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• Quizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499

  December 2019

  I might as well copy my post from your other thread over here:
  
  If you can't or won't build your own, the next best thing is getting one built to order.  On a tight budget like $500, that might be hard to do, but once your budget goes over $1000, it's a lot easier.
  
  Anyway, I tried going here and largely following the special deals that seemed reasonable:
  
  https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/AMD-Ryzen-7X-Configurator
  
  The changes that I made from the default were:
  
  Chassis:  CyberPower Onyxia
  CPU:  Ryzen 5 3600
  CPU cooler:  CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO
  Motherboard:  Gigabyte X570 UD
  Video card:  Radeon RX 5700 XT
  Power supply:  Thermaltake Smart 600 W
  Hard drive:  whatever the cheapest mechanical drive is
  SSD freebie:  yes, you want that
  
  That comes to $1203, which is quite a bit cheaper than your Amazon links.  About how the hardware would compare to your two links is:
  
  CPU:  Significantly faster cores than the SkyTech computer, but fewer of them.  It might still be faster just about across the board because a Ryzen 7 2700 will have to throttle so far back to keep everything inside 65 W when you're pushing all eight cores hard.  As compared to the HP, it will probably be a little slower on single-threaded performance, but a lot faster on multi-threaded, as the more efficient architecture can clock a lot higher inside of 65 W when you push a lot of CPU cores.
  
  CPU cooler:  Significantly better CPU cooler, which matters for Ryzen systems, as that will allow the CPU to clock higher.  The SkyTech computer has the AMD stock cooler, which is decent, and the HP computer obscures it, but probably has the Intel stock cooler, which is awful.
  
  Motherboard:  Probably a significantly better motherboard.  The HP motherboard is almost certainly some awful cheap junk that you don't want.  SkyTech doesn't have large enough volume to commission their own largely bare motherboards like HP does, but I could just about guarantee that it's not an X570 motherboard with the full upgrade path that you'd want.  The HP computer has no realistic CPU upgrade path other than replacing the computer outright.
  
  Memory:  They all have 16 GB of DDR4, but the one I linked above clocks it higher.  It also has two 8 GB modules, not a single 16 GB module, as vendors may sometimes do if it's cheaper.  You want two memory modules to be able to use both memory channels, and neither SkyTech nor HP say if they do that.  The SkyTech computer says in one place that it uses DDR3, but that's surely wrong, as no motherboard will accept both DDR3 and a Ryzen CPU.
  
  Video card:  Slightly slower than the SkyTech computer, and significantly slower than the HP.  This is the main place that I saved money, and why the computer comes out about $200 cheaper in spite of otherwise being substantially better.  But a Radeon RX 5700 XT is still quite a fast video card, and I went with it because I didn't like CyberPower PC's relative pricing on their GeForce cards.
  
  Power supply:  Likely to be significantly better than either of the Amazon computers.  A Thermaltake Smart power supply isn't great, but it's not bad, either.  The rule of thumb is that if a company won't tell you which power supply they're using, it's because the power supply is bad.
  
  Storage:  Twice as much SSD space than the HP computer, while only half as much SSD space as the SkyTech, but you also get a hard drive.  A 512 GB NVMe SSD plus a 1 TB hard drive isn't usually what I'd recommend, but they priced it so that that's only $3 more than a 480 GB SATA SSD with no hard drive.  You could also upgrade the hard drive to 2 TB for another $16 if you need the space.
  

  
• Cleffy Member RarePosts: 6,414

  December 2019 edited December 2019

  With the Skytech, you can get a better price directly from their website: Skytech Gaming
  However, that specific model is not sold through their site. I don't really ding them because they have good reviews, but early impressions don't say much about a product. Given Skytech's business model, they source good Mobos, CPUs, GPUs, and cases paying slightly below MSRP. This means a low profit margin and high volumes. So they are probably spending 15~30 minutes on assembly and if you pick their premium products they are investing in testing. You will get a similar experience with iBuyPowerPC/CyberPowerPC, but you can specify a better PSU. If something goes wrong it's usually not a fun experience with no experience assembling PCs.
  
  They are using a Rosewill Cullinan PX case, and a Gamdias Kratos M1-600B. My bet is they get special pricing from them for parts as the Gamdias PSUs are trash especially for the price and only offer RGB. They are local to Skytech Gaming which probably makes them convenient to source from. My bet is the CoolerMaster and Thermaltake cases also have PSUs from CoolerMaster and Thermaltake which aren't good. The InWin, Rosewill, and Corsair cases probably source the PSU from a local supplier like Gamdias.