Which other brands are giving you grief? Honestly, it feels like you didn't really follow my advice in either of those two scenarios I suggested. For a business setup, just skip the local shops—you should've gone straight to Future or ADM. They actually pick up the phone and get stuff sorted out fast, usually working things out in your favor.
Toshiba is a bit slower than Western Digital Blue, but Seagate Barracuda isn't so bad that an installation would take this long. What did you use to test your RAM? If you used MemTest, how many passes did you actually run? Just a heads-up, Patriot drives are notorious for showing up dead on arrival, burning out quickly, or causing weird compatibility headaches. Did you double-check the connections inside the case, or maybe check the sticker on the back? And don't even bother with 32-bit—you definitely need 64-bit SP1 and a solid, reliable version.
Sure, you're the one footing the bill upfront, but once they issue a refund, make sure they don't try to pull any "pricing" nonsense on you.
You don't really need to worry about it—honestly, if you see the retail box, that’s your signal that it comes with a stock cooler. For an Intel build, those basics are usually plenty, unless you're stepping up to an i7 or one of those K-series chips where you definitely want to look into an aftermarket cooler. Just a heads-up though, if it's sold without any cooling at all, that's what they call "tray" versions.
And hey, you can totally justify dropping the price a bit if you're looking at an i5-4440 instead, since there isn't much of a real-world difference—it's just a 100 MHz clock speed bump, which you won't even notice.
If you're looking at the R9 280, I’d say Gigabyte or XFX are definitely your best bets—they have the fewest headaches. Both run quiet and stay cool as a cucumber, plus they both overclock pretty well. Honestly, Gigabyte gets the edge over the XFX 1g version just because of the extra warranty coverage.
Sapphire models tend to run a bit loud and hot, which forces the fans to spin faster—meaning they burn out more often (though tweaking the fan profile can help a little). As for MSi, they’re right up there with Gigabyte in terms of performance, but you have to watch out for those occasional issues with oil leaking from the heatsink... it doesn't happen to every single card, but man, it sucks if it happens to yours.
Regarding that motherboard—honestly, unless you're planning to overclock or eventually swap in a K-series CPU with a Haswell core, there's no real reason to go with the Z chipset. You could save some cash by picking up the ASRock B85 PRO4 instead.
As for storage, you can stick with a Toshiba drive for now. If you want more speed, though, maybe look into upgrading the SSD to something like an OCZ Arc 100. Also, you could probably scale back the power supply to a 600W unit and be totally fine.
Regarding futur—look, I’ve already made my stance clear a few times now, and honestly, I don't really care what a 10-year-old like you thinks about it. Building PCs has always been a huge hobby of mine—especially putting together custom rigs—so if I actually know my stuff and have some experience in IT, why wouldn't I recommend the best possible options to people?
By the way, the reason I use futur for every build is because that's where I learned to build; their website is super easy to navigate, making it the fastest way for me to just whip up a config and copy/paste it. What I put together is what stays, and most importantly, they stay competitive on pricing and are actually reliable when it comes to returns/warranty stuff. If you had ever actually bought anything from them or dealt with a claim, you'd get why I suggest them along with a few others. Providing Links and such is just to make things easier for whoever is looking for a suggestion—it's not like I'm trying to be "oh, where is this, I can't find it," etc. Plus, there are a few other forum members who build rigs too, so do you really think I'd go out of my way to force people toward futur or trash their builds for no reason just to make mine look better? At the end of the day, it's up to everyone to decide where they want to shop, and I'm just using my free will to suggest whatever store I want. If someone isn't feeling futur, I'll put a build together using somewhere else—though 99% of the time it's not even necessary since everyone seems to stick to the same handful of shops anyway. You can find several of my builds from other stores—mostly from Links due to different payment methods or locations—so feel free to troll through my profile and look for them.
Sharing solid, firsthand info about components is honestly just bad news for everyone else 👏 As for the photos, that's all just stuff from my own home; they're builds I put together for friends, acquaintances, and whatnot, which is pretty obvious if you look closely.
edit: sorry for the OT, mod—Rachel Garcia4, this reply was actually meant for someone else 😉
I just wanted to mention this so you could double-check—even though HP is pretty standard for most companies, they sometimes miss out on certain networking features compared to the Pro version. KLIK.
