(mischievous music) (gunshot blasts) - We bought them. - Do you have roosters around you? - We unboxed them. - [Cameraman] They have extra, why? - We trialed their tech support. - I managed to pull it out all the way. - And now in our final act we're benchmarking all six of our systems to see which PC integrator
offered us the most bang for the buck when it comes to gaming and streaming performance. But, as regular viewers of the series have probably
come to expect by now, there's a lot more here
than meets the eye. Like thanking D brand for
sponsoring this series. They're cool. And you're not, more on that later. (upbeat music) Ah, Alienware. I mean, Dell. After a wholly unimpressive sales and support experience, our
Dell surprisingly at least came with the latest version of Windows the latest Windows
update and video drivers and also the usual slew
of Dell support software, including everyone's
favorite McAfee Antivirus which we promptly uninstalled, wait a minute, 12 months subscription. What? Did they actually end up charging us for that after we said not to, no way. - Well, not exactly. Dell seems to include
a one-year subscription to McAfee on their G5 desktops for free. So that's all right, I guess,
but here's the problem. First of all, any mention of a discount disappeared
from our order entirely. And if you load up a G5 on Dell's website, spec it out with the
appropriate hardware, fun fact, you can actually choose
a dual channel memory kit for no added cost. You end up with a system that costs just over $1,600 Canadian, not
anywhere near the 2000 we spent. Oh, and remember the warranty they tried to sell us which we actively declined multiple times? - [Sales Rep] So that's the
reason we are suggesting you to take the warranty. (screams) - No, no, that's all right. - Well, they're still on the invoice just under much more obscure names. So I thought, did we actually get them? And I went to check our
warranty status and sure enough it has four years of
extended onsite warranty and four years of premium
support, which if you add both to the online configurator
would bring the total to just $2 off what we spent. - So they straight up
charged us for something we told them we didn't want. - (laughs) It gets better,
for the icing on the cake, on Dell's site, you can't even select both of the warranty packages the rep included at the same time. It only lets you order one. - So in summary, then, not only did the Dell sales rep straight up scam agent Sarah, and by extension me out of over 300 Canadian rubles on services that we said we didn't want. They managed to deliver a system with the worst expandability, the least resilient packing
material, zero upgradability for either the power
supply or motherboard, thanks to the proprietary case and nearly the worst
performance of the bunch. More on that later,
they even failed to help with a routine tech support
problem over the phone. I am straight up furious, like Dell, you guys told us that secret shopper 2018 was gonna be part of a
service and support overhaul but it obviously didn't happen. And while many of our
viewers have been quick to blame the representatives that we spoke with, I believe this is
actually a systemic problem. It is no secret that forcing employees to
rely on selling services like financing to make their
commissions creates this kind of negative customer experience. Honestly, it felt like shopping at a we finance all used
car lot and it sucked. Dell, you came in dead
last, way to go losers. Based on the ordering and
tech support experience and the actual spec of our system, our other tier one HP on the other hand looked very promising but both Windows and the Nvidia
drivers were nearly a year out of date from the time of ordering. I mean, I get it. They were probably clearing
old ninth gen stock after the launch of
their 10th gen desktops but it's not the best
experience to spend an hour updating your brand new system. In terms of build quality, it was great to see a
mostly non-proprietary setup from HP though. And there were no apparent restrictions in terms of swapping in
off the shelf components. The secondary front storage Bay came with both power and SATA data already run to it for an easy storage upgrade. And the 750 watt, 80 plus
platinum power supply is standard ATX. Continuing with the
trend last time around, HP's omen command center
still does basically nothing. I mean, you do at least get some control
over the included chassis RGB but aside from the utterly
useless network optimizer there's nothing really
to command in there. The rest of the pre-installed software
is the usual compliment of HP support stuff. Along with a 30 day McAfee
trial, which we uninstalled. As for the bios, it's limited
to a basic HP support set up with only system tests and
information pages available until you open up the advanced menu which isn't that advanced
