Worst So Far: iBUYPOWER Pre-Built Gaming PC Slate MR1004 Review

[@GamersNexus]

The next one on the bench seems, so far, to be promising. We haven't found any show-stopping issues (yet). Hopefully it gives us a positive prebuilt to review! Back-order a GN Anti-Static Modmat "Volt": store.gamersnexus.net/products/modmat-volt-large Buy GN's Red & Black Mouse Pad: store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-charge-redblack-mousepad Watch our review of Cyberoower’s Gamer Xtreme i3200BST: kzbin.info/www/bejne/g2ebknhnr8aSd80 Watch our Dell G5 5000 pre-built gaming PC review (tear-down & billing): kzbin.info/www/bejne/anWwmGmeitqXfqc Or Part 2 o four Dell review, where we look at bloatware & benchmarks: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3-akoyqoN9-gMU Watch our Pre-Built Buyer's Warnings: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mXzbc6Kdq7qYlcU Blue & Black Mouse Pad: store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-component-blueblack-mousepad Wireframe Desk-Sized Mouse Mat: store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-wireframe-mouse-mat

[@david3199]

Hi Sttteeeeppphhheeennnn. Love how all these manufacturers fail so hard on building pre-built PC's!

[@theskyknight1002]

Best of luck on the quest, finding an out of the box pre built with no real issues isn't easy.

[@TheAlienwarewolf]

Steve, please review CLX/Cybertron prebuilt gaming PC's!

[@Nib_Nob-t7x]

I wonder if its orgin they are good but expensive

[@peccatumDei]

Dawid Does Tech Stuff (who delights in trashing bad prebuilts) actually found a Lenovo with almost no issues. If it's not already in your queue, it's a good one to add.

[@FightingFire01]

"Components tested individualy, not assembled" sounds like a futurama joke, and the punchline is ibuypower

[@draconightwalker4964]

they should change thier name to isellshit

[@--_DJ_--]

FCC stickers are funny?

[@darkSorceror]

To paraphrase Ogden Wormstrom, "I give your quality control the worst grade imaginable: an F minus minus!"

[@bru_haha]

I know it’s kind of a meme to overreact to something like this, but the sticker is for FCC compliance and not referring to the PC’s functionality. It just means that components are individually compliant with FCC rules for RF interference, but the assembled PC was not tested as a whole for RF. It has nothing to do with IBuyPower testing the PC’s functionality after they built it.

[@darkSorceror]

@@bru_haha So how come the other prebuilts don't have it?

[@egs-zh3dt]

"IBP has a screw loose" Yeah, both literally and figuratively

[@madmax2069]

Lmao, a screw loose, bent and twisted and flopping about.

[@JohnDoe-cq9no]

Purchased a $2,300 prebuilt from iBuyProblems that was put together wrong and doesn't work. I don't even know how it could have passed the "inspection".

[@ChristopherHailey]

I didn't know The Verge sold pre-builts.

[@bestgirlyagoo800]

GN found the guy's new day job

[@TheInternetHelpdeskPlays]

Well thanks for giving me cringe flashbacks, I forgot that video existed until now.

[@ChristopherHailey]

@@TheInternetHelpdeskPlays Oh, sorry...my bad

[@cy-one]

All hail brackets! \o/ You get a bracket and you get a bracket! Everyone gets a bracket!

[@Lingosel]

I’ve heard so much about this verge video in the past few years, I can sorta guess what it looked like, but I really want to watch the original just for fun :p do you know if its recording is still available somewhere on the internet?

[@DestDroid]

Steve finally admits this entire series is because his grandma wants to get into gaming.

[@MVicarious]

Are we sure this PC wasn't intercepted and tampered with by Dell to make theirs appear less bad?

[@rustler08]

This thing is trash, even by Dell standards.

[@JeighNeither]

My IbuyPower has been flawless for 2+ years now, pushed hard as a gaming and audio production unit.

[@Xolerys]

Ehhh I doubt it, I don't see gamers Nexus doing that plus I used to work there and let me tell u, quality standards there a shiet

[@MVicarious]

@@JeighNeither I'm glad you got one that serves your needs. I'll never give them a dime, but mostly on principle for me. They're trying to take advantage of computer ignorance, pawning off old tech like GT 710s (shit card even 10 years ago) in "gaming" rigs full of RGB, to people just wanting to get their kid something to play Fortnite on.

[@logmaster534]

@@Xolerys the comment was a joke

[@dem279]

“I was gonna remove the last screw but they pre removed it for me” i lost it

[@cryptocannoli2512]

🤣😂🖐️👍☠️

[@Mathignihilcehk]

Just like the screw eh?

[@darkSorceror]

"The plastic is chewed up" Yup, looks like when the GPU pulled out, it bent the slot itself, not just the reinforcement. This also explains how the clip came out; it would have popped off when the GPU came off the slot. I've made the mistake a couple of times of forgetting that these clips changed design from the old molded plastic design, and popped them off myself. Honestly doesn't take a whole lot of force to pop them off if you have a GPU in there to use as a lever

[@andyenglish4303]

Honestly if the components were so poorly installed and so treated so badly in shipping it's kind of a miracle none of them arrived bricked.

[@darkSorceror]

@@andyenglish4303 You could almost forgive the GPU coming loose, or even the motherboard mounting (if it was torn out by a heavy GPU) as shipping damage, and told them just to use the expanding foam bags. But the "installed/not tested" sticker demonstrates they know they have issues, and prefer to waive responsibility away with legal boilerplate, rather than fix any QC or warranty/support problems.

[@Holesale00]

That pcie slot was bent during assembly, Because for the system to be dropped hard enough to bend like that during shipping the side panel or whatever other glass should be shattered and other likely other damage to the case it self. Coming from experience working in a SI build warehouse I've seen Properly packed systems encased in plywood and foam get dropped by UPS and the PCIE slot is literally ripped off the board and in all the cases the glass was shattered sometimes even ram popped out of slots as well as custom watercooling tubing popped out of place due to drops.

[@lucidnonsense942]

@@Holesale00 In fairness, the whole mobo moved and even stripped one of the screws out and I think those panels are acrylic. Or, someone hulked on it so hard to shift the motherboard - that's jumping off a trampoline,, while aiming at the slot with the GPU, level of force.

[@tad2021]

But how would it have popped off the retention clips on every other slot as well? I wonder if iBP removed all the retention clips to prevent customer damage to the mobo from trying to remove the GPU and not knowing to release the clip first. If that was the case, it may have backfired here.

[@Chaosdude341]

I absolutely love the review style GN has. It's very particular, strong, fair, and the attention to detail is second to none, nor is the consistency!

[@jimgray3346]

In your sentence, replace "nor" with "as". Just a little syntax tip. Otherwise, I agree with your statement.

[@Chaosdude341]

@@jimgray3346 i dont know what the fuck I was thinking

[@MaksKuaka]

​@Chaosdude341 what I wnor thinking*

[@EmperorFeatherFlight]

​@@jimgray3346just like* the consistency sounds a bit nicer to me

[@justahyundai]

that's a bit of a run on sentence, it's syntactically more accurate to use "as is" given both consistency and attention to detail are being compared similarly @@EmperorFeatherFlight

[@boloaimlock603]

This is actually depressing

[@GladinGAFloodGoFundMe]

Tech Jesus is saving us from throwing away our money. But yes also depressing.

[@surfingeagle784]

That thumbnail though. It's like forgive them Father they no not what they do

[@John__K]

Imagine being the average joe that is new to computers and has to deal with this huge amount of crap.. This looks at least 1-2 months of back and forth RMA... if you are lucky and they send it back to you in a working state the second time...

[@agdgdgwngo]

With all the pre built apparently this bad and components so hard to get I fear for the future of PC gaming.

[@DedMem3]

That was my exact thought

[@askopte]

"Worse than dell" definitely says something

[@NightMotorcyclist]

I'm sure Dell/ Alienware will find a way to go even lower.

[@wayge]

@@NightMotorcyclist 100% gpu usage on boot

[@Ricky-nq7lu]

@@NightMotorcyclist Biggest screw up Alienware ever did was sell to dell as they put out some good system till dell got there dirty hands on it.

