during our secret shopper project we discovered that while some pre-built
gaming systems offer a solid value in terms of their performance with Tier one
providers like HP and Dell you can often
run into proprietary parts limited upgrade ability and configurability and
questionable software load outs that can affect the overall experience so the
popularity of machines that are built from retail parts by smaller system
integrators like iBUYPOWER or main gear is understandable boutique builders in
particular don't always hit the best performance per dollar but what most of
these shops offer is a high degree of customize ability and more transparency
into the actual components you're buying now a lot of you watching our channel
would look down on the idea of buying a pre-built computer but consider this
what if a well-known and respected manufacturer came out offering the type
of system that would be similar to what you would end up configuring for
yourself and at a reasonable price offering a turnkey solution with a solid
warranty well that is what Corsair tried to do with the Vengeance gaming PC 50
180 let's see if it's worth your
hard-earned money Thursday boots is a
bootstrap startup that handcrafts boots using the highest quality materials and
then sells them at an honest price what a business model right they offer free
shipping and returns and you can check them out at Thursday boots comm /l tt
we'll have that linked below
so let us cover the four pillars of any gaming system price quality performance
and support which together help us determine the value of this thing after
spread shooting the components all together and checking non sale prices
through both Amazon and Newegg it turned out that the prices of the parts came to
just over $2,100 this means that Corsair
is marking up this machine 12 to 13 percent or about $300 over regular
Street pricing but it's not time to make
a final judgment here just yet first let's dig a little deeper Corsairs
markup also includes assembly and two years of warranty support on the
completed system and check this out Corsair has multiple RMA centers for
their machines so depending where you're located you might not end up having to
ship the machine which is currently only available directly from Corsair all the
way back to them if you run into an issue what's even better is they'll
cover shipping both to and from the service depot and they'll even send you
replacement packaging if you tossed out your original box that's pretty rad at
least on paper when it comes to the next
pillar quality well we'll start with that aforementioned packaging our array
arrives protected with open celled foam and had this peered contraption to
ensure that the graphics card wouldn't snap out of the slot you know it's kind
of ghetto looking but hey if it works it
isn't stupid so no complaints there cabling was neat on the front and
tightly bundled on the back chamber and we didn't have really I mean any gripes
with the machines construction quality overall we did wonder why they would use
a 240 millimeter AIO to cool a non k
processor in a B Series board but the
answer here is most likely for the looks and a single 120 millimeter cooler would
have made the system look kind of asymmetrical the only thing that really
stood out here was Corsairs use of an 80 plus bronze
750 watt power supply now to be clear
it's a decent 2nd gen unit from their CX
series and five year warranty so I guess the logic
here was that more people would care to have 750 watts than would care if it had
higher efficiency which is a trade that they could have easily made moving on to
the performance in a massive surprise - absolutely no one in games our machine
performed exactly as a core i7 eighty seven hundred plus an RT X twenty eighty
should turbo boost on our CPU worked correctly our GPU reached anywhere from
1935 to 1950 megahertz while gaming and
we never heard more than a low hum from
the direction of the tower no cooling issues and no weird fan ramping behavior
or anything like that to report it's almost like Corsair has a lot of
experience when it comes to PC cooling now as for storage our SSD uses a fine
controller and it sits on an X two PCI
Express laws so as expected that puts it somewhere in between a SATA SSD and an
enthusiast class NVMe one and while Corsair applied no performance
optimizations to the UEFI BIOS no factory profile saved even everything
worked out of the box without an issue now when it comes to pre-purchase and
post-purchase support well we didn't have a chance to actually test the
latter due to this being a review unit which was not secret shoppers so we
couldn't stage a tech support scenario or anything like that maybe in the
future let us know in the comments if you'd like to see that and as for
pre-purchase support well disappointingly it actually does not
exist at all you see Corsair presently
has just four machines available on their site all of them none configurable
with the other three being Corsair ones with the closest configuration their
commanding a much higher price while using the same class of graphics card
maybe ok conspiracy theory moment here
maybe Corsair doesn't want to have a sales rep because that person would just
spend all day down selling customers to the Vengeance I don't know that's pure
speculation anyway let's get back to the value conversation because it's the most
complicated part of this video compared to configuring a system over on
iBUYPOWER trying to include as many of the same components as possible corks
airs pricing actually looks really solid for our vengeance PC but that doesn't
necessarily mean I'm happy with it before I can explain why we need a
little bit of history now in spite of their wide portfolio covering the vast
majority of PC components from cooling
to cases to RAM and storage Corsair
surprised everyone when they introduced the Corsair 1 a fully integrated ready
to ship system like Windows pre-installed in everything for gamers
not because anyone thought they weren't capable I mean obviously there are
plenty of people at Corsair who know how to assemble a gaming tower but rather
for business reasons by branching out
into completed systems Corsair stood to alienate the same partners system
integrators like main gear and ibuypower who I mentioned before that they rely on
for a significant chunk of their business by effectively competing with
them directly and potentially unfairly since Corsair
obviously has more profit margin on a
Corsair power supply than a reseller of
Corsair power supplies could now Corsair
story at the time was the one is unique it's too difficult to assemble to offer
this chassis as a standalone case so it doesn't really compete with anyone elses
offerings but like this one
this is the Vengeance PC a fully built
gaming PC from Corsair using all
off-the-shelf components so is it a great value
well it is if you were gonna buy exactly
these parts anyway but it's not if you
were the kind of person who was more likely to spend their hard-earned money
on raw performance so Corsair was in
kind of a unique position here to use some of the extra profit margin that
they gained by being the manufacturer of both the components and the finished
system to deliver great performance and
flashy aftermarket looks but by choosing
a non overclockable CPU and a B 360
motherboard at this price point I do feel like they fell a little short of
that goal if that was their goal and you
know I have to wonder if maybe this was on purpose to avoid disrupting the
market whatever reason there was for it the
good news is that we have no qualms about the quality of the system or
Corsairs ongoing existence if you ever need support so as they continue to
expand into this business I think vengeance gaming pcs are gonna get only
more interesting to gamers as time go on that is the ones that don't feel like
DIY either for themselves or for their friends because as it goes with
pre-built you could get a faster computer if you built it yourself then
again maybe of course they're doesn't care I'm sure they'd be happy to sell you their components - excuse me
master Ops vast curved gaming monitor is
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