adding only some basic power, IO and boot options. The main issue we had last time around with HP's config was the
heavily limited boost clocks on the CPU. And unfortunately, these same
issues are still present. I mean, how is that even possible? Stressing the CPU with y-cruncher, a pi calculation tool, we started at around 4,300 megahertz. All right. But then our temps immediately climbed into the high 80 degree range,
which is, I guess, okay. And then after a few seconds with no appreciable
spin up in the CPU fan, our clocks would drop to
around 3,700 megahertz and the CPU would draw exactly,
exactly 65 Watts of power which happens to be the
rated TDP of this chip. Now we thought that it might be some kind
of power virus mitigation. So we loaded up the blender BMW test. And unfortunately it
exhibited the same behavior. As for the GPU, with FurMark running, HP's stock configuration for the system had the
GPUs blower fan spinning at just 60% speed with temperatures hovering in the high 80s and the card clocking
down below its base speed. We tried manually tweaking
the fan curve in Afterburner and while it did yield better temperatures the clocks remained the same
due to power limitations. Now you can bypass these but it's just confusing, right? Like why is HP intentionally
handicapping both the CPU and GPU in a gaming branded system? For noise? I mean like, okay, but, HP, there are other ways to solve this. Maybe, just maybe, a single
92 millimeter exhaust fan isn't enough for
a powerful gaming rig. With how well HP performed during the rest of the
purchasing experience and with how good the system was on paper this was kind of a letdown, but we'll let the performance numbers
make the final call. Onto iBUYPOWER. This system also came with
Windows 1909 from late last year but their Nvidia drivers
weren't quite as bad as HP at only five months or so old. On the inside, you'll probably notice this, like the rest of our remaining systems,
was pieced together strictly with off the shelf components. So there's nothing proprietary like we found
in, particularly, the Dell. It also seems like this
is the one manufacturer so far that listened to our criticism from last time around. You might remember that
we were disappointed in the complete lack of cable
management from iBUYPOWER in 2018. Well, this year, the cables behind the motherboard tray
were managed about as well as you can expect from a
prebuilt and for bonus points the fans were plugged
into the correct ports this time, that's sarcasm, by the way you don't get bonus points
for not screwing up. It's also the first of our
systems to come with a Ryzen CPU, specifically the eight core 3700X during our white cruncher stress test the iBUYPOWER machine maintained
a consistent all core boost of 4.1 gigahertz at just over 70 degrees. Not quite the 4.5 gigahertz
max boost that AMD advertises, but this is about what we would expect on an all core synthetic load like this on Ryzen. The GPU, an MSI RTX 2070 Super with a decent
dual fan cooler managed to maintain clock speeds
higher than base in our FurMark test and temps
were in the low 80s, as you'd expect on an
Nvidia card with GPU boost. This system also featured
dual channel memory and it's worth noting that
while none of our tech support agents instructed
us to reenable XMP profiles, after our phone calls, we
did go ahead and do this for this system and the
rest of them that allowed it so that every system was
putting its best foot forward. And we even set our power plans in Windows to high performance. Back to the bios though, on the included ASUS
X570P it was two revisions or about four months
old as of ordering it, which would be unlikely to make much of a difference in performance especially this late in
Ryzen 3000's life cycle but bios updates usually do improve system stability and compatibility, especially with the higher speed
memory that Ryzen loves. So it's one of those things that's just a nice touch and
would make us think, wow, you know, these guys really care. Overall a very solid
job so far, iBUYPOWER, and assuming that you
didn't somehow handicap your gaming performance it seems like this is your race to lose. CyberPower PC. Oh boy. Well, for the second season in a row they effectively didn't provide us with any guidance on
the ordering experience. - [Sales Rep] I don't know what you need or what you do not need. - There we go. - But we did at least managed
to get a system from them. As we noted in the unboxing
experience, this machine did experience some minor shipping trauma but CyberPower did at least ship over replacement panels at
our request for no extra cost. So I'm gonna put a little
gold star right there. For the record though, CyberPower, you need to make sure that
you test your packing material because you were probably
a good two inches on the backside from being thick enough. If you know what I mean. Software wise, this system also shipped with a near year old Windows 10 build, but with AMD graphics