[@CaveyMoth]

@@wayge Thermal throttling on boot

[@NightMotorcyclist]

@Ross- A -Roni Their business line is much better than their consumer desktop line, although depends on which agency is setting up the contract. Some city agencies I've seen/ worked for got second or third rate Optiplex PCs that would bog down almost immediately after boot with garbage "support" software and some drivers. These were running 8th and 9th gen i7 CPUs.

[@johnbagley8211]

Back when I used to do SI on ebay, I would ship my PCs out of my apartment. I eventually used FedEx but, prior to that, I used UPS. Well, I scheduled a pickup and UPS came to get this large, 35lb full tower system and this angry little man threw it down the stairs after I closed the door. He didn't know I was watching him through my peephole. I got sooo pissed. When I confronted him he claimed it was an accident and wouldn't let me have it back bc it was already scanned in, saying "That's what insurance is for"... I had to pay to have it rerouted and rebuilt the system. UPS did nothing about it.

[@Nes924]

Should of just threw him down the stairs and say it was an accident, no evidence ;)

[@PerpetuallyTiredMusician]

I hear that. As someone who services basses and guitars as a side business I have had customers use UPS twice. First time it ended with a broken headstock. Second time an instrument got lost in transit, then delivers to a random ups service place in another city 3 weeks later. Great company with excellent sEerViCe 10/10.

[@kalashnikov1343]

As someone that works in the industry (LTL freight), UPS does infact have the highest claims. It's despicable when people treat shipments like that but sadly it happens. I know at my job most of us try to preserve the shipments to the best of our abilities. Although much of this iBuyPower computer was beyond shipping damage. The trucks that haul these packages are bouncy and I could foresee one particularly hard bump shifting the GPU enough to damage the PCI slot. It's definitely a sensitive item and the shipper should have prepared it better.

[@conturnplayscounturn6911]

how does someone even "accidentally" yeet a 35 lb system?

[@devilmikey00]

I've been pretty lucky with shipping my whole life. The only one I've ever had an issue with is UPS. They either won't just leave the damn thing on the door step and make me drive 30-40 minutes to pick it up or I've had them yeet my packages over my 8 foot tall back fence. One time the damn box was even labeled fragile. Thankfully the packing was good enough to take the fall but god damn I cringe when I've bought something and see it's UPS doing the delivery.

[@sagejpc1175]

When you said "We are the personal IT for our friends and family" I felt that.

[@simplysaphi]

"everyone here is personal IT for friends and family" Steve, this hits too close to home

[@alienpoker]

I just say ‘if I was a surgeon, would you expect me to operate on you in your house, and for free?” But yeah- I’ve been there. Worst thing is this: anything you touch or fix is forever your problem when it goes wrong.

[@vollkerball1]

last year my dinning table full of friends and family PCs... they think i am a pc wizard and i told them i only know how to use google search better than them

[@KooYu]

*sad IT noises*

[@vollkerball1]

@Zippy Dastrange Most of them afresh windows install solved the problems, other i had to dissassemble the pc. But yeah above 80% was software issues

[@kekistanifreedomfighter4197]

so true.

[@tyranids4ever]

"Caution: Hazardous Area" probably truer than intended

[@justsomeperson5110]

I am morbidly curious if that PSU collects fire-hazard levels of dust inside...

[@GGigabiteM]

@@justsomeperson5110 The PSU itself is a fire hazard. Raidmax is one of the worst PSU vendors, their units are known to explode and not be able to handle anywhere near their rated load.

[@beef682]

ever experience a loose screw falling into a PSU, bike yikes.

[@GGigabiteM]

@@beef682 I once had a ground wire pop out of an AMP connector and in a one in a billion chance the strain on the wire caused it to flip back towards the PSU. In a further one in a billion chance, the bare end of the wire make it through the grille on the housing and touched the primary side heatsink. That was such a loud bang and bright flash that it took me a few seconds to collect myself realize what happened. So much current went into the heatsink that it blew a hole into the side of it about the size of a pencil eraser. The entire primary side of the power supply was destroyed. Mosfets turned to charcoal skidmarks, the bridge rectifier shorted out and the fuse was nothing but glass bits rattling around in the case.

[@HelloFellowDinosaurs]

@@GGigabiteM Once one of my PCIE slot case guard things; those metal slits, fell under my motherboard when my PC was in a cardboard box because I thought that would be a good idea, and I accidentally knocked my desk one time and the bracket must've bounced up right under the motherboard and a poor little VRM got ded

[@sheevmuhqueen726]

A raidmax PSU. Whew. They spared every expense.

[@ConnorReviewsandMore]

While I can agree this PSU is a cheaper low end unit not really ideal for a mid range gaming build. I thought I'd like to add I've had great luck with raidmax's products. My power supply is going on 7 years now without issues. Being used daily for mining & gaming (2 gpus and a hot overclocked amd FX cpu). Some of their products are better than people tend to think in my opinion. Obviously you also get what you pay for.

[@jeffb.6642]

@@ConnorReviewsandMore well this one doesn't even have Active PFC - you can tell by the presence of the voltage selector switch. A PSU built in recent years that doesn't have APFC is going to be horrible, no exceptions.

[@messoremvitae]

@@ConnorReviewsandMore Mine is from 2008 (500 watts) , Powered a core 2 duo e6850, a radeon hd 4850 512mb, 2gb ram, a 160 gb WD hard-drive, a 500 gb seagate. It is in perfect condition because I opened it up once a year and cleaned it with compressed air.

[@MayaPosch]

Due to reading PSU reviews for years, my instinctive response to Steve mentioning 'Raidmax' was one of disbelief and terror. To me, Raidmax PSUs will forever be linked with fried mainboards and hard drives, performing only marginally better than Deer PSUs (RIP). Not having APFC on this particular model and yet a flashy sticker and outside makes me question how long it'll take before the Raidmax PSU puts the rest of this iBuyPower system out of its misery.

[@mindwreckRC]

@@MayaPosch oh jeez. deer PSUs. **horrible flashbacks**

[@andrewmakarov2753]

Pessimist: "The worst" Optimist: "SO FAR!"

[@Dato-64]

Homer, is this you?

[@saphirakai]

Realist: there are no GPUs Nihilist: idc i'm on console

[@Betsybabe3218]

Honestly I'm far from optimistic, but even I'm awaiting something far worse than this

[@warmike]

@@Betsybabe3218 the ewaste pcs from ebay got you covered

[@Crash32378]

I've run a local computer build/repair shop for almost 20 years now. I have nightmare stories of people bringing in pre built system like a week old that were bad but NOTHING and I mean NOTHING compares to this. This is horrible.

[@Shadyyus]

This pc seems extremely bad and definitely a store return rather than a pull apart.

[@tsdobbi]

" people bringing in pre built system like a week old" Why are the bringing them to you and paying you when they no doubt have a warranty?

[@Crash32378]

@tsdobbi Because they couldn't RMA them. I've worked on 5 systems in the past 6 months that the companies wouldn't RMA because of so called "shipping damage" or "Abuse". One of them the company didn't didn't even secure the video card pre shipping one the water block wasn't even secured and had no paste on it. Both of them the companies would not RMA. They claimed it was shipping damage and the person had to go through the shipping insurance which would take 3 months to get the system back.

[@SideswipePrime606]

@@Crash32378 That's insane. I feel awful for those people, but at least you were there to help them out.

[@xDownSetx]

30 seconds in and my jaw has dropped in complete horror

[@mjc0961]

30? Took me just 8!

[@thatsgottahurt]

lol, just posted the same. that sticker is hilarious (*ly bad)

[@PatalJunior]

Not even 30 seconds.

[@anthonyclark9591]

I face palmed myself into another dimension

[@CaveyMoth]

Should have had a weight bearing CPU cooler.

[@ZoeBios121]

I'm beginning to understand why Apple makes a killing if this is how the competitors in the pre-built space do.

[@Bourikii2992]

It's because the courts allowed apple to create a monopoly by sueing compact. Which was a decent prebuilt company at the time.

[@Waldherz]

@@Bourikii2992 No, this has nothing to do with this. Its because the 30 other major SIs dont do their job properly. Apple didnt become a major player because they sued an already dying company.

