Solid Computing - i5 Gaming PC reviewed by NAG

[Ipwn 4]

Hi MyBB,

As most of you have seen our first attempt at breaking into the gaming PC market is featured in the July issue of the NAG, for those of you who haven't seen this review, it can be found here:

http://solidcomputing.co.za/mid-range-gaming-pc-nag-july-2012

The product page to order arguably the best-bang-for-your-buck gaming PC currently can be found here:

http://solidcomputing.co.za/i5-gaming-pc-s/i5-midrange-gaming-pc

We have been trying very hard over the month to find games which we will have issues playing at max and the lowest fps we could accomplish was in Battlefield 3 with all setting on ultra where our lowest fps was 70. To get a better idea of the performance take a look at the benches the high end i7 PC achieved above ours in the NAG.

We will be adding some more gaming PC's throughout the weekend as well as bringing back some more "Upgrade and Save" special which should all be live on the site by Monday.

And lastly I would like to thank everyone who has been jamming some "Snipers only" with us on our Modern Warfare 3 server. We are currently discussing having a 3v3 league towards the end of the month, anyone interested can drop us a mail through the contact us page

Hope everyone has a good weekend

Regards,

Jaco

 

[nakedpeanut]

Comp sounds good! whats the prize?

 

[Ipwn 4]

Comp sounds good! whats the prize?

We haven't decided just yet, one thing we have all agreed upon is to have our web designer smack together a website for the winning clan which we will host indefinitely on our failover server in the UK as part of the prize. The other option in the mix is to have a FFA snipers tournament to prove once and for all who the best in RSA actually is, which is me according to the current rankings

We are still very open to any suggestions though?

 

[GoofySmurf]

We haven't decided just yet, one thing we have all agreed upon is to have our web designer smack together a website for the winning clan which we will host indefinitely on our failover server in the UK as part of the prize. The other option in the mix is to have a FFA snipers tournament to prove once and for all who the best in RSA actually is, which is me according to the current rankings

We are still very open to any suggestions though?

Wow did you guys add 100% markup on the pc, strange I can get the system for under 10K.

 

[Neverwhere]

Wow did you guys add 100% markup on the pc, strange I can get the system for under 10K.

Yeah hehe, R18k and the word mid-range don't sit right with me.. For gaming, couldn't you do something in i5/i7 without the water cooler. Do you even need water cooling on an i3? Who's overclocking i3?

Edit: I see the image you have states i3, and the text above states i5. Typo in the image?

 

[Inn3rs3lf]

Wow did you guys add 100% markup on the pc, strange I can get the system for under 10K.

Lol. K. Trolololol

 

[FaSMaN]

You want to have me pay R17000+ and yet you guys dont know the difference between a core i3 and i5?

Taken from your website:

PS Your spending the money in all the wrong places , Maximus V Gene Z77, with a i5 Intel Core i5-3570K , at that price you can probably swap the Corsair Graphite 600T for a coolermaster 690 II LE and fit a newer i7 , even then your still way over priced.

and a lonesome cheapest you could find 500GB seagate ,couldn't spare R200 to fit a 1TB?

Gamers looking to spend that sort of cash would do it themselves for half the price and to there own specs.

 

[kingrob]

R18 000 for a midrange gaming pc?

Just crazy. Then I'd rather get myself a desktop replacement, like the Asus G73.

 

[Ancalagon]

500GB HDD and 60GB SSD for that kind of money? I think the motherboard is a waste, those are for bragging rights only.

 

[crysis]

The product page to order arguably the best-bang-for-your-buck gaming PC currently can be found here:

Regards,

Jaco

Definitely arguable.

 

[Ipwn 4]

The i3 is a typo, the pc has a i5 3570k processor. As for the claim that the pc can be built for R10? I'll gladly call your bluff

Gaming PC's carry a price premium due to the fact they they are assembled, over clocked and tested to meet set requirements. Feel free to compare the benches done by a third party on our PC to an i7 build by our competitors. These PC's are built for gamers who don't feel comfortable assembling their own machines and tweaking the voltages to get every last MHz from their CPU.

I appologize for the typo, I'll have someone fix it in the morning.

Regards,

Jaco

 

[FaSMaN]

I dont have the nag to check, but by any chance was that i7 stock or overclocked aswell,if not, well thats not a fair comparison now is it?

As for the 10k comment, I didnt make it,and component for component it would be difficult, but I couldn't care less, as the parts you chose for the rig are needlessly expensive as most people pointed out, and your margins are way to high on already needlessly expensive components, except offcourse your choice of hard drive(Seagate 500gig rofl) , that is overly cheap

Slapping "GAMER"/"OVERCLOCKED" onto something only increases the value of a rig if you have a name that can back it up alienware is a good example of this, they started the whole Pre-overclocked stock computer, and went as far as cherry picking cpus off of the intel assembly line just for that purpose,and they had the guarantee and support to back it up directly from the manufacturers.

As for performance I will call your bluff this time "...tweaking the voltages to get every last MHz from their CPU." , I can guarantee you at 4.4ghz there is still head room, and you know it.

Also I noticed this high end rig doesn't seem to have a OS bundled with it , atleast according to the advert.

PS Not trying to completely dis you product, you have the right to sell what ever you want at what ever price you see fit, just pointing out the flaws with it, and that most people on Mybb would be clever enough to spot them aswell.