drivers that were only three months old. Not terrible, it's still not great. Oddly enough, though, we
struggled to find any indication that the system came from CyberPower in the operating system. They didn't even bother to
set a branded wallpaper. The only clue that we did end up finding was their
support information listed in the about your PC
section of control panel. Aside from the external
shipping damage though, the overall build quality is on par with the iBUYPOWER
system we just looked at and CyberPower spent
the extra time to clean up the back of the motherboard tray and overall present a
pretty decent looking rig. Our only recommendations here would be to opt for a power supply
with all black cables. Some better color coordination on the memory and to go for an NVMe SSD. That last one is the biggest, especially in a system that costs $1,400. The Intel 10700K boosted nicely between 4.6 and 4.7 gigahertz
under full synthetic load while maintaining a cool 68 degrees. And on the flip side, during
our FurMark stress test the AsRock RX 5700 XT,
which was the only AMD GPU in our lineup, reached
a smoldering 87 degrees while hovering slightly below
its advertised base clock. On the plus side, though, the bios version was at least the latest
available as of the order date. So that's cool. Now are y'all ready to see the
slowest PC out of the bunch? Whether it's the fact that
their cheapest system barely fit into our budget in the first place or the fact that they have to spec a lower than default case to make it work. It's no secret that Origin doesn't cater
to peasants who only have 1,500 US dollars to
spend on a gaming system. It shipped with the latest major build of Windows 10 and the most up-to-date Nvidia drivers we've seen yet, just over a month old, dang, with the only
shortcoming being the bios which was one revision old. Again, not expecting
any performance issues. It's just a little disappointing when you're paying this much for a system to be set up properly. They were, however, the only company to save a
pre-configured bios profile which included both XMP settings as well as some tweaks to the fan curves. Like everyone else in
this competition, though, they failed to instruct Agent
Sarah to enable their profile after our RAM receipting
debacle, so oopsie. Cable management upfront is the best that we've seen so far and it better be. But around back, while it was on par with the other
systems, it didn't wow me, you know, something
that I was hoping for at this kind of markup on assembly. The 10400 processor that came in our system stayed super
cool at just 62 degrees with the excessive
included AIO water cooler and maintained a respectable
four gigahertz on all cores just like what Origin
has listed on their site. And while running FurMark, the 1660Ti managed reasonable temps and a small bump over base clocks, which,
well, is unsurprising for this size of a cooler on a GPU that draws this little power. It comes down to this then. Origin, if you're gonna sell
systems in this price bracket you should at least try to offer some sort of reasonable value. It doesn't need to ship in a wooden crate. I don't need a $50 visa card
and I don't need the mouse pad and t-shirt. That is easily a hundred to $150 in value that I would
have rather you guys just put towards, well, a better computer or just be expensive and
own it like Voodoo used to. If I click on the $1,500
system, you should just have a little pop-up
that says, oh, I'm sorry. You must have taken a wrong turn. Last, but not least, Maingear The first time around on secret shopper we struggled to find anything wrong with the build quality of
the system they sent us. And again, that seems to be the case. Cable management is solid, the cooling layout makes sense, and they even zip-tied the
extra slack on the CPU fan. Nice. Speaking of the CPU fan, underneath it as you might've guessed,
is another Ryzen CPU. Specifically a 3600X six core. Under our y-cruncher synthetic load it maintained a reasonable 80 degrees with all core boost clocks
around 4.1 gigahertz just like the 3700X in the iBUYPOWER system. And that is right about what we'd expect. In FurMark the not factory
overclocked GPU boosted about a hundred megahertz over base with temps in the 80 degree range. What's interesting here though, is that while the actual margin
that Maingear charged us, that is to say the price over the parts cost, is
nearly the same as Origin, they managed to deliver a
better overall spec system by quite a lot which should theoretically
perform noticeably better. I do wish they had opted for an NVMe SSD for a
system in this price range. But other than that,
it's a pretty nice build. If you can swallow what basically boils down to a $350 build and service fee. And so in summary, this
video is pretty long already. So if you want to see