[@TalesOfWar]

@Gareth Tucker Apple also invest more time, money and resources in general to their packaging than most other companies invest in their entire logistics operation. Never mind the actual logistics once they're boxed. Even the trapezoidal shape of the older iMac boxes was designed to make stacking them on pallets easier and more secure while taking up less space so they could get more per stack. Then there's the totally obvious "why does hardly anybody else do this?" aspect of the boxes opening outwards so you can get the damn thing out easier. Have you tried taking out a monitor or case from their box in a small room? Fucking nightmare! Compared to just opening the flap on the iMac box.

[@RavensWolves]

I was about to post a similar response. How is just base assembly and shipping such an issue with these companies? It’s almost like comparing speeds of the builds is beside the point when just turning it on is such a poor experience.

[@marxman6896]

How the fuck is it remotely acceptable to slap a sticker on a PC that says "FULL PC NOT TESTED"? What an absolute joke. THIS is the company that won best prebuilt from LTT? Now I understand why we've been telling people not to buy prebuilts for so long.

[@JeffBreyer]

Its sad to see this considering all the work I used to put into builds at a small pc integrator I used to work for. Certainly we used cheap cases as we were business focused but we still took things a bit more seriously including a full days worth of testing for every PC that went out the door.

[@JohnDoe-cq9no]

Purchased a $2,300 prebuilt from iBuyProblems that was put together wrong and doesn't work. I don't even know how it could have passed the "inspection".

[@GregJ22]

"This is where I would remove the last screw but it was already pre-removed for me." I love you, Steve. ♥️

[@redsquirrelftw]

All these little burns and wittiness jar me out so much too haha.

[@goofball1_134]

Steve's sarcastic humor is much like my own and it's a big reason I come back 😂

[@johnr4724]

I wouldn’t expect something worse than that dell prebuilt so I guess that’s an achievement from Ibuypower

[@defresurrection]

@John R I had a Dell with no internet. After HOURS and hours with tech support, I decided to install an ethernet card bypassing the motherboard connection. I called them back to tell them I solved their problem. They sent tech to my house to replace motherboard. Proprietary Crap. Years and years ago it was a $1500 computer.

[@GaiusSabinus]

The rateing is sub-dell

[@scottcraig5394]

Nice

[@Skyhawk1998]

Dell has awful design, iBP has awful quality control.

[@TalesOfWar]

The Dell was crazy bad for other reasons. At least that actually worked and wasn't a potential fire risk just for turning it on.

[@chriss4799]

Worse than the G5? This is gonna be good.

[@Paul_Sleeping]

One thing Dell has done really well is that the systems are well built. Sure everything about it is proprietary and not much upgrade options Ibut for the most part, a Dell PC will arrive in working order and will last years. I recommend the Optiplex and laptops to my clients.

[@linchester8464]

Other than the pay for more support shit. Dell systems are mostly none issue. If you know what parts Dell used. You can actually repair or upgrade it yourself and save money

[@butifarras]

@@Paul_Sleeping optiplex are really good, I recently bought a usff mode for my mom, with an i5 2400, slap an ssd and works just fine for browsing and ms office

[@KostyaLiskov]

@@Paul_Sleeping @Paul_Sleeping would not agree. I found that most computers from dell fail miserably due to cheap parts they use. Well at least thats how it is in the company i work at Most common issue I find is their RAM is (poop) that fails all the time that requires replacement. And all that bloatware keeps growing into more if you leave them on auto update and do not delete it. Maybe on laptop game they are good, but definitely fail on desktops.

[@adamearle583]

That is 100% a store return. When parts are hard to find I’ve bought prebuilts to get parts out of. I’ve bought probably 6 ibuypowers. They always have foam packing in the case and always have a printed manual. Someone bought that and jacked it up considering the missing pci-e clips. If that’s not the case it must of been someone last day and they were just like f it

[@lurchadams2400]

i just recently bought one i didn't have the foam in the casing but there wasn't any damage to the pc its self

[@adamearle583]

@JK not sure how you got that from my comment but no I've never returned one I was just saying someone did that to that one.

[@Thunderstryk]

@JK reading comprehension is hard it seems.

[@johnmaurer3097]

@@lurchadams2400 I bought one a few months ago because other sites said they’re good machines. Mine was packaged well, had the foam inside the case, and everything works well. It was about $1400 which is double the cost of this one. Something I’ve noticed about the bad iBuyPower reviews is they’re reviewing machines for $500-700. Of course that’s a piece of trash. You can’t get a game computer for that, the GPU itself costs that much.

[@snipzmcrifle6562]

@@johnmaurer3097 you can actually get pretty good gaming pc’s for 700 bucks, especially since gpu prices aren’t as abysmal as they were a few months ago.

[@uncanny_mac4660]

Cyber Power feeling really good about that "Better than Dell" award.

[@peterpain6625]

Yea-nah. That's basically only saying dog poop tastes slightly better with a cherry on top :)

[@AC3handle]

Just need to push those warrantees and then they'll be matched.

[@FunnyFavor]

Eff Cyber Power, horrible company, horrible products, and oh wow their "customer support" lol

[@RJW14]

Yeah that should've been an easy thing, but I guess not 😂

[@peterpain6625]

@@RJW14 That's what you get having minimum wage workers with zero experience with no breaks working with computer hardware. I bet if they'd pay people a decent wage and give them some training before this would not happen.

[@trevorsmith470]

What I learned today: UPS's favored shipping method is trebuchet. Also ibuypower hasn't gotten its act together.

[@iFiReRaiN]

That looks like its not a shipping problem.

[@MattDakus]

I work for a freight shipping company that ships prebuilt gaming PCs out of Seattle, I can't remember from whom. Let me say I wouldn't trust anything more fragile than an anvil to be shipped with my company if it were my property! These gaming computers are often hastily thrown into uninsulated trailers with virtually no suspension, few if any tie downs, and shifting freight!

[@trevorsmith470]

@@iFiReRaiN Not entirely, no, but I doubt even the cheapest of SIs would manage to destroy a metal-plated PCIe slot just by building.

[@mrn234]

@@trevorsmith470 This metal plating is more show then anything else mate. its made from a thin sheet of metal. The Material would need to be 2-4times the thickness to make a difference at all.

[@trevorsmith470]

@@mrn234 Yeah probably right. Still, the fact that they bent a PCIe slot at all instead of just ripping it out is quite telling.

[@KingEurope1]

I genuinely thought Dell was so shocking that they couldn't be beat...

[@spacetoast4874]

At least dells get to the point where it bluescreened from heat. These just don’t run at all lmao.

[@YeOldeTraveller]

I agree there. I am disappointed by CyberPower as their products seem of be well designed. I was considering using them at one point. Ultimately, I built my own as I had some of the parts already and there was no price advantage. Granted this was a few years ago.

[@pacificdrum0301]

The dell isnt even bad outside of bloatware.. lol

[@redsquirrelftw]

@@spacetoast4874 I love the fact that the bar has to be set so low lol.

[@spacetoast4874]

@@pacificdrum0301 old dell is god tier reliable lol. I’ve still got 4 2005-2009 era PCs Alive and running good lol.

[@TheDripGodHimself]

I know this is from a year ago, but both the PCIE clips were snapped on my build, and it was shipped with a broken gpu, kinda glad though, it got me into PCs more!

[@axelNodvon2047]

Same model? Or just from ibuypower too?

[@TheDripGodHimself]

@@axelNodvon2047 I don’t believe so. The one I had was from their Slate Lineup.

[@Haku351]

I had a iBUYPOWER that i just replaced worked great for 5 years(still works). shipping can really suck.

[@JohnDoe-cq9no]

Purchased a $2,300 prebuilt from iBuyProblems that was put together wrong and doesn't work. I don't even know how it could have passed the "inspection".

[@nitepone]

The lack of support here is the worst part... I can't imagine spending hundreds on a product, have it come like this, and hear nothing back from customer support.

[@DeadNoob451]

Well, i imagine their support team has a full inbox if they ship all of their systems like this.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

I bet the overburdened customer support guy is also in charge of installing GPUs.

[@habitualoffender4957]

@@dycedargselderbrother5353 I am pretty sure there are 2 of them and I have talked to both! lol

[@Aereto]

I always tell people to not buy pre-built. If they have issues because the vendor is the one who messed up the PC, they are beyond help.

