I read the whole article, and some of it was over-the-top. Claiming that the cooler was insufficient for the i7-8700 CPU, without: 1) load and temp testing, and 2) speculating that the cooler should be overspecified, should the owner be lazy and never dust out the PC for three years. C'mon. Really? That's not a real complaint.
Also, picking on them for hot-gluing the USB3.0 cable? And making the claim that they "just don't" separate in shipping? Ok, Steve, try doing systems integration for years, and then get back to me, You YT star You. It's not like it can't be peeled off, if necessary to do repairs. And I expect that it cuts down on support calls, which is why they do it, otherwise, they wouldn't spend the labor on it.
I remember hot clue and silicone paste (caulk) on IDE cables back in the whitebox days at Computer Fairs. It's not at all unusual for a SI to do that, especially shipping. (I don't, but I don't do pretty-much any volume. Most of my few sales are local.)
Yeah, he had valid complaints, that they "wasted" the mobo's USB3.0 header, to route to a USB-C bracket on the back side. There's a reason that header is called "Front USB 3.0", it's for the front of the case. If they didn't use a case with front USB3.0, well, shame on them.
And of course, the massive screw-up that Walmart sent the down-rev SKU, rather than the full-fat version, yeah, I'd be pissed at that too, Steve.
In closing, I bought an "HP Power Gaming PC" last BF, with an i5-7400, 2x4GB DDR4-2400 RAM, an OEM GTX 1060 3GB, and a 1TB HDD (disconnected before use, and an SSD installed), and honestly, for $500, I couldn't build one at the price, and it was pretty darn good. Pretty much decent reviews from that era.
So, not all Gaming PCs from Walmart are a bad deal. Some, are very good.
I agree, it seemed overpriced, for shipping with an H310 mobo. Although Steve harps on the "Half Bus Speed" thing like it matters somehow. The video card's PCI-E goes straight into the CPU, as does the DRAM. So, you're looking at chipset I/O, like USB3.0 and SATA, potentially bottlenecking slightly. Unless you're trying to use Linux software MDM RAID-5 over four Intel chipset SATA ports, while at the same time, downloading over a gigabit internet connection to an NVMe SSD, while backing up your RAID over multiple USB3.0 ports to external HDDs, AT THE SAME TIME, then I DON'T think it's a (real) problem.
Edit: Of course, mine was an HP, not some generic shlock builder, but still.
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