all the specs, hit pause. Now the main highlights for me are HP and iBUYPOWER's inclusion of an RTX 2070 Super
GPU, and NVMe boot SSD. And that's all without
making crippling compromises to the config elsewhere. Another standout was
Maingear and iBUYPOWER's use of AMD processors to deliver
better bang for the buck. Remember guys, the
motherboards are also typically more affordable at a given feature set if you go team red. Many of our manufacturers
ended up wasting money on things that I wouldn't
consider necessary, like liquid cooling on not over clockable CPU's
or Origin's inclusion of an overclocking capable
motherboard with a locked CPU. Surprisingly though, RGB didn't end up being an obvious value killer. With iBUYPOWER managing to include as much or more RGB than anyone else while also shipping the best speced machine. Specs are cool and all. How do they perform? To no one's surprise, iBUYPOWER's superior config offered the
greatest performance overall, with the HP and CyberPower systems
trailing slightly behind, depending on the game. We can easily see the
benefit that AMD cards have in F1 2020 as CyberPower's 5700 XT managed to outperform even the
2070 Super equipped machines and then was on par in Modern Warfare. So if you don't care about game streaming or features like RTX voice,
it's a pretty solid option. It's also clear that HP's power limitations
did hurt them here even in real-world applications because we would expect it to perform on par with the iBUYPOWER system or even better considering it's Intel CPU. But it didn't. As for our Maingear system, it held a respectable lead
over both the Dell and Origin Who, no surprises here, both
hovered near the bottom. As for streaming though, to test the CPU and coding capacity of each system we set up every machine to
encode a six megabit, 1080P, 60 FPS x264 stream of
the F1 2020 benchmark. Then one by one increased
the encoding quality until the encoding process
started to drop frames. Unsurprisingly, our CyberPower, iBUYPOWER and Dell systems were all able to record with the x264 slow preset
without any hitches. While our Maingear system pulled out a reasonable max preset of medium. As you might have predicted based on the issues we had with
power throttling on the HP, it couldn't push anything past the default very fast preset. Yikes, oh, and the Origin
system capped out at fast which makes sense, given
its piddly core i5 10400. Now it's time to crown a winner. For the second time in a row, iBUYPOWER is taking home the prize. When we last secret shopped them, their tech support was a bit of a nightmare and it's
definitely improved. They technically didn't
get our system booted during the call, but they at
least diagnosed the problems and they offered us an
RMA to get them fixed. And just like last time,
it's very hard to find fault with their recommended
config for the money. In second place, I expected to have HP, but
due to the severe power limitations that crippled
our system's performance, even in gaming, that crown
instead goes to CyberPower. I still think these guys have
a lot to learn when it comes to their pre-sales experience, but for a company that
seems to sell predominantly through other retailers
like Amazon and Best Buy I can kind of see why it might
not be a priority for them. During our tech support calls they provided video
tutorials, which was nice, but their technician's refusal to stay on the line to guide agent Sarah is honestly unacceptable in my book. And also what is this cooling layout, who designed this thing? It's just weird. I mean, I guess the
computer stayed cool enough but it's going to be a dust nightmare in the long run. In third place, we've got Maingear. Their ordering experience was great. As long as you can accept the fact that you're buying a more boutique system and paying a premium for it. Their customer service
experience was second to none. Their build quality was excellent. And while they clearly can't compete with a high volume manufacturer,
like iBUYPOWER, on price, if you like a quality
product with great support, a Maingear might still be right for you. In fourth place, we've got HP. Seriously guys, you were
so close to awesome. The tech support was solid. The ordering experience was
solid, but you done goofed the part that actually
matters, performance. Please HP, figure out what
it is that is limiting the power delivery or I
don't know what it is, fix it, fix it for good. In fifth place, Origin PC. Their ordering and
customer service experience was flipping awesome. It's just that it's only natural for the worst performing system out of the entire competition
to end up near the bottom. Yeah, it's well built and it does come with
24/7 customer service. So I guess if you decide to set up your new rig at three in the morning and RAM sticks need re-seating,
that might be useful. So like Maingear then, if you want tech support reps that sound like they really do enjoy talking to you, Origin could be a great choice,