[@nitepone]

@@Aereto It seems that good support is a premium that you have to pay extra for (which makes sense..). LTT's undercover PC shopper series showed that boutique SIs do a much better job with support.

[@skeledog1942]

6:20 you know you have problem one of the tabs is sticking out over a USB port, you can see the PCB through the HDMI cutout, one of the USB ports is as good as gone underneath the io shield, and your ps/2 port looks like a waning gibbous moon...

[@GamersNexus]

You get a heart specifically for working in the phrase "waning gibbous moon."

[@skeledog1942]

​@@GamersNexus lol I'm sure its not often that pc ports get compared to phases of the moon, but I figured it sounded better than "semi obstructed circle with 6 holes and a rectangle"

[@Teal3800]

@@GamersNexus You thought right, It's worse than shipping damage, the motherboard wasn't even lined up with dust cover in your video. The tabs on the dustcover that are supposed to be above some of the ports on the motherboard are stuck in the ports, hdmi and usb. These would be bent if it was shipping damage.

[@tomkavulic7178]

Wow, I honestly wasn't aware of just how abysmal the prebuilt market is.

[@FightingFire01]

There's a reason why people look down on prebuilds, and it's not only elitism.

[@Unborn8436]

I think there are pre-builts from smaller start up companies that have attention to detail and care into pre-builts they sell.. Well at least in my country

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

I don't remember it being this bad in the past. I get that "grandma" PCs are no good--they never were--but the higher end systems used to be okay if overpriced.

[@habitualoffender4957]

@@Unborn8436 I think they just do not worry about their cheaper builds. I have had good luck buying some higher dollar machines. My cousin however bought a budget pc a while back and had months of issues, all were from the same company.

[@Aereto]

Yeah, pre-built PCs have no prestige from actual PC communities. Just wannabes and stupids getting impressed on eye candy. I moved on to building PCs because pre-builts cheap out on parts that end up bottlenecking the parts you want.

[@Systemsturz]

My main takeaway is that ASRock did a great job at reinforcing their motherboard

[@biancosmon]

To recap... - Cyberpower sells an inefficient radiator - Dell sells a set of Dell parts put together for the purpose of running Dell bloatware - iBuypower sells a box of loose steel and silicon that someone used to relieve anger The bar for pre-built PCs seems to be on board the Titanic

[@totalannihilation9065]

Pre builds, at this point, are just means to get your hands on a Motherboard, CPU, and Hopefully a decent GPU. My 800 dollar CyberPower PC (From October 2020) came with crappy everything like the CPU cooler, RAM, PSU and case fans. All the original parts that were kept on mine are the Motherboard, CPU and case. Everything else has been replaced with better stuff. Even My RTX 3060, ryzen 5 3600 CyberPower version had crappy parts which were also upgraded. It is the only way to get computers nowadays so we have to make do. It's either that or bite the bullet and buy components at scalper prices, the pre builds aren't really helping that much either.

[@kayak118]

@@totalannihilation9065 Bro... I just bought a CLX set prebuilt from a retailer. It was pristine. Built exactly to order. Shipped, double boxed with all the foam, and everything. Instantly powered on, and I got to installing my software. First prebuilt Gaming PC Super glad I chose that instead of the iBuypower, and the other option. 😬

[@kraio-sfu]

@@totalannihilation9065 I’d argue it would also be “hopefully a decent motherboard”

[@Kingtoby1981]

What about Digital Storm? I've had success with my pre-built PC I bought from them

[@Kingtoby1981]

@@kayak118 I bought my pre-built PC from Digital Storm like 5 months ago and I've been satisfied with it

[@xthetenth]

Me then: Oh, that dell is about exactly as bad as a technically functioning computer could be, guess that's the floor Me now: Oh how naive I was.

[@vincentvermilya1365]

There was a saying about a university president that used school money for his own purchases. "He picked the bar up off the floor, proceeded to stab a hole in the floor with it, and took the bar down to the basement."

[@MadIIMike]

Well, I mean it wasn't technically functioning and had to be fixed by someone requiring about the same if not more knowledge than building a PC from parts.

[@andyenglish4303]

No you were correct... because straight out of the box this PC probably would have had a short and died. Dell is still the floor for a functioning PC.

[@xthetenth]

@@andyenglish4303 Yeah, I wasn't expecting anyone to ship a computer that wasn't technically functioning, so this caught me by surprise.

[@harshbarj]

"Complete system not tested" This is unacceptable for a prebuilt. If you are paying them to build it, it should be fully tested. I'd return it and state that as my reason why.

[@--_DJ_--]

That is an FCC sticker. Pretty sure it means all the components pass FCC standards but the thing as a whole hasn't been tested. It has nothing to do with testing the pc for functionality.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

It's baffling that this appears to be an industry standard. Storage device not even plugged in? No OS on it once connected? Blasé responses from tech support: "oh that's totally normal, we don't check, maybe we might write an install script someday"?

[@Rylika]

It should be tested for sure. The bare minimum I expect is windows/bios boot to see everything is plugged in and not this NO testing BS

[@thoso1973]

Where I worked, all assembled builds were tested; temperatures (if available), all fans working, all USB slots, sound, OS (if installed) and graphics card (driver + outputs). We could normally detect issues while the OS was being cloned onto the SSD/HD, which took 5-8 minutes. So, there is NO excuse for these cheap manufacturers, to send out pre-builds to costumers with so many quality issues.

[@harshbarj]

@@spell105 "lease look into what this sticker means. It's about the WiFi, nothing else." That's not what is says though. Also looking at the FCC guide, it's clear it's more than the wifi but the system as a whole. "For a product assembled from tested components but not tested as a system;" So no it's about the while system and has nothing to do with wifi only.

[@umanoid1523]

Awesome series. Especially since building my own is now out of the question with shortages and scalping.

[@darkmage07070777]

"Here's where bad gets worse." *THERE'S MORE?!*

[@wolfhauzer3178]

Noooo...Dear GOD

[@Random_Banshee]

always has been.

[@quasarproductions2690]

My $1300 prebuilt came with the fan rgb unplugged, the cpu was overheating because all the screws were not fastened. the sticker covering the back tore off and left stuff everywhere. the bios was misconfigured and xmp was off. my gpu is faulty and the fan presses against the heatsink, scratching it and making a rattle. i put cardboard between the fan and heatsink to fix it after being rma'd the worst possible version of my graphics card. it wasnt worth rma'ing so i sent them back their rma and kept my cardboard stuffed gpu.

[@Kholaslittlespot1]

@@quasarproductions2690 I hope you have learned a valuable lesson. DON'T BUY PREBUILDS! (Hope you have a stable system now!)

[@Squinoogle]

Carriers: It's cheaper to absorb the cost of damaged parcels than to change our ways. Distributors: It's cheaper to absorb the cost of DOA units than to change our QA processes, and we can always claim from the carrier for anything they've damaged. Retailers: aww crap.

[@tzfardaya]

Don't know about carriers, but couriers don't pay out that much... Almost no one packs to the standards listed on courier “acceptable packaging" requirement webpages...

[@POSSEPIED]

i once had a ibuypower slate pc, and it kept on crashing and bootlooping. Turned out that the ram stick was sticking out and wasnt fully put in

[@thenoobslime4881]

That one’s on you man

[@auscaliber1]

@@thenoobslime4881 no it bloody well isn't. it's an easy fix -- that shouldn't have to be done when you've paid a company to professionally build. In what world is improperly seated RAM the CUSTOMER'S fault you troglodyte?

[@nothing.mp3]

"By getting a super F" Dang, Steve went Mr. Crocker on iBuyPower's sorry excuse for a build

[@ALEXANDER1318]

Now if only we could just wish these horrible computers away from our plane of existence.

[@metalaarsix]

Hey man, if being negative means putting these crappy products on the spotlight to help people avoid getting ripped off, then I'm all for it.

[@tkirchmann]

The silver lining is these pre-builts make WalMart look like a pretty high quality brand.

[@Rexars]

Isnt that terrifying? 😂

[@scottcraig5394]

Great Value PCs

[@Nareimooncatt]

You haven't seen the videos of their Wal-Mart computer buys, have you? Lol

[@tkirchmann]

@@Nareimooncatt You haven't watched this video have you? Lol

[@KahlDragonborn]

GN needs a big partner to make this a series forever, these are by far my favorite videos and most informative.

