ASUS Essentio CM6870-US-3AD Desktop PC, Intel Core i7 3770(3.40GHz), 16GB Memory, 2TB HDD $750AR

Excellent student desktop, but bot quite a gaming pc.... Too bad

This is a well-rounded system for this price. The good is the Blu-Ray drive and the low-end discrete graphics (a slight upgrade over the integrated HD 4000). The bad is the 5400RPM hard drive.

Bottom line: If you can live with the slow hard drive (or, better yet, do not mind installing an SSD), this is a good deal.

Additional notes: Some may complain about the 300W PSU that precludes a serious graphics upgrade. I am not in that camp as this is not a gaming system.

This is.... not impressive whatsoever. I have seen budget gaming systems that have been better balanced and still had good processing power that were priced comparatively... Well-rounded? Hardly... That HDD is 5400rpm, btw...

Hell, look at this one I grabbed within the first 3 minutes of looking around... http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/syste...pecial_III

Quote from Zephon13 : Hell, look at this one I grabbed within the first 3 minutes of looking around... http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/syste...pecial_III

Mind telling us how this lower-end system with no OS and at $100 more is a better deal?

Quote from deelseaker : Mind telling us how this lower-end system with no OS and at $100 more is a better deal?

Lower end? It's got an i5 3570K, which isn't that much under the 3770K in performance. It has a much better GPU, better PSU, faster HDD, AND TO TOP IT OFF... liquid cooling...

8GB RAM is fine because with a crappy GPU like what's in the Asus, what are you even going to do that's intensive enough to use 16GB?

Dude you are clueless. Having a super fast processor but nothing to go along with it is stupid and pointless.

/thread

Quote from Zephon13 : Lower end? It's got an i5 3570K, which isn't that much under the 3770K in performance. It has a much better GPU, better PSU, faster HDD, AND TO TOP IT OFF... liquid cooling... 8GB RAM is fine because with a crappy GPU like what's in the Asus, what are you even going to do that's intensive enough to use it? Dude you are clueless. Having a super fast processor but nothing to go along with it is stupid and pointless. /thread

You are clueless if you think your i5 "gaming" PC is a deal. You brought an unrelated POS configuration into this discussion to create an apples-to-oranges comparison. Not everyone needs a gaming PC to begin with. In fact, most PCs are not gaming PCs. Who are you to shove a gaming scenario onto a someone who may need photo/video editing and/or multitasking capability?

To address your, I emphasize, unrelated example specifically, for the $100 premium + the cost of the OS, you can easily throw in an SSD and an HD 7750 card (which the the 300W PSU there will handle well) onto the Asus and end up with a much superior configuration.

Quote from deelseaker : You are clueless if you think your i5 "gaming" PC is a deal. You brought an unrelated POS configuration into this discussion to create an apples-to-oranges comparison. Not everyone needs a gaming PC to begin with. In fact, most PCs are not gaming PCs. Who are you to shove a gaming scenario onto a someone who may need photo/video editing and/or multitasking capability? To address your, I emphasize, unrelated example specifically, for the $100 premium + the cost of the OS, you can easily throw in an SSD and an HD 7750 card (which the the 300W PSU there will handle well) onto the Asus and end up with a much superior configuration.

i7 3770K has no business being in some kid's PC who is just going to go on Facebook.

Anyone doing any sort of rendering will want a decent GPU. That "POS" configuration will outperform this POS Asus on any balanced task. Not to mention it was the first thing I even saw on the site. They a number of other builds that will also be more balanced that are priced under this piece of crap with a 300w PSU, crappy GPU, and slow HDD. Also the motherboard is cheap piece of garbage.

i5's handle multitasking just as well as i7's btw. They're both built on the same processor architecture, so again you're clueless. If you want to get technical, the i5 3570K has a better price/performance ratio as well. I laugh at kids who blow a ton of money on fast processors they don't even know what to do with.

Oh, and ever heard of Linux? It's free, buddy.

For a few hundred more than this I built a system that craps all over this.

i7 3770K
EVGA GTX 680 FTW 4GB
16GB G Skill Trident 2400mhz
Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe
850w Corsair TX850

Because go big or go home.