but you have to understand that you are not getting
the best bang for your buck. Even among the boutique builders. At least not in this price bracket. Last and definitely least. Dell. You guys straight up scammed me out of several hundred dollars by selling agent Sarah warranties she explicitly denied
wanting multiple times. I would, it's at the point
now where I would strongly recommend that anyone
that's bought a prebuilt from Dell in the last little while double check your invoice to make sure that they didn't tack something on there that you didn't know about it because I am still (beep) livid about what happened here. Dell, you suck. And you know what else sucks? You, for missing out on the LTT X D Brand
special edition sticker bomb and Linus face drop, do better next time. Yep, I am literally advertising
a D Brand product right now that you can't buy and they've asked me
to rub your face in it. So there you go. You can't have it anymore, this. What a weird sponsor those guys are. Right? So that's it. We've wrapped secret shopper two. Thank you guys so much for watching. I sincerely hope it
won't be two years again before the next one, but these things are honestly
an absolute butt ton of work. So I'm not gonna make any promises. Make sure you're subscribed though. Just in case we do it. Oh, if you guys are looking
for something else to watch now go check out the previous secret shopper.
So not only did the Dell phone rep scam them for about 300 cad, she sold them two warranties that can't even be purchased together from the customer side. Metric-based performance evaluations in action.
Unsurprising that iBP takes the performance crown again, but Maingear should still be proud of their ordering and support experience.
TL;DW: ibuypower >> cyberpower > maingear > HP >>> Origin >>>>>>>>>> Dell
I'm a little disappointed in HP and Maingear.
HP because, man, they really were so close. There are still some hiccups, but seriously if they were able to deliver, that would've been amazing to see a big mainstream company like that to actually beat the boutique/enthusiasts at their own game.
Maingear, in part because I thought they did well. Value... yea. I care about performance and trying to eke out performance per dollar is something important.
IBP seems to be doing well. As someone who builds their own computer, IBP would be a company that I would go to in terms of value if I was to buy a computer so its nice to see that the other stuff is also not bad.
Dell on the other hand... fuck Dell.
Many years ago, I too was scammed by Dell.
The motherboard on my Alienware laptop gave out two days after the warranty period. I called them and was told since it was so close, they would give me a "special offer", If I bought the extended warranty, they would cover the motherboard. The repair was quoted at $400, and the extended warranty was around $200, so naturally, I accepted the offer.
I sent in my laptop, and lo and behold, the warranty didn't actually cover the repair, and I'm on the hook the now $500 repair fee on top of the $200 I already paid for the "warranty".
After countless back and forth with god knows how many agents, they agree to refund me the $200, but 6 weeks later, no money. I finally got fed up, recorded another call where an agent "promised" the money was on the way, and successfully issued a charge back with my bank.
TLDR: FUCK DELL!!!!!
I’m pretty sure what Dell did is totally illegal - well it definitely is here in Aus
Woo, boy. Dell just keeps on giving.
Absolutely not surprised that Dell's customer support continues to be bottom of the barrel.
I bought a Dell G5 laptop a few years back and I can definitely echo Linus's experience. Dell's warranty support was completely and utterly fucking useless. I ended up buying my own replacement power brick for the failing Dell one in the first year with my own money after there phone support person had me run a whole pile of tests and could not get the problem to repeat while I was on the phone. The issue was during long gaming sessions the power brick would overheat and stop working which was hard to test for using the system diagnostics in the bios.
Power brick aside the build quality of the unit was average. I would not buy another Dell product personally, dealing with the Dell reps was an absolutely horrible experience. I am not going to exclusively blame the reps here and I do feel they are forced into these situations by their management. I think Dell's management sets the tone for how their staff deal with customers and this is unfortunately the end result. If I do buy another gaming laptop down the road it will probably be something from Lenovo.
To add a cherry on top Dell actually called me when my warranty was about to run out and tried to get me to pay for an warranty extension.
Note to self, never buy prebuilt from Dell. That was easy.