[@timmmurray8110]

That "testing" sticker means something specific in terms of FCC testing, though it's now optional to put that sticker on. When you build an electrical product that doesn't intend to send out radio waves (like wifi), you have to spend a lot of money going to an FCC test lab. If it's an "intentional radiator" (a wifi dingle, or some other type of radio), you have to spend even more at an FCC test lab. But if you're just assembling a product built out of components that were individually tested--intentional radiator or not--you can just promise that it's compliant and move on.

[@JeffBastian]

I'd love a wifi dingle lol JK

[@Cinestudi0]

The more you know

[@BlinkingTwin]

Saw the thumbnail and was like "Oooooh this is gonna be good!" Honestly tho? Thank you. Your videos have been one of my go tos for linking to people getting into pc gaming

[@SamichHunter]

This really makes me sad. Having started my working life in the 80's, I was always told that the customers were the most important thing to take care of. They were the reason we had a store to sell things and an income to live on. These days it seems that most retailers strive to be just a little bit better than the customer at making items to sell, and then making them pay a premium for that feature. I sure hope you find a company that actually earns the money that the customer had to earn in order to pay for the product. Thank you for the content you provide, and as an electronics tech, the depth of coverage you go into. You and your team are rare in today's coverage and you don't use that as an excuse to do a half-ass job. So I truly thank you for this.

[@Skyhawk1998]

Many companies have figured out that the buying process of most folks is clicking "Price: Low to High" and buying the first result. It's a damn shame.

[@pgamez4077]

Reputation used to matter but nowadays there are too many marks to care if they take money elsewhere (bonus points if they happen to take their scorned dollars to a different company that is actually the same company under different branding)

[@setcheck67]

@@Skyhawk1998 This. Even against all common sense "lowest bidder" is always the gold fucking standard. We've had water plants built that cost millions to manufacture and they gave the design work to the lowest bidder only to find out the plant doesn't work and you now have a 4.2 million dollar tax payer funded monument of failure. At a certain point people need to start getting fucking fired for always going the cheap option. Even Apple goes the cheap option, but charges like this stuff is expensive and it's sickening.

[@Grandwigg]

The mangling of the back io makes me think the assembler forgot to install it and tried to force it in after the mobo (and more?) was already installed. (I did that once years ago, and forever regretted it. I'm still ashamed )

[@DM-xi3hw]

what are the odds that this is the same pc

[@Nareimooncatt]

"Caution: Hazardous area." I think that label should be on the outside of the shipping box.

[@mikenelson6630]

I like that statement "pretty much everyone here is the personal IT of friends and family". So true, and it's a title that so many of us, myself included, hold. This is a great video series, it reminds me exactly why I will always prefer to build my own PC's, even with the current silicon shortage.

[@DayLateGamerWill]

1000000000% agree

[@foxboi6309]

This makes the Walmart PC look incredibly better lol

[@deekdouglas3055]

Oh shoot is it that bad 😂 I got the worst so far but took that as a question 😂

[@JustinStrate]

I bought a Walmart one on sale when it was 600$ 2 years+ ago and it’s been amazing since for a cheap computer with a 1070 in it haha.

[@bannahpinson3330]

My older brother just got into pc gaming at the worst possible time for price to value, but ended up getting him a Hewlett packard pavilion prebuilt with a r5 3500 and a 1650 super for 600 at walmart, everything else we could find at best buy was like 500 and had i3 lol

[@devilmikey00]

Yeah and those were actually super good deals on sale. That mostly came down to crappy low end motherboard and abysmal case.

[@matasa7463]

@@JustinStrate You can always just rip out the 1070 and put it in a custom rig lol. But you'll probably want to redo the thermal paste on the GPU.

[@AkornzStash]

*_*me finding this video after receiving my iBUYPOWER custom build 3 days ago*_* 😅 hope they got better... EDIT: Ok, watched the rest of the video. I know this was 3 years ago. So from my experience they have improved dramatically. My system was packed well, no damage. Graphics card in its original box and I installed it. There was no foam inside the case though, which surprised me a bit especially since their instructions and video state multiple times to remove it... which sad if people don't realize that already. In any case, so far so good. The Only gripe I have, was some of the cable management. All cables was secure. But they the RGB/FAN hub in the frontside of the case?! It was up in the top of the case, so you had to "look up" under it a bit. But this is a WHITE Y70 case. And even if you didn't look up under it, you could still see the big bundle of black RGB & Fan wires going to it. I took all the wire bundle loose in the back of the case, unplugged all the rgb & fans, cut all related zip ties etc. Moved the Hub to the back side of the case and stuck it on one of the HDD sleds as I'm not going to be using those. I will say that there wasn't a good place for the hub in the back besides the HDD sled. But I think if I was to wire the system from scratch, I could have placed everything out better to where it would fit somewhere. Also the white corsair fans I had iPower to add to the system, had black wires for some reason ...?? Which is no fault to iPower. Thats all on Corsair, and something they certainly should fix, just doesn't make sense to have a white rgb fan with black wires. In any case, iPower had the black wires going awkwardly through 3 separate slots near the fans, also very visually distracting. I removed those, bundled all the wires together, and put them into some white cable sleeve cover, rand them up to the top of the case and through one hole all together. Now it blends in fairly well, and at least is less visually distracting. Anyway, at least this was just a visual nuisance, and not an actual problem with the system. Stuff like this is somewhat frivolous, but it was important to me and disappointed me a bit to see how they had it. Right now just installed a clean, de-bloated, windows 11. Currently running the system through stress tests and etc. This is my new editing rig, and I want to make certain everything is good before I begin to migrate over from my very old 8 year editing 1700x editing system that is failing. I have no idea why I just wrote such a long comment... as no one will read this anyway.

[@JeffBastian]

Their tagline should be "iBuyPower: Setting the floor in pre-built quality"

[@ferrumignis]

They could truthfully claim they were "setting new standards"...

[@JeffBastian]

@@ferrumignis Indeed, need to put some asterisks tho lol

[@James_Bee]

The literal basement dwellers of the PC world.

[@alienpoker]

“See Jimmy, you’ve broke it already! That’s why we can’t buy you nice things”

[@caesarxinsanium]

Press F

[@finylin]

When getting into PC gaming, I got a low tier rig similar to this back in 2014 from ibuypower through Best Buy as a Christmas gift. I had two RMA's because my first rig had a hard drive failure, and the second one had a graphics card failure. This video really showed me how bad they are and imagine how bad they were 6+ years ago...

[@Zarrx]

I got one through NewEgg 2 years before you roughly... Mine ended up not being bad, had internal packaging and the HDD is actually still functioning to this day... somehow. I quickly upgraded it to a 7770 at the time this was an upgrade lol. It was a 1gb model and it was on clearance for $100 cdn. Eventually ran an i5 4th gen in the case... move to an r9 280x then a 1060... the memories.

[@Tzalmavet]

@@Zarrx I had a similar experience. Bought an ibuypower pre-built in August 2014. Wasn't too bad for an entry level build but I definitely overpaid for what it was. The following spring I ditched the reference design R5 250 1GB for an MSI R9 280 3GB and a proper power supply. It actually gamed fairly well at 1080p with just a GPU upgrade. Later on in the summer of 2015 I decided the AMD FX 4300 wasn't cutting it so I swapped it out for an i5 4690k and new motherboard. This propelled the once lackluster pre-built into the stratosphere (compared to how it was before). I gamed heavily on this setup for years until 2017 came around and it was time for another GPU upgrade. The R9 280 was one hell of a card for the duration I owned it but the GTX 1070Ti I replaced it with was a much needed upgrade and allowed me to dabble in some light 1440p gaming. In 2019 I decided the entire build would get an overhaul for as many flagship components as possible. Little did I know Covid-19 was about to derail that entire plan. Late summer/early fall, 2020, deep in the pandemic, I was having trouble acquiring any parts for decent pricing. I ended up going with an i7-10700k which was still a massive leap from the i5-4690k that was showing it's age. Swapped the board, chip, ram, and waited for the release of the RTX 3xxx series cards. The hunt for a GPU made the hunt for an i9-10900k look like a pre-school game of hide and seek. Three weeks ago, June 2021, through newegg shuffle I was able to snag an EVGA RTX 3070Ti FTW3 for $800. Not my first choice for a GPU upgrade as I was hoping for an RTX 3080 but I could not pass up the opportunity for a current gen GPU given the circumstances and the MONTHS I spent scouring every website possible for in stock GPUs. For the RTX 3070Ti to fit I would have to move the build into a different case. Now the only remaining part of my system left from 2014 is the hard drive which is beginning to degrade in performance and will most likely fail in the near future. What a journey and experience it was with this pre-built to climb the ladder of PC gaming into a high end build. My current system specs: Intel Core i7-10700k @ 4.9GHz, EVGA GeForce RTX 3070Ti FTW3 ULTRA, MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Edge Wifi ATX LGA1200, Deepcool Gamerstorm Captain 360X White, Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200, Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive, Samsung 850 EVO 250GB, Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 7200RPM, Corsair RM850x 850w 80+ Gold certified (2021).

