Vigor Gaming Computers

[deshende]

Has anyone used or purchased a computer from Vigor Gaming before?

Vigor Gaming Computer - The Ultimate Gaming Computer for the Extreme PC Gamer

I'm getting to the end of life in my current gaming machine (couldn't play Borderlands because my current graphics card does not support a high enough level of shader level).

I've build my own systems in the past, so I've had my hands on experience with it, but I know the only thing bad about building your own system is if something goes wrong you have no one to blame but yourself. So something pre-built, with gaming components, and a warranty without paying for a name (like Alienwear) sounds appealing to me. (I'm also tempted in trying water cooling out and I'd rather try that out if leaks and part frying would be covered in a warranty rather than just screwing myself if I tried it out on my own). Working in IT myself, I see how often hardware dies and it would be nice to take that worry out of the equation.

I'm leaning towards a Force Recon T7 box. And after comparing similar component prices from Newegg and Vigor, there really isn't a huge difference in price (after considering the Free shipping and $500 off back to school specials currently offered by Vigor).

So I guess my only hesitation is throwing that much money towards a company that I really don't know much about.

(The only other caveat is that the back to school special ends tomorrow. I don't like having so little time to research, but $500 is a decent savings on a new system.)

So does anyone have any opinions on Vigor?

[Pikarya]

I've never heard of them. Google pulled up some mixed on reviews about their company.

[Isiolia]

I've build my own systems in the past, so I've had my hands on experience with it, but I know the only thing bad about building your own system is if something goes wrong you have no one to blame but yourself.

Yes and no. More often than not, when something goes wrong, it's one component or another having issues. If you built the machine yourself, you simply need to deal directly with the company that made that part, rather than contact the company that assembled it.

I have no experience dealing with Vigor, but looking at the config of the system you mentioned, you can do better for two grand. The same exact hardware from Newegg lands you in the $1500-1600 range before OS license, so you're saving hundreds if that's the actual config you want.
Realistically, why would you SLI Geforce 250 1GB cards instead of buying a better single card? The 900W PSU is perhaps overkill, could save there. While I'd say an SSD might be nice, 30GB is a little undersized. More generally, unless you're really planning to push it, why look at a 900-series i7 in the first place? i5 or i7 860 might be better, and less expensive to start with.
Chances are you could cut it down to the $1200-1300 range and get the same gaming performance.

So, IMO, you -are- paying quite a bit for the name and the service. Honestly, even more than you do with Alienware. Take the base Alienware Aurora system, same i7 920 CPU. Bump it to the higher PSU config. Bump it to dual GTX 260s. 1TB RAID0 main drive, 1TB secondary drive, stock 6GB of RAM...and it's right about the same price as the Vigor system after the $500 rebate.

Like I said, I don't know much about Vigor as a company. However, a quick Newegg/competitor check seems to show that they're pretty much in line as far as boutique builders go.

[Olo401]

Heard of Vigor before.. they make the Monsoon CPU cooler which gets OK reviews.

Took a look at the build list for the machine you're considering and... ugh what a joke.

- The GPUs they're using are extremely old tech (GTS250 = 9800GTX+). You'd be better off with a single GTX275 or Radeon 4890.
- A 900W power supply is overkill even with dual SLI.
- SSD is fine, but 30 gigs for the OS drive is not enough.
- Only 3 gigs of slowly-timed RAM and Vista Basic 32-bit with an i7-920? And then charge 30 bucks just to switch to Vista Home Premium 64-bit?
- You don't even get a monitor or bluray drive for that $2500 price tag.

If you build a system yourself, you choose what parts go into it. You still have a full warranty for each and every part you use. If something's gonna fail it'll most likely happen in the first 90 days you have it unless you do something wrong, and even then if something fails you RMA it. And you'll save yourself about a grand.

[deshende]

Thanks for the feed back. I wasn't planning on going with all of the base components in the build, but haven't had time to research everything yet (like what the video cards to go after and such).

I have no experience with SSDs. I thought 30gigs was a bit low as well (since WoW alone is 20gigs and I usually have multiple games installed at a time). I was going to replace the 30 gig ssd with a "normal" 1.5 TB 7200 option they had.

I defiantly don't want Vista and would go with one of the Windows 7 options, but I haven't figured out the difference between all of the Windows 7 varieties yet.

I guess it comes down to needing to put some research time in for a while. (Thanks for helping me not impulse buy even though I have a game at home I can't play haha).

[Weeks]

Kingston is coming out with a 40 GB SSD based on the Intel X25-M that is going to cost $85 at Newegg after a mail-in rebate. It's not going to perform quite as well for technical reasons, but if they can keep up with demand I'd expect it to become more-or-less standard for new builds.

Also seconding that you can do better overall. Shouldn't take much more than $1k to put together a system that's going to perform alongside that one.

[fishstix]

Kingston is coming out with a 40 GB SSD based on the Intel X25-M that is going to cost $85 at Newegg after a mail-in rebate. It's not going to perform quite as well for technical reasons, but if they can keep up with demand I'd expect it to become more-or-less standard for new builds.

Also seconding that you can do better overall. Shouldn't take much more than $1k to put together a system that's going to perform alongside that one.

The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive has the fastest read speed we have ever seen, but it also had the lowest write speed ever seen on an SSD.

I'm still waiting for prices to go lower though x.x