Before anyone says anything, I know I could do better building my own, but I am currently working about 80 hours per week and have family obligations, so prebuilt it is. My budget is $1200 max (that includes shipping). Just need the computer itself, nothing else.

Looking at an Ibuypower Series A

Coolermaster 922 HAF - Tower

Intel i5 2500k

Liquid Cooling (I'm sure it's some generic brand) w/ 120mm fan

8GB (4GBx2) DDR3-1600 Corsair Vengeance

Nvidia Geforce 560 ti 1GB 900mhz superclocked - core (only one card)

Asus P8Z68-V LX Lucid Virtu Technology

650w Corsair TXV2

500GB HDD 16m cache 7200 rpm (probably some generic brand)

24x Dual Format/Dual Layered DVD +R/+RW (again, I'm sure it's just generic)

12-in-1 Internal Flash Media Card Reader/Writer (I could honestly probably just skip this outright)

Win 7 Home Premium 64bit

All totaling to $1152, this particular model has free shipping so yay me. I went out to newegg and priced out something similar, for the parts I wasn't sure of the brand, I just chose the cheapest generic (which I am sure what they do) and came out to around $1134 w/ S+H. Getting BF3 and Arkham City as freebies is purely a bonus (although it's roughly $110 in free games).

I don't plan to ever want to SLI, and I am skipping the SSD mostly for cost effectiveness, although getting a SSD and adding a HDD later might be a good route too (which I am sure would void my warranty though).

So, please give me honest opinions.

Not bad I would say.

try this site and see what you can come up with. You can pretty much pick and choose everything, from case, to cooling, PSU ect.

More or less custom build your own and have them put it together. No cheap parts unless you choose them. What you listed isnt bad IMO, but my advice is to shop around a bit and see what you can do. Make tha $1200 stretch as far as you can.

Oh and the obligatory - building your own is cheaper =)

http://www.avadirect.com/

Yeah, I've been looking at AVADirect. My only real problem with them is that I can't read the details of the complaints filed to the BBB, Cyberpower too for that matter. However, I could read every detailed complaint vs. Ibuypower, and most times it sounded like the customer was acting pretty unreasonably.

Yeah, I'm still shopping around too, but this was the only real deal that made me go, hey that's not too shabby. :P

No I would not say its bad at all.

I personally bought a comp. from them years ago because like you I was busy and didnt feel like building. Just be aware that during shipping hardware may be unseated. When you get it crack the case and make sure everything is in place and seated well.

The one I bought was sli, one of the cards went out after a month or so. Defect on the card and no fault of theirs. To get a replacement they wanted me to send in both cards, authorize $400 dollars on my CC, and wait 4-6 weeks before they would replace them. During that time I would be without a computer.

I pretty much said to hell with that and bought a new card. Even if its a hassel I will always build my own from now on. Cheaper, easier to replace faulty hardware with Newegg, or tigerdirect.

just be aware that service after the sale may not be what you expect. You get that comp and a month later the MOBO goes bad, then you are sending in the whole computer ( paying for shipping ) and then will be waiting 4-8 weeks to get it back. If you are ok with that then go for it. Doesnt look like a bad system overall.

Originally posted by jdnewell

Not bad I would say.

try this site and see what you can come up with. You can pretty much pick and choose everything, from case, to cooling, PSU ect.

More or less custom build your own and have them put it together. No cheap parts unless you choose them. What you listed isnt bad IMO, but my advice is to shop around a bit and see what you can do. Make tha $1200 stretch as far as you can.

Oh and the obligatory - building your own is cheaper =)

http://www.avadirect.com/

Wow thanks for that website for AVA Direct I am going to check them out and build me a kick ass desktop system for TERA and they are way cheaper than Alienware, Falcon, and iBuypower :)

Thanks!!!

Not a bad build.  I wouldn't pay the $19 extra to get Corsair memory rather than some other brand, as that's about half the cost of the memory.

The advantage of AVA Direct is that they let you pick the exact parts, and have suitable parts for all price ranges.  iBuyPower doesn't have anything appropriate to a gaming machine on a tight budget, but has a more reasonable selection for larger budget systems.  The most glaring omission is the complete lack of decent quality power supplies cheaper than a Corsair TX650 V2.  If you're trying to build a $700 budget gaming system, then you probably want a good quality 400-520 W power supply, and iBuyPower won't sell it to you.

I strongly doubt that adding your own hard drive later would void the warranty.  If you physically remove your hard drive before sending the system in for warranty service, they'd have no way of knowing it was ever there.

I also expect that you'd be able to build your own system comparable to that for cheaper than you think.  You might be looking on New Egg at the exact parts they offer, and ignoring comparable parts that are cheaper on New Egg but not offered by iBuyPower.  But if it's worth paying someone else $100-$200 to assemble the parts for you, then that's a reasonable preference, too.