[@babies909]

What pc would you recommend someone who is looking to start playing on one? Games like gta role play etc..

[@Zarrx]

@@babies909 probably worth staying away from Dell, HP, Alienware. Monitor online retailers for pre-builts that go on sale. Your GPU will probably be the most important component... 1060/1660/2060/3060 or better. Or on the AMD side you can go with the RX 580 or 5500 xt/5600/6600 (coming out). You want an SSD of at least 500gb as well. CPU would be good to be i5/Ryzen 5 but you can get a Ryzen 3 or i3 of a newer generation (Ryzen 3000 or Intel 7th Gen or newer)

[@StelioKontos42069]

I must’ve gotten lucky I bought one for 1k from bestbuy 6 years ago worked flawless 3 years had a ram stick die the next year the ssd died and now the power supply blew and took the motherboard with it all in all tho I was happy with it

[@TheDigitalThreat]

"System not tested" Just oozing confidence

[@BRUXXUS]

I don't understand how these companies are managing to be THIS BAD at what they do. Making computers is *literally* their business.... and they're f*cking terrible at it. I need a change in career where I can make millions doing something as poorly as possible.

[@MikeJones-bl6lu]

They outsource to other companies. Used to work at Ingram Micro back in the 90’s and they bought a company that setup and configured all Dell and HP internet and online orders. You wouldn’t believe all the shit that happened. Just grabbed any memory or hd off the shelves.

[@tylerboyles4504]

This isnt an issue with all their pcs. It has to come down to who is actually building the computers. I bought one from them last year with literally zero issues.

[@tylerboyles4504]

This isnt an issue with all their pcs. It has to come down to who is actually building the computers. I bought one from them last year with literally zero issues.

[@km5405]

thats the level of QC id expect from a bottom of the barrel wish deal. i guess they saved cost by just firing their QC department and using interns to build everything.

[@Xolerys]

I used to build for IBP, the problem I would say they had was they focuses too godang much on how many PCs u can build a day rather than how good u can build them

[@marionscott9760]

I cannot wait to see Steve get a prebuilt with the plastic sheet still on the CPU cooler heatsink, providing no contact with the CPU and the cooler. Its also nice that GN is diving into prebuilts and hopefully we see alot of these companies up the QA and actually put thought into these builds.

[@Whiterabbit124]

I absolutely LOVE this series of videos. It's been EONS since these assholes cared about quality of their pre-builts, I am so happy, so nasty and so full of schadefruede, it's DELICIOUS. Just twitter this very video to iBuyPower just to rub it in. "See, assholes? You shit the bed. Make sure you get a good, long look at it."

[@lutaic74]

It's never gonna happens, Linus has done 2 years of secret shopper and no matter what he says nothing changes

[@oh-not-the-bees7872]

Its not ever going to happen

[@DangNguyen-xx3zi]

The whole business model of these companies is to sell trash like this targeted at people who don't know about PCs, likely parents buying for their kids or people who for whatever reason don't want to assemble their own. Then when it inevitably breaks down after a few months they'd point the finger saying it's "user's fault" and charge exorbitant repair costs

[@bornin103podcast4]

How the heck was that mousemat floating??? I have to buy one now!

[@paulnolan4971]

They're made from Tech Jesus' Kundalini yoga mats :D

[@matasa7463]

The power of miracles. You do not see his Samson level hair? That's pure holy power, baby!

[@kylestrng28]

I actually got an iBuyPower a month or so ago, was pleasantly surprised. Had the foam packaging, easy start guide, and nothing was damaged. Maybe I got lucky. I did order from them directly though, not from a store.

[@Daedalus33]

Just got one for the black friday sale and it came basically perfect. Might be because i got a $1700 unit but who knows.

[@mindofmannyy]

@@Daedalus33 i was about to buy the same one lemme ask you questions about it

[@Daedalus33]

@@mindofmannyy sure

[@ArboYTV]

@@Daedalus33 I bought one from them as well, worked good for about 2 weeks then the PSU died randomly during a stream..PC hasnt turned on since and im debating either sending it back or just upgrading the PSU on my own. everything else looks to be in excellent shape, no damage whatsoever.

[@PowerPerPound]

Just for anyone else looking in the comments. I also got a system from them with the same case but upgraded components for about 1400 and everything came in completely fine and I have been very happy with the look, sound level, and thermals.

[@johnvvoorthuijzen2653]

Sooo, Dell set the bar really really low, yet ibuypower still insists on limboing under it.... impressive actually

[@noobmasters6913]

he ddint buy it from ibuy power.. god only knows where that ben i bought 2 pcs directly from ibuypower and they where great.. i now know how to build pcs so i just build my own now but i would deff order from them again..

[@Dr.Zoidberg_2914]

I bought one directly from ibuypower to and it's awesome

[@NightfallGemini]

@@noobmasters6913 That doesn't exactly matter because if the box is undamaged, one can reasonably assume the damage was when it was initially packaged or even before. This isn't on the retailer, it's on the builder.

[@noobmasters6913]

@@NightfallGemini or it was repacaged.. all i know is that i have orderd 2 and my friends order from them as well and i have yet to see one issue. he didnt order straight from i buypower. that changes thing because it could have been bought and returned and sold again for all we know

[@noobmasters6913]

why would ibuypower knowingly sell a broken pc.. also all the pcs ive seen come from them have the packaging inside the tower. that's why i think something's up here

[@johnbagley8211]

These companies are a joke. If QA is too expensive to implement at these price points then they need to charge more for their systems... Even if by just a little.

[@elodgubcsi]

Or just don't give executives $50k bonuses every Sunday and they should be fine

[@xxM4Mxx]

I got 2 IBP PC's directly from their website, and everything was perfect out of the box. After 6 months only issue I had was the AIO went bad in one of them. To be fair, this might have been my issue, because it was working fine, I took it outside to give it a cleaning with canned air, and when I was done, it thermaled to the point it shut down. It came with a 120mm AIO (which I was not thrilled about in the first place), but I bought a corsair 240mm AIO, crammed that in, and so far, it has been running great. The thing to take away from here is being GN's PC was purchased through a retailer, it went through ALOT more shipping and handling then if it was purchased directly. Yes, the eternals could have been more properly secured with shipping packing, but alot of that damage could have been caused by how it was handled in shipping. I have seen a few people in redistribution warehouses not give 2 F's about what they are handling and how they are handling it, where if purchased direct, it gets handled alot less and could result in less damage during shipping.

[@coastallab5526]

GN team: *starts posting reviews of prebuilt PCs* Literally every prebuilt PC brand: "Guess we're screwed"

[@AnEverydayZombie]

One of the issues here is a lack of screws, so idk bout that

[@coastallab5526]

@@AnEverydayZombie the took the screws out of the pc to screw their own work probably

[@reinbeers5322]

Think it was Maingear that did well in Linus' testing, so maybe they will do well here too.

[@HimmelWeint]

Maingear will do well they've always done extremely well in terms of support and the overall package it might cost a bit more but they really do make a compelling package especially now that the market is all screwed up and they actually come in at a cheaper price than if you were to go out and buy the parts themselves unless you can get the parts at the non existent MSRP.