Yeah, just a heads-up—the HDD fix is actually 500GB (honestly, I don't think you'll need more than that anyway). Besides the individual part warranties, you'll get a full 12-month warranty on the whole setup—which means free diagnostics if something goes south, just like pretty much any other big US tech retailer or shop. And look, it’s not like I’m running the place myself 😁 . Basically, once that 12-month window closes, if you can't figure out what's broken on your own, you just take it back to them. They'll run the diagnostics, charge you based on their hourly rate to find the issue, and then swap out whatever died—provided, of course, it's still under warranty. You can read here. . edit: Oh, almost forgot to mention—they don't put those annoying "warranty void if removed" stickers on things, so you're totally free to upgrade whatever you want or just hit it with some compressed air to blow out the dust whenever .
Honestly, you don't even need an i5 for what you're doing—an i3 is already a step up, and even just some G1xxx or xxx Celeron / Pentiumi would get the job done.
If you go with those pre-built big-brand setups, you're usually paying a premium for nothing—it’s rarely actually better or higher quality. Personally, I think it's way smarter to just build your own rig. If you want something reliable, snappy, and stable for the long haul, this is the kind of build I'd aim for:
i3 4150 AS ROCK H81M HDS CRUCIAL 8GB 1600 MHZ PATRIOT 60 GB SSD SATA 3 TOSHIBA 3,5 500 GB SATA 3 LG DVD-RW SATA FORTRON HEXA+ 400W 80+ ACTIVE ZALMAN A1 MINI ATX USB 3.0 WIN 7 HP SP1 64 BIT
~ $1433 including shipping.
- You can save some cash by swapping in those Celeron or Pentium chips—specifically the G1840 or G3220. - Dropping down to 4GB of RAM. - Cutting out the SSD entirely.
Honestly, this kind of setup should be plenty + just enough—as long as we’re talking standard stuff like web browsing, emails, Microsoft Office, and things like that. I mean, there are other things people call "basic," but then you get into the heavy-duty software like AutoCAD or the Adobe suite, which is a whole different ballgame.
If this isn't actually going to be used in an office setting (meaning there's no real need for genuine Windows licenses), it's probably smarter to just "figure out" a way to get an OS. We're not exactly talking about pocket change here.
Is this for a business setup or just for home use? What’s the actual goal here? Also, do you need to factor in a monitor and peripherals? Just a heads up—I'd steer clear of those pre-built configurations if I were you.
Look, I don't care what the official ADM site says—what actually matters is what's listed on the retailer's page. In your case, it’s ADM and whoever is handling the import for those cards, because they're the ones handing out the coupons. Basically, once importers get their hands on those vouchers, they bundle them with the graphics cards they're pulling from their suppliers—and obviously, they're going to shout it from the rooftops just to reel people in. Makes sense now?
It's pretty straightforward—you basically didn't get anything, so maybe just double-check your mailbox. As far as I know, they aren't even handing those out anymore.
Grab a better motherboard (ASRock H81M HDS), stick with some 8GB single channel RAM (Crucial), and pick up a decent case—maybe a Zalman Z1, Z3, Z3+, or even a Sharkoon VG4-S—plus the rest of those parts listed above, and you’ll be good to go.
Sure, I can get on that—but the real question is whether they’re actually legit. In my experience, those things are usually the culprit behind 90% of freezes and random crashes. Better double-check.
Honestly, if you're looking at those options, I’d say steer clear of the MSI cards—especially since you've already got that reliable Gigabyte or the XFX mentioned earlier as solid alternatives. Lately, it seems like more and more MSI TF models are dealing with oil leaking from the heatsinks. People say it won't actually kill your components, but still—it’s pretty gross to have your GPU basically sweating all over your case and other parts.
🤔 Looks like their website was just acting up—it’s back online now.
Don't even bother with the v300. It seemed decent enough when it first launched, but ever since they pushed those new firmware updates, the performance has absolutely tanked.
It’s a bit of a toss-up... companies throw all sorts of random stuff into their builds sometimes. If you can dig up the specific model for a big-name brand like HP, Dell, or Acer, it’s usually pretty easy to get an idea of what’s actually inside. If it turns out you're dealing with DDR3, there's definitely a chance of compatibility issues since they're likely from a different manufacturer—so just make sure you run them through MemTest first to be safe (aim for about 3 or 4 "passes" to be sure).