[LiveBrianD]

http://www.frys.com/...%20page:fri_pg3
This is advertised as a gaming pc. Intel i3 2120, 8GB RAM (1333MHz), geforce 520, "480 watt" power supply (model not mentioned), and liquid cooling (mentioned on the main ad http://www.frys.com/ads/page4 but not the specific detail page). A few things - a geforce 520 sucks at gaming, right? I've seen plenty of i7 machines with radeon 6450s or geforce 520s advertised as ultimate gaming machines, when they will probably play games like crap. Also, why do you need liquid cooling if the CPU is only 65W and can't be overclocked at all? What a waste. And what's the 12V rail on that power supply, as well as the brand? It's probably a piece of junk. I wonder how many people iBuyPower will fool there.

[coastie65]

That is not one of iBuypower's better offerings for sure. Probably a special Configuration for Fry's. Only two positive things I could see is the 1155 MOBO and the case. Not a clue as to the rest, but it probably won't do all that well with Skyrim. Speaking of which, I was playing Dungeon Siege III and I noticed that thing was spread across all 8 windows in performance in the task manager. Apparently it does utilize HT.

[waldojim]

You will probably find that this is common. Even when companies that know better sell in a big box store, they end up being about that sorry. This is mostly so they can sell the machines under the magic $1,000 mark.

Sadly, the best I have seen in prebuilt bigbox gaming machines has been entry level gamer cards. Basically like the 550, or 6750

[LiveBrianD]

The 550ti is actually a pretty capable card in my opinion (even without overclocking).

That machine was $700. For $740 (OK, I went a little over budget), I came up with:
LITE-ON DVD Burner - Bulk Black SATA Model iHAS124-04 - OEM - $18, good enough
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - $100, I would've gone for a cheaper one like the antec 300 but that ibuypower has an $100 nzxt case, so to be fair I went with this.
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - $90, that also had a 500GB HD
ASUS M4A88T-M AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - $80
EVGA 01G-P3-1556-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) FPB 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card - $145, this absolutely kills the 520
Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W Continuous power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power ... - $46, it's not rated for as much as the ibuypower's 480W unit but the that probably doesn't have a great 12V rail anyway, so this is likely capable of just as much realistically (I've seen some 500W raidmaxes with a 12V rail ampage similar to the EW 380W).
Patriot Signature 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model PSD38G1600K - $37, the ibuypower also has 8GB but it's at 1333MHz
AMD Phenom II X4 960T Zosma 3.0GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HD96ZTWFGRBOX - $125, I figured this would be more powerful than an i3 2120
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM - $100, duh!

No liquid cooling that's pointless, and a much better gaming and overall machine. How is it that OEMs always get this wrong?

[waldojim]

LiveBrianD, on 03 February 2012 - 10:17 PM, said:

The 550ti is actually a pretty capable card in my opinion (even without overclocking).
[snip]
No liquid cooling that's pointless, and a much better gaming and overall machine. How is it that OEMs always get this wrong?

OEMs have a considerable amount of overhead to consider. They also have to employ people to assemble the machines. This is not a one man outfit. Fry's wants money to sell them, Schneider wants money to deliver them, workers want paid to build them, the electric company wants paid, the leaser of the building in which the machines are being assembled wants paid, etc. There is a LOT of overhead building PC's. You aren't going to find CHEAP OEM's that are also QUALITY oems. The two functions are mutually exclusive.

As for a 550 being enough - I get it. I really do. Just like the 5770's were 'enough' for me, when I needed more than my 8800's were delivering. The difference though is that the 8800's handled the newest games MUCH longer, and can still handle most games today. My 5770's were BARELY an upgrade from them even though they are several generations newer. They are still middle of the road now. Here I am 2 ~ 2.5 years later needing replacements. Yes I will replace them, not with another middle of the road card. I will go with a 7870 or similar TOTL card to ensure it is enough for more than 2 years. The 550Ti is ALREADY seeing the end of its useful life. Skyrim alone was my wakeup call. Neither the 5770 or the 550Ti can really handle it well.

[LiveBrianD]

With cheap PCs, it's hard to say - sure, they have more overhead, but they also buy everything in bulk and include bloatware to help keep the price down. (I suppose they also use more generic or cheaper components like the motherboard, ram, and power supply, since most people won't notice those.) I've found that with those it's hard to say whether buying a prebuilt i3 machine or building one myself is better.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 04 February 2012 - 04:43 PM

[coastie65]

waldojim, on 03 February 2012 - 10:05 PM, said:

You will probably find that this is common. Even when companies that know better sell in a big box store, they end up being about that sorry. This is mostly so they can sell the machines under the magic $1,000 mark.

Sadly, the best I have seen in prebuilt bigbox gaming machines has been entry level gamer cards. Basically like the 550, or 6750

When Gateway came out with the FX6800 Series with the 1st Gen i7, they were pretty good rigs. They used the HD 4850 and I forgot which Nividia card, but it was a GTX of some kind ( depending on which model you got ) and some in mdels had the 4850 in Crossfire as well as the i7 Extreme Processor. The prices reflected the different cinfugyrations too. They ran from, $1250 to $3000 across about 6 models. The biggest issue was the locked memory, although some at the upper end were running at 1333 Mhz. I am on the Gateway now, as it needed it updates and I thought I'd try unlocking the BiOS again. I think I got a got a bad command line.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 06 February 2012 - 03:12 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Can you flash it in Windows?

