ibuypower vs. cyberpower laptops?

[rpjkw11]

I've had the Cyberpower Fangbook HX7-100 for 6 months and I've not had any trouble. Quality is top shelf, inside and out. Battery life, as far as I can tell, is excellent. Simply surfing the net is good for 6+ hours. I use Flight Simulator 9 & 10 and get about 2-2.5 hours on a charge. The only downside, which I knew when I bought the lappy and is not a problem, is the ten pound weight. I can honestly recommend a Fangbook to someone wanting a higher end laptop.

 

[hodgenutts]

Thank you rpjkw11 for your experience.

 

[hodgenutts]

Well I ordered a cyberpower with the new 860m gtx graphics and an intel i7 4810mq cpu as it seems it will play the games I like and was under $1200 with a blue ray burner.

Placed order a week ago and still have not received an E.T.A. on when the laptop will ship... Perhaps I am just impatient...

 

[DooKey]

Well I ordered a cyberpower with the new 860m gtx graphics and an intel i7 4810mq cpu as it seems it will play the games I like and was under $1200 with a blue ray burner.

Placed order a week ago and still have not received an E.T.A. on when the laptop will ship... Perhaps I am just impatient...

You'll like the cyberpower once you get it. I love mine.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Well I ordered a cyberpower with the new 860m gtx graphics and an intel i7 4810mq cpu as it seems it will play the games I like and was under $1200 with a blue ray burner.

Placed order a week ago and still have not received an E.T.A. on when the laptop will ship... Perhaps I am just impatient...

These boutique guys tend to have lag times - very not Amazon-instant-gratification style.

Wouldn't be the end of the world if you gave 'em a call to check the order status though.

 

[hodgenutts]

I called today. Customer service told me they would get back to me. I'm waiting "patiently" LoL. I'm not complaining though as I still think I'm getting a better deal than the original alienware I was looking at that had a nvidia 765m and a intel i7 4700qm for $1399.

The alienware may have had better cooling, but I really don't know because I've never had one.

Thanks for all the responses.

 

[hodgenutts]

Well Finally got a tracking number. It's due to be here Wednesday. Now just crossing my fingers the new 860m lives up to the hype and can play the few games I play at Max settings. The 128 bit bus kinda has me skeptical... I'm kinda curious if 2 gigs of vram is overkill for a 128 bit bus and not just wasted vram.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Cool. Post pics and let us know how you like it.

As an aside, the VRAM is only "wasted" if the GPU doesn't have the horsepower to render the textures that would take up 2GB of VRAM. (This one does.) Or if the games you play don't need the extra VRAM. (Most games these days seem to, but it does depend on the title.)

As a general rule, you want to have a little wasted VRAM, since if you hit the VRAM wall, textures have to get retrieved from system RAM and your FPS takes a nosedive.

 

[toughtrasher]

Well I ordered a cyberpower with the new 860m gtx graphics and an intel i7 4810mq cpu as it seems it will play the games I like and was under $1200 with a blue ray burner.

Placed order a week ago and still have not received an E.T.A. on when the laptop will ship... Perhaps I am just impatient...

That's a pretty good deal, I'd say. And yeah, I'm late on this but they do take quite a while to give out shipping info, as far as my experience with Cyberpower goes.

 

[hodgenutts]

She's due to get here today. I'm excited for new gear but also nervous at the same time hoping she'll perform good enough... I feel like a kid back in school not sure how a date is going to go.... Yes I believe that statement just took my inner nerd to a whole new level LoL Thanks to everyone for all the advice.

 

[hodgenutts]

Ok. The new laptop is here. Initially I was let down. I has a dead pixel. When I loaded Windows the first time and was trying to install a game it gave a BSOD in about 10 minutes. I tried again and it would BSOD again after about 10 minutes of running. I tried to run windows update to see if that would fix it as the BSOD was giving the driver power failure code. The first 3 or 4 times I tried to run windows update the laptop would BSOD within 10 minutes of starting the update. FINALLY it stayed on long enough to let Windows update. Since the update I have not had another BSOD. I ran a few benchmarks to see if the computer would crash. I ran 3DMark06 and 3DMark11.

Here are the results on 3DMark. These are the free version preset tests:


3DMark06:

Total score: 26321
SM 2.0 score: 10729
HDR / SM score: 12155
CPU score: 7248



3DMark11:

P score: 5287
Graphics score: 9933
Physics score: 8932
combined: 4929



All in all I guess not bad for a laptop under $1200. Not sure though cause haven't been in the loop on gaming laptops.

On a side note, it has a button to boost fan speed to help keep the GPU cool under heavy use. I used the octane Fur Mark bench and it got up to 85 degrees so I ended the bench. I assume that is to hot but not sure.