[@sjab5987]

I am legit proud that my Patreon and GN Store monies are going to videos like this one that call out these companies.

[@Power-Wiesel]

we expected nothing and were still let down

[@HimmelWeint]

I expected prebuilts to be bad but i thought dell would have been the absolute bottom of the barrel garbage tier trash that would be impossible to beat but ibuypower proved me wrong.

[@walspeed]

If its any consolation, ive had a bunch of friends recently decide to get into PC gamin and all of them speced out an iBUYPOWER machine. None of them came with any glaring issues and i did check each one. Only complaint was the turn around time of nearly 2 months.

[@matasa7463]

"What's wrong with buying pre-builds? Stop shaming people!" ... This. This is what could go wrong.

[@reynutz]

And ppl who don't have past experience can fuck up a PC just as bad lol.

[@Derpkips31415]

@@reynutz thats why there are so many good tutorials to assemble a pc nowadays...

[@reynutz]

@@Derpkips31415 Tutorials dont always cover everything. Even the best always seem to skip over little things experienced people already know all about which defeats the purpose of the video tbh.

[@jmckey]

I don't think iBP used to be this bad. I saw that early in the pandemic they were having to cut back on support due to Covid and shifted to discord and I wonder if now they are trying to ramp back up or upper mgmt want to keep costs down and profits high. This might be the kick in the nuts they need to out some money back into QA and Tech support. Having been in a big company tech support myself I can tell you it's a constant struggle to convince new CEOs we are a good investment and they all keep making the same stupid mistakes.

[@matasa7463]

@@reynutz So it’s doubly worse - not only are they risking getting garbage or broken shit, but they will have no way to even understand what’s wrong. I went from 0 PC building knowledge to experienced builder in 6 month with just learning online. There’s no reason why someone would not able to do a build competently with just some effort.

[@CarthagoMike]

Just... how. It really is an art to build a pc this badly.

[@MrMaxusy]

Jack Etienne can do a worse job. While being cocky and pretending he did not.

[@Tilim1st]

10:45 Gordon Ramsay: "This PC is so bad, I have to use Gamers Nexus mod mats, to protect my table from it!"

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

This PC is so bad I have to use Gamers Nexus mod mats to protect my Gamers Nexus mod mats.

[@braydonvaneck6265]

my strangest experience of a loose part was an old Flip-phone/Walky-talky style antenna wedged behind the motherboard.

[@bennetreinecke9317]

If these OEMs put as much effort into putting together good PCs as the GN team put into making this video, we'd have multiple recommendable prebuilts by now. Side question: Does only Steve put in 80-100+ hour weeks or is the entire team working crazy hours? Imagine the rest of the team working in shifts so Steve isn't alone in the office 50% of the time

[@Oxissistic]

I can just imagine Steve as a teacher is grade school, announcing grades to the class then pausing to ask IBuyPower to come to the front of the class. Steve walks up and standing proudly next to IBuyPower announces the work they submitted and given a Super F, there is no greater F than the one they have now received. Love your work Steve and the GN team.

[@chucksim2063]

You know shit is getting real when Steve pull's his hair back lol

[@aimekuel8374]

I truly enjoy your product diagnostics and reviews. Thank you! :-)

[@mrhadley8197]

My favorite line in this review: "So you're just shoved in to the deep end except the deep end is shark-infested and there's corpses of video cards and PCIE slots that have sunken to the bottom." I am assuming the 134 thumbs down at this time are all iBuyPower employees?

[@raifsevrence]

iBuypower doesn't have 134 employees. Those are the bot farm downvotes they payed for.

[@taco9797998907907]

And one or two fanboys.

[@pkt1213]

Good way to prevent users from plugging into the onboard video.

[@kyleholt7112]

My grandpa got me a 3070 for my birthday bruhhhh he said he went into the computer shop (micro center) and just asked for one and they brought it out like....I tried to get one for 3 months and he randomly goes 2 days before my bday and picks one up lmao he got the gigabyte one 😂

[@FunnyFavor]

Awesome grandpa you got there

[@sourgrap3_]

Things like this really make me wish I lived by a Micro Center

[@rainmain]

congrats bruh :D

[@L3ON360Z]

What a boss

[@mikeramos91]

Guess he got lucky 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@douchopotamus3755]

Watching these makes me really appreciate the time I put in on my 950$ custom built

[@flight240]

I would be embarrassed to send that out to a customer. That's insane. Must've been someone who really didn't give a damn.

[@bubbafug00gle51]

Being embarrassed is a luxury. If you meet a quota or lose a job you were lucky to get... having the job becomes the source of pride. Without knowing where the work is being done who can say the motivation. I'm surprised that pc building is not part of a prison work program. This kind of low margin manual labor is perfect for exploiting prisoners while pretending to teach them a useful skill for the outside world.

[@WayStedYou]

Looks like this ibuypower was thrown almost as hard as that time their csgo team threw for skins.

[@SaintDorado]

Remember when "It comes pre-assembled and you don't need to know how to build a PC." was an arguement for buying a pre-build? They might as well send it out in parts at this point.

[@benjaminoechsli1941]

This one would be in better condition, probably. 8/

[@tomservo9254]

That would be kinda great, actually. Like the PC build version of those recipe kit boxes.

[@SaintDorado]

@@tomservo9254 It would be great, but that kinda defeats the point of getting a pre-build in the first place.

[@tomservo9254]

@@SaintDorado I could see it being more like a semi-prebuilt. Like the MB/CPU/PSU are preinstalled and you put in the CPU cooler and the GPU yourself after delivery. There are online-only retailers for bicycles that operate that way - the core components of the frame are already assembled but then you install the handlebars/pedals/wheels yourself. Makes it way easier to ship the bike with far less risk of damage, and it reduces the price since there's less installation labour.

[@SaintDorado]

@@tomservo9254 I mean putting in the CPU cooler and GPU should take a professional probably like a minute max. I don' think that would reduce the price. :/

[@docmarons3782]

I used to work at an SI for almost four years. I can tell you exactly what happened. First, there is no official training, guide, or set of standards for assemblers. It's assumed by the directors of operations that the knowledgeable (or at least who they think is knowledgeable) employees will help the less-knowledgeable employees. It's "ask X if you have any questions" and left at that. It's minimum wage, the requirements to get into assembly is to build ONE test machine of the lowest tier, which is examined by another assembly employee. The PC doesn't even have to be assembled correctly, since a lot of the time the green light is given to a new hire with the "we can teach them" attitude. Hiring people who don't know how to build computers and then having them taught by other people who might not know how to build computers is a recipe for disaster. Basically, most of the talent on the assembly floor is from hobbyist builders and people who watch channels like this regularly. You can get a very well-assembled computer or a train wreck based literally on whether or not you're lucky or unlucky enough to get a particular tech, and whether or not it gets to a QA person (also untrained and minimum wage, but at least they have a bullet point list on what to look for if you can trust them to read it) who cares or remembers to look. It's sad, because really you can't even take the fact that one sample unit of a secret-shopper SI build is good as a representation of the whole company. You might have just happened to get a good assembler building it. Turnover is massive, though, and most people who are good at what they do end up shoehorned into building the superpremium / custom liquid cooling cases, leaving prebuilts and lower-end cases to the less competent and new. If you want a good chance to get a good assembler, get custom liquid cooling or their top tier of fancy / huge case. Or a laptop, since those are outsourced and all the SI does is slap their sticker on it and put in the drives, and it's thankfully hard to mess that up too much. So, here's the Sherlock Holmes reconstruction with insider knowledge. That build got in the hands of an assembler who just doesn't give a damn, is new and untrained, or both. In the process of building it, they put the motherboard in at an aggressive angle, which caused its ports to get stuck in the I/O shield. No amount of shipping jiggling is going to get the grounding tab to go into the ethernet or HDMI port, that goes on at assembly. Those tabs, coupled with the grounding tabs by the PS/2 port pushing against the housing instead of lying on it, mean the whole motherboard is tweaked. Since they don't know what they're doing, they then put the screw in the upper left hole, but didn't catch the fact that it wasn't actually going in enough to catch the threads on the standoff because the PCB was suspended. It might have caught just the top thread, but that would easily vibrate out during shipping. When installing the GPU the inexperienced / careless assembler missed the PCI slot, instead jamming the card's contact edge against the metal support and deforming it. They were able to screw it down, but it was never in the slot to begin with. Since these completed machines are not even tested (which boggles my mind, because even at my sorry SI we did that), the I/O shield tabs and fact the GPU was not in was not discovered. Then, during shipping, the un-plugged GPU, held roughly in place by the screws, jiggled around without any supporting packaging and jacked up the slot even more, and might be responsible for ejecting the retaining clip, too. The only thing I don't know is how all the OTHER clips got removed, but since they weren't found, the assembler might have just intentionally removed them for some unfathomable reason, possibly on the logic that they weren't in use. I've seen the craziest shit and most backwards logic from assemblers who didn't bother to ask how to do things. Some guys who are employed for weeks and built dozens of systems make The Verge look good. My time on the inside has destroyed my faith in SIs. The only reason I would see to get one is the warranty which you might need to use immediately to RMA it for being built crappily in the first place, and is normally short enough that real non-manufacturer issues will start showing up after it expires. Because it was built there, you can still RMA it at cost out of warranty. The RMA department is normally made up of ex-assemblers who actually know what they're doing, because there's the actual burden of making sure it works before sending it back and fixing the dumb stuff the assemblers do. Even then, though, you're normally out for WEEKS without your PC. It's good content, but it kinda hurts me on the inside to know that no matter how many secret shopper videos you and Linus do, any good outcomes from the assembly / QA side could be flukes in the hands of good, mostly self-taught employees. It's even a risk on the customer service side. You could get someone in the office, a remote call center, who knows what they're doing or is mentally out to lunch or grumpy all on chance.