Edit: Wait, didn't you have an evga 1366 board? What happened to that?

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 06 February 2012 - 04:16 PM

[coastie65]

LiveBrianD, on 06 February 2012 - 04:11 PM, said:

Can you flash it in Windows?

Edit: Wait, didn't you have an evga 1366 board? What happened to that?

Yep. It's sitting in the closet with all the other surplus stuff. Thing didn't have enough USB headers. Would have had to sacrifice my card reader & two USB ports up top.

AS for flkashing in windows, I would need to figure that out. I have the unlocked BiOS image and I would need to make up a flash utility some how. The one I have is a DOS. Well, it's something to play with from time to time. Need to switch computers I guess as all the cleaning is done. It was in pretty good shape inside as this case has filters of a sort except over the vent on the cover and the exhaust stuff.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 06 February 2012 - 05:12 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Well that's a lame excuse. Either you sacrifice a card reader, or you get to overclock the CPU and make the ram run faster. Come on, you can buy a $10 card reader if you need it, right?

Can you use the gateway bios flash utility?

[coastie65]

LiveBrianD, on 06 February 2012 - 05:32 PM, said:

Well that's a lame excuse. Either you sacrifice a card reader, or you get to overclock the CPU and make the ram run faster. Come on, you can buy a $10 card reader if you need it, right?

Can you use the gateway bios flash utility?

Not sure. I'm back on the beast again, so will play with some the next time I'm on the Gateway. If I should somehow insert the BiOS image in there, maybe, but would have to go back and get it again as I had to rename it form the original name. Besides, it got to where it wouldn't POST and I just said the heck with it. I hadn't even gotten around installing the Drivers and i had to go online to get the jmicron stuff as that didn't come with the MOBO stuff.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 06 February 2012 - 05:38 PM

[SnyperTodd]

Coastie, is the file you're trying to flash actually named 'BIOS.rom'?

Try adding the /i switch before the filename with no space between them. You can also try combining /P /B /N /C into /pbnc.

[LiveBrianD]

What do all those stupid switches actually do? Why not just afudos bios.rom? I did a little research on unlocking coastie's motherboard and ran into a guide that mentioned how to bios flash a few different bioses, and it mentioned all the switches that coastie tried. Yet, for other bioses, it's much simpler. (darn you AMI!)

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 06 February 2012 - 06:00 PM

[coastie65]

SnyperTodd, on 06 February 2012 - 05:53 PM, said:

Coastie, is the file you're trying to flash actually named 'BIOS.rom'?

Try adding the /i switch before the filename with no space between them. You can also try combining /P /B /N /C into /pbnc.

Hey Snyper, Yeah I had to rename it from the original Gateway BiOS name. Guess that is what get for having skipped over DOS back then.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 06 February 2012 - 06:02 PM

[waldojim]

coastie65, on 06 February 2012 - 03:11 PM, said:

waldojim, on 03 February 2012 - 10:05 PM, said:

You will probably find that this is common. Even when companies that know better sell in a big box store, they end up being about that sorry. This is mostly so they can sell the machines under the magic $1,000 mark.

Sadly, the best I have seen in prebuilt bigbox gaming machines has been entry level gamer cards. Basically like the 550, or 6750

When Gateway came out with the FX6800 Series with the 1st Gen i7, they were pretty good rigs. They used the HD 4850 and I forgot which Nividia card, but it was a GTX of some kind ( depending on which model you got ) and some in mdels had the 4850 in Crossfire as well as the i7 Extreme Processor. The prices reflected the different cinfugyrations too. They ran from, $1250 to $3000 across about 6 models. The biggest issue was the locked memory, although some at the upper end were running at 1333 Mhz. I am on the Gateway now, as it needed it updates and I thought I'd try unlocking the BiOS again. I think I got a got a bad command line.

Don't add all those extra switches in there. As I recall, you need /p /b /n /c /x and DON'T use the /reboot switch. You want to ensure it flashed correctly before rebooting.

edit: Flashing Guide.

This post has been edited by waldojim: 06 February 2012 - 10:35 PM

[coastie65]

Ok. I'll give you a little something else to chew on. In set-up it shows as AMI. Ok, the MOBO has the little programmable 6 pin ( I believe ) EPROM. The larger chip is elsewhere on the board and every picture I have seen of that MOBO, that larger chip has the AMI label on it. Mine has a Phoenix Label on it. Mind you, I am referring to the larger Non Programmable Chip NOT the EPROM. I do know that that MOBO went through several changes along the way and they were inconsistant to point that some, although could be configured in Tri Channel, only had 4 DIMM slots.

[SnyperTodd]

Coastie, when you go into your BIOS, does it say AWARD or AMI? If it says AMI, it's AMI. Don't worry about what stickers say.

And WJ is right, you don't need all of those extra switches, but if it doesn't work like he is suggesting, try combining the first four like I suggested above. If neither of those work, try adding the /i switch in front of the filename without a space between the two. If I remember right, that is the force-flash switch.