocks the air intake a little bit, no matter how I try to arrange the plug it doesn't get better.

I thought this was unusual. I don't think it actually helps with cooling much but I left it attached to the side panel. It can be removed easily and it can also be extended toward the CPU cooler by ~2".

GPU is a great overclocker but keeping it stock since the cooling can't keep up with clocks.

 

[mfenn]

They did.

That's a pretty damn good job for a custom prebuilt!