[@matthewbowen5841]

What an underappreciated comment

[@mikecronce1173]

At ~10:00, "that's so in there, how does that happen" - I will say that personally I've never tried to yank one of those x16 retention clips out of an empty slot, but with the leverage provided by a GPU it's super easy to do if you fail to open it the whole way (or remember to open it at all) - I pulled mine out in my most recent build when I was switching from air to water and had to block the GPU. It took almost zero effort. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was also super easy to put it back in haha

[@aethertech]

If nothing else failed this thing, the raidmax psu instantly does it.

[@JonoSSD]

Steve's expression: why are we still here? Just to suffer?

[@ElijahK4892]

I have had mixed experience when iBuyPower. First pc I bought from them was a customized rig with a 1070 and an i5. Got to me quickly, ram fine, cable management was great. No complaints. Second was a 2080ti, i7, ssds, upgraded Corsair RGB fans, RGB lighting, aio, all of the bells and whistles. It arrived late, and when opening the box, which was in perfect condition, I found the entire case to be broken up. Front plate hinge was broken. Top of the case was cracked and mountings were broken. The thumbscrews for the glass were bent. Horror story goes on. It was quite obvious that someone had dropped the PC and packaged it anyways. I knew it wasn't caused by the shipper because the inner and outer boxes were in perfect condition. I repacked it and sent it back. Took over two weeks to get a new one which was unacceptable considering I had paid for the express building and had already waited for it in the first place. Upon getting the new one, at least it wasn't destroyed, but the wiring was absolutely terrible. Thia was infuriating because I paid for the "professional" wiring. So in order to add my hard drives and stuff from my previous rig, I completely gutted it, rewired everything myself at put it back together. I also paid for an over clock. It wasn't applied. I bought the computer because at the time I didn't have enough time to build my own. After everything, i functionally had to build it myself anyways. Was absolutely infuriated. On top of everything their customer service was beyond poor. After that experience I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

[@eandersen4662]

I bought a $1700 iBuyPower system last Christmas and have no complaints with my build. It came packaged very well and with the expanding packaging on the inside. No loose components and the cable management was better than I thought it would be.

[@barrett206]

They bought the cheap one so anything above like 1 grand should be fine ( they also bought it from Amazon which is 3rd part so not buying directly from the producer is a risk in its self)

[@dylanbonilla9884]

KZbinrs are more to an likely to open, mess with internal components, then make a video about the “issues” they encounter just for views, so I take all these reviews with a grain of air

[@uthamanj6454]

@@dylanbonilla9884 Yup :) This is a QC issue which is a fair point to bring up. But if their QC is so terrible they would not have survived in this business for more than 20 years.

[@dylanbonilla9884]

@@uthamanj6454 You failed to realize not everyone buying their PC are review KZbinrs. My whole point was, this review is not trustworthy because it has been known for these people to open, tamper and report the “issues” they find with the system. Nice try

[@theriseoftony]

@@dylanbonilla9884 well not true bc when we got ours Hdmi went out while gaming for two days . Then got replaced todsy and pc doesn’t even turn on. I know it’s not the Hdmi cord bc I test it out on my laptop

[@TheRogueWolf]

When the video has a six-minute-long section titled "Massive Damage", you know someone screwed up.

[@andyenglish4303]

Maybe they thought the PCI slot was a giant enemy crab.

[@worldfamousgi86]

I'm so glad that the graphics cards and processors that aren't going to miners or scalpers are going to these companies.

[@andyenglish4303]

I mean at least they're eventually ending up in the hands of gamers. ...assuming most of them don't leave the graphics card half hanging out of the PCI slot because then they'll only be in the hands of gamers long enough to carry 'em to the recycling center.

[@cszero2109]

That sound effect at 4:46 scared the shit out of me! I jumped out of bed and waited to hear sirens

[@yeetleslaw8529]

Pre-build makers don't even care anymore. They know they're just selling a GPU bundled with a computer.

[@madmax2069]

Yeah, its like bundling a cheap PSU with the graphics cards on Newegg.

[@Grens101]

And this is why I only ever build my own systems

[@markmerkel]

When someone just wants a kind of okay PC: "Is it possible to learn this power?" Steve: "Not from a system integrator."

[@roundduckkira]

- saith by Darth Lenovo too lmao

[@Zacks.C-land]

Steve: “Gamers Nexus is the pathway to many abilities that SI’s consider… unnatural.”

[@BarryPilkinton]

I’ve had 3 ibuypower PCs over the years and they have been perfect. Best computers I’ve ever owned. This has to due to shipping. 😕

[@FreezeOnFleek]

just got my first one i broke it by tampering with something but i fixed it

[@h2rv]

Definitely not good value for your money though. A LOT of better options

[@Lady_Moonsong]

To be fair, ibuypower never specified that the power you were buying was Raditz'

[@drbluewolf]

It's like whomever built this computer accidentally ripped off the first pcie clip. Then intentionally ripped off the rest in hopes that someone wouldn't notice.

[@danielius2924]

And I thought that the SI's where scared of Linus's "Secret Shopper"

[@gamechaser002]

Mmm, yes, but Linus is actually buying from them directly with the trade-off of not going as far as Steve does. Steve will tear the thing down to rivets and caustic-comment every little discrepancy, including the rivets. A lot of that is deserved it looks like.

[@bubbafug00gle51]

I think they know that most of their business comes from people who aren't researching pcs on youtube. Most people watching LTT or GN are building their own.

[@YeOldeTraveller]

As noted, they don't care as they figure (likely with cause) that their target customer is not going to see any review of their product. I also think LTT is more main stream. I expect a lower percentage of his audience is actually DIY than the GN audience.

[@bubbafug00gle51]

@@YeOldeTraveller GN is definitely deeper down the rabbit hole of tech. Not sure what percentage of the Linus crowd is the DIY type but, yeah, he's definitely more of a media brand than a full on tech channel... there is still a lot of useful tech stuff there.

[@s1l3nc3r3]

This is more so the difference from buying at a store vs buying online/phone. I'm not sure why, companies cheap out so much on the shipping/handling/packaging so much when its a store product. But they really should consider when an item goes to a store, its being touched 3 to 5 more times before it gets to a customers hand. This will be the number 1 cause of items getting damaged during shipping.

[@backpackindad]

I love your mod mat my dude, i use it for a mouse pad ngl. Keep up the content.

[@soundthesam]

I’d recommend lenovo legion as a contender, they at least are using standard connectors and parts for their pc’s, as an oem that’s a good thing Also using a 5 heat pipe cooler on the ryzen systems

[@scottcraig5394]

What about HP?

[@scottcraig5394]

Horse Poop?