All in all what is the consensus? Do those figures seem reasonable? I can return for a full refund within 15 days.

Thank you so much for your assistance and opinions.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I would call and mention the dead pixel. See if they'll exchange it. That would drive me nuts after a little while. Back when, it used to be that you needed to have more than X number dead pixels, or 2+ within a certain distance, but panel production has gotten so good... it's been years since I had a dead pixel on a new LCD. Call me spoiled, but I don't think that's really acceptable anymore. (You might have gotten a good price, but for $1200 I'd expect a bit more in the spit'n'polish department. Demand satisfaction!)

Those BSODs would also freak the hell out of me and make me do a complete set of hardware diagnostics. If anything looked at me cross-eyed or gave me a bad vibe, it would be RMA time.

Laptops will tend to run hot while gaming, but FurMark is known for overheating things that wouldn't normally overheat. 85C would be a reasonable temp for a CPU or GPU under very heavy load. I think max temp for your CPU is 105C, not sure about the GPU.

How's the build quality? Feel of the screen hinges? Action of the keyboard? Trackpad work alright? That stuff is almost more important than raw GPU performance, IMO.

 

[hodgenutts]

I would call and mention the dead pixel. See if they'll exchange it. That would drive me nuts after a little while. Back when, it used to be that you needed to have more than X number dead pixels, or 2+ within a certain distance, but panel production has gotten so good... it's been years since I had a dead pixel on a new LCD. Call me spoiled, but I don't think that's really acceptable anymore. (You might have gotten a good price, but for $1200 I'd expect a bit more in the spit'n'polish department. Demand satisfaction!)

Those BSODs would also freak the hell out of me and make me do a complete set of hardware diagnostics. If anything looked at me cross-eyed or gave me a bad vibe, it would be RMA time.

Laptops will tend to run hot while gaming, but FurMark is known for overheating things that wouldn't normally overheat. 85C would be a reasonable temp for a CPU or GPU under very heavy load. I think max temp for your CPU is 105C, not sure about the GPU.

How's the build quality? Feel of the screen hinges? Action of the keyboard? Trackpad work alright? That stuff is almost more important than raw GPU performance, IMO.

Thank you for your response. Over all the build quality seems solid. The hinges are actually the most sturdy I've had on a laptop. I've had a few HP's, Gateway, Lenovo and the hinges on this laptop are much more solid than any of those. The keyboard surrounding area and palm are is all metal, so the frame seems solid.

I need to take a good look at USB ports and see how solid they are. I'll call them and mention the dead pixel. The mouse pad reminds me a lot of a MacBook.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Awesome!

 

[hodgenutts]

After looking it over.... It actually has MSI on it... It appears MSI did in fact build it or at least played a major role in it's production.

 

[DooKey]

Cyberpower uses the MSI chassis to build their laptops with.

 

[hodgenutts]

Cool. Well I installed two blizzard games, and now the geforce experience will not load, and windows keeps throwing up error messages when trying to run windows update and won't update critical updates...

I'm thinking I shouldn't put up with this many issues with a brand new PC and return it.

But I wonder if I am just being to anal and impatient and if I should do a re-install of the O.S. :/

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Cool. Well I installed two blizzard games, and now the geforce experience will not load, and windows keeps throwing up error messages when trying to run windows update and won't update critical updates...

I'm thinking I shouldn't put up with this many issues with a brand new PC and return it.

You shouldn't.

But I wonder if I am just being to anal and impatient and if I should do a re-install of the O.S. :/

That would likely be part of the troubleshooting process they'd want you to follow before they issue an RMA.

If it came with a restore CD/DVD or partition, do a factory reinstall, and if it's still bad, it's RMA time.

It's probably just some bad RAM or something. Happens all the time. But it's not your job to figure that out.

 

[hodgenutts]

You shouldn't.



That would likely be part of the troubleshooting process they'd want you to follow before they issue an RMA.

If it came with a restore CD/DVD or partition, do a factory reinstall, and if it's still bad, it's RMA time.

It's probably just some bad RAM or something. Happens all the time. But it's not your job to figure that out.

Well that's just it. Since I ordered it through AAFES (military store) I have no RMA process. In the first 15 days I simply tell them I don't want it and whether it's because it's not working properly or I don't like it, they issue a full refund and then their rep works the rest of it out with cyberpowerpc. I don't have an RMA process. I just say "I want a refund" and I got one that same day. I just didn't know if I'd be jumping the gun and being to anal by doing that, or if should do the whole re install O.S. thing...

 

[DooKey]

I would reinstall the OS before going through all the hassle of trying to get another laptop. I'd also open the back up and reseat the RAM prior to doing that. It won't take long to restore and it might solve your problems.