The moment I had to spend my own hard earned cash on a PC tower is the moment I started building my own custom PCs instead of buying prebuilt systems. It has always been a great way to save money which allows you to get more bang for your buck.
However, for the first time, I decided to go ahead and order a prebuilt from a company called CyberPowerPC. I’ve been wanting to upgrade my aging rig for some time now and actually planned on doing it right after the first of the year.
Shortly after figuring out exactly what parts I wanted in my system, the world starting dealing with Covid-19 which caused computer components to skyrocket in price thus crushing my dreams of not waiting over an hour for a 10 minute 4k clip to render in Adobe Premiere.
I decided to put my build on hold and wait for prices to come back down while my keyboard short circuited from the tears falling from my eyes.
That’s when an angel, in the form of a 350lb football linebacker whom I also call friend, had his computer literally catch fire to which he needed to find a solution fast appeared. He ended up buying a prebuilt system from Best Buy that was built by a company called CyberPowerPC.
The price for what he was getting in the system wasn’t half bad which caused me to jump on their website to see how much it would cost me to build my own system, but a completely custom one with all the components I had previously wanted. I was shocked to find out that with the deals they were currently running I could get everything I wanted for about $100 – $150 dollars more than if I built it myself but with other perks like a 3 year warranty.
Fast forward and here we are with the new system sitting behind me and me making this video showing you guys what I got as well as sharing my experiences with using CyberPowerPC to build my new gaming & content creation machine and whether it’s a company you should be using as well.
ROLL THE INTRO!
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Alright, with the formalities out of the way, let’s dive in!
First things first, let’s go through exactly how much more this machine cost me versus if I would have built it myself as well as the extra perks I received… or maybe I should say, “should have received for that extra cost.”
Stay tuned to the end of the video to hear some of the things that CyberPowerPC definitely messed up on and didn’t do much to fix or compensate for.
With the recent growth of my YouTube and Twitch accounts I decided to go all in and build a PC that would last me for quite some time as well as one that would work both for Gaming & Streaming as well as for Content Creation like editing and rendering YouTube videos.
This machine is built inside the Lian LI PC-011 gaming case which sports a tempered glass front and side panel allowing you to see all the components inside the machine as well as the RGB lighting.
It has the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro ATX motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor which features 16 cores and 32 threads of amazing speed and power.
I’m cooling that bad boy with the Corsair Hydro iCUE H150i RGB Pro XT 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler because I’m definitely planning on overclocking this bad boy!
For the memory I went with 64GB of Adata XPG Z1 3000Mhz memory which I’m well aware isn’t necessary for gaming, but helps tremendously when it comes to editing pictures in Adobe Lightroom or videos inside Adobe Premiere.
For the graphics card, I went with the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Super. This is the one area where I skimped a bit on money and honestly now that I have the system, I do wish I would have just went all out and spent the couple extra hundred for the 2080Ti, but I’m still super happy with the performance of the super so far!
We also got a 1TB M.2 NVME SSD as well as a 4TB SATA 3 Mechanical Hard Drive.
So how much did this entire setup cost me through CyberPowerPC? About $3000USD…
But… before I hit that buy now button I also priced all the components individually and if I purchased them all individually and built it myself I would have saved about $300 dollars, however, I knew I could save a bit more and that extra cost also included some perks that I wouldn’t have gotten if I built it myself.
First, CyberPowerPC advertises with several streamers so I knew there were coupon codes out there that could save me money and thanks to Summit1G I saved an extra 5% off the entire purchase. When everything was said and done I ended up paying about $150 dollars more than I would if I built it myself. But again, this included several things that if I built it myself, I probably wouldn’t have gotten.
When I purchased my PC it was around July 4th which is a holiday here in the United States and they had a promotion where instead of a normal 1 year warranty, you received a free 3 year warranty. Definitely not something I would have gotten if I built it myself. Also, they had a special where you got a gaming mouse and mechanical gaming keyboard for $9 dollars each as well as a decent free mouse pad.
Also, that price included them professionally wire managing the cables inside the PC case so it looked super fresh and clean. Something I’ve never personally bothered with as well as overclocking the entire system guaranteeing at least a 10% increase in performance. I’ve also personally never overclocked a system and admittedly is not something I was comfortable with trying myself.
But this is where the problems started with CyberPowerPC that I mentioned at the beginning of this video.
Now while I did have these several issues, overall the process with CyberPowerPC wasn’t bad. There were plenty of options to choose from in regards to computer components when building the computer on their website including most name brand components you’d typically look at if you were building your own system and the tech I spoke with in regards to the issues was friendly and apologized for the mistakes, but that still leaves me with the question of whether it was worth buying from them and if I’d buy from them again in the future?
The site was easy to use and they keep you updated throughout the process of your build and where it’s currently at in regards to preparing, assembling, *cough* quality control and shipping of your PC. It also seems that they run promotions quite frequently which paired with a streamer’s discount code could make it quite competitive in price to building your own, however…
The main reasons I decided to go with the system vs building my own wasn’t just the price. If it was, it was still cheaper building it myself even after the discounts and promos, and quite honestly I enjoy building my own PCs. It was the fact that I could also get things done that I wouldn’t typically do in my own builds like the wire management, overclocking and setting up of all the rgb equipment.
So in the end, if I had to do it all over again knowing I would receive the system I received, while I’m quite happy with it and pumped to have it. I probably would have just built it myself.
If you’re interested in seeing my exact build and links to all the parts in my system there will be a link in the description that will take you to my website where I have everything listed out individually!
Also, if you have any questions about my build or my experiences with CyberPowerPC that I didn’t answer in this video I do stream every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening over on Twitch which you can also find linked down in the description below!
I also have a review of my new $1,000 monitor that is great for both gaming and content creation coming out, so make sure you get subscribed for that and ring the bell to be notified when I post it on the channel!
Thanks so much for watching and until next time…peace out everybody!