 

[Ipwn 4]

I dont have the nag to check, but by any chance was that i7 stock or overclocked aswell,if not, well thats not a fair comparison now is it?

As for the 10k comment, I didnt make it,and component for component it would be difficult, but I couldn't care less, as the parts you chose for the rig are needlessly expensive as most people pointed out, and your margins are way to high on already needlessly expensive components, except offcourse your choice of hard drive(Seagate 500gig rofl) , that is overly cheap

Slapping "GAMER"/"OVERCLOCKED" onto something only increases the value of a rig if you have a name that can back it up alienware is a good example of this, they started the whole Pre-overclocked stock computer, and went as far as cherry picking cpus off of the intel assembly line just for that purpose,and they had the guarantee and support to back it up directly from the manufacturers.

As for performance I will call your bluff this time "...tweaking the voltages to get every last MHz from their CPU." , I can guarantee you at 4.4ghz there is still head room, and you know it.

Also I noticed this high end rig doesn't seem to have a OS bundled with it , atleast according to the advert.

PS Not trying to completely dis you product, you have the right to sell what ever you want at what ever price you see fit, just pointing out the flaws with it, and that most people on Mybb would be clever enough to spot them aswell.

Hi Fasman,

Like I mentioned before, the pc is aimed at a market not capable of building and over clocking their own computers. If you request a quote for the same computer component wise our own quote will beat the one for the full system. Our upgrade and save specials were specifically aimed at bringing the costs of bundles down to sub retail pricing.

The over clocking on this pc isn't anywhere near what we can accomplish with the processor, a stable 4.6GHz is is easy on most 3570k with an H40 but we can't advertise an overclock which certain processors can't achieve.

As with all products there are flaws and it's easy to point out pricing as one of them, just remember to take the pricing from our competitors in this market into account, the largest supplier in this market sells the identical computer for around 4k more(yes identical, configure it yourself). This pc was an attempt by Solid Computing to migrate a fraction of our business into this market.

We appreciate all the feedback we have received thus far, thank you

Regards,

Jaco

 

[FaSMaN]

I respect your very professional reply

And would like to add, unfortunately the competitors thats charging R4k are very large corporations with even larger expenditure and probably do offer some other value added services,already bundled to the price, you get with the there products, but there are numerous other companies(wish I could list them, but that would be thread highjacking) that are the exact same size you are, doing the exact same,prebuilt and overclocked, for a lot less, only difference in this case is unfortunately that they didnt decide to fork out to have one of there rigs tested by NAG (a well played and good marketing move from your company),so not only does that not grant the readers a valid performance comparison, but makes it extremely difficult for them to compare similar system manufactured by similar (sized) companies,with the same offering.

What allso strikes me is it appears that your target market is, like you said "a market not capable of building and over clocking their own computers." but you expect them to be tech savy enough to install there own os as its not bundled (atleast like I mentioned before according to your specs list)

This will probably be my last post on the matter, as all flaws have now been brought to your attention, and this discussion wont bare any fruit for ether of us.

PS Allso you never commented if the competing i7 was overclocked or not?

 

[Ipwn 4]

I respect your very professional reply

And would like to add, unfortunately the competitors thats charging R4k are very large corporations with even larger expenditure and probably do offer some other value added services,already bundled to the price, you get with the there products, but there are numerous other companies(wish I could list them, but that would be thread highjacking) that are the exact same size you are, doing the exact same,prebuilt and overclocked, for a lot less, only difference in this case is unfortunately that they didnt decide to fork out to have one of there rigs tested by NAG (a well played and good marketing move from your company),so not only does that not grant the readers a valid performance comparison, but makes it extremely difficult for them to compare similar system manufactured by similar (sized) companies,with the same offering.

What allso strikes me is it appears that your target market is, like you said "a market not capable of building and over clocking their own computers." but you expect them to be tech savy enough to install there own os as its not bundled (atleast like I mentioned before according to your specs list)

This will probably be my last post on the matter, as all flaws have now been brought to your attention, and this discussion wont bare any fruit for ether of us.

PS Allso you never commented if the competing i7 was overclocked or not?

The article doesn't stipulate clearly wether there is an overclock so I would have to confirm this for you. It appears to me that it has been though... Value added services such as OS installation can be done at the clients request but as most people are well aware people generally don't want the price of the OS to be included in the retail price.

The idea behind this review as well as the gaming server/league is to announce our presence to the gaming market, a market dominated by the larger companies you mentioned. Even though most other companies offer similar services hardly anyone is aware of them as some of the best specials/services/products are often hidden away behind overly complicated websites.

Our business plan differs form the rest to ensure a unique experience, one our customers thus far have enjoyed and praised

Regards,

Jaco

 

[Duff-Man]

Wow did you guys add 100% markup on the pc, strange I can get the system for under 10K.

Pre-built gaming PC's are priced to compete with other other pre-built gaming PC's. In a pre-built PC besides the cost of the components ,there are a lot of other fees that are added on to configure the PC, such as assembly, OS installation and overclocking.

Sure you may be to get individual components and assemble them for cheaper than the cost of a pre-built PC, but the pre-built PC is for an individual who doesn't have the skills/knowledge to assemble it themselves and may not be able to overclock it, configure it etc.