Gadgetory

what's cracking people welcome back to the channel hope you're all doing well so a couple weeks back NZXT reached out to me and they're like hey Kyle we'd love for you to take a look at our pre-built service online configurator thing and I was like whoa did you see did you say pre-built because that's that's like a trigger word for me but NZXT was like please just check out the website and stuff just take a look and sounds like fine I'll take a look I'll take a look so I did and I was pleasantly surprised by just how different their approach to pre-built system building is compared to any other pre-built solution that I've seen to date so I figured what the hell I might as well share the information out and give it to you guys and lets you do with it as you will and I'm definitely looking for feedback on this service I'm sure NZXT is as well so by the end of this video please watch the whole video first before you comment any constructive criticism or anything like that I want to hear your honest feedback on this service in the comments below because I think NZXT is kind of on to something here you guys can let me know if you agree but here's their website it's called the service for starters it's called build or BLD before we actually dive straight into the configurator I kind of want to see how NZXT defines their own service here and so when we go to the what is BLD or what is build well what is build page they're pretty upfront I mean right out the gate they're letting us know they're super transparent there's a 99 dollar fee attached to this service and the $99 which isn't too bad actually I was expecting quite a bit more includes you know in a nutshell these four sort of pillars of their service for starters the configurator lets you select up to three PC games and as you go about configuring your system the configurator will automatically tell you what kind of frame rates you can expect to see in each of those games it kind of takes a lot of the guesswork or all the guesswork out of determining what kind of performance can you actually expect in games X Y or Z so I think this is actually really cool and especially since they're really putting their money where their mouth is by giving a full money-back guarantee and in case you were wondering how NZXT is able to give these performance predictions it's all based on their cam software and all the data that that's been acquiring over the last few years gives them the ability to give us a very accurate projection of how any given system is going to perform also professionally built yes it goes without saying that NZXT people probably know how to build a PC it's gonna be dust free it's gonna be really tidy it's gonna look very professionally built because it's built by a team of trained peoples and even the operating system the drivers are all gonna be up to date pretty much the only thing you have to do once it arrives on your doorstep is start using it so a very nice quick and easy turnkey solution in that regard I also do appreciate a good all-in-one warranty when it comes to pre belts this one's really no different in the fact that instead of having to deal with eight or nine or more different vendors you only have to deal with a single warranty plan as NZXT is the one middleman between you and all those manufacturers in fact they're one of the manufacturers but they're also sort of being the the single tech support that you'll need to call in the event that anything goes wrong with your system and I believe it's a two-year two-year warranty as well NZXT is also promising a wicked fast turnaround meaning that your system will actually be shipping out to you within 48 hours after you place your order which is lightning fast so those are sort of the four pillars if you will of this service that they are bundling all together for $99 and what's even better is that as we're about to see they're charging MSRP for all the components and that's I think that's the most exciting part here stuff even though you're paying a little bit of a premium here $99 you're actually gonna be saving quite a bit when it comes to you know your DRAM and your GPU especially we're gonna take a look at that right now in fact let's let's get started let's actually just get out some some some system here now the three games that we're gonna choose obviously there's a limited list here just based on sort of popular demand I'm gonna go pub key for tonight might as well just make a train here with battlefield one you can also select between 1080 and 1440 so I'm gonna go with 1080 still a very popular resolution of choice I'm gonna go ahead and pick my price now these are sort of just baseline suggestions 750 sort of like the more budget lower budget you know 800 and less $800 or less twelve hundred and fifty is the mainstream sort of sweet spot and $2,500 being your your high-end you know balls-to-the-wall system so I'm gonna go the mainstream 1250 you'll see when I select that it asks me what cpu platform I'd like to go I've been doing quite a few rising builds lately so let's switch it up and do some intel now right off the bat here's the base system that it spits out and to the left here you can see our games with their projected frame rates with 108 fps guaranteed in battlefield 1 117 and fortnight 86 and pub G you'll also notice that these estimates are based on the 1920 by 1080 P resolution that we selected just a moment ago and the game's highest graphics settings so this is 108 FPS on Ultra settings in battlefield 1 this is you know max settings in fortnight max settings or ultra preset in pub G is what we're seeing here but moving on over here you can see that this base system that they they quoted us here is $1,600 which is quite a bit more than the twelve hundred and fifty bucks we initially opted for but that's okay because from here you can you can either go lower or higher and it'll sort of swap around the parts a little bit until you find that sweet price point that you're looking for so maybe 1600 is a little high for us and right now we have at core i5 7500 with the gtx 1070 TI and 16 gigs of ram with an SSD at 275 gigs so I'm gonna go lower-priced and see what what happens there so that took off maybe about a hundred bucks $7,200 we solved the same case interestingly we have now a 7600 K and still the same card more or less and oh I see we've been reduced to eight gigabytes of ddr4 and SSDs the same let's let's keep going and you notice how the the frame rates drop down right so let's let's go another lower lower one here now you can see we've dropped down a little bit further so with this system floating at around thirteen hundred and fifty dollars we have a core i5 7500 gtx 1066 gigabyte and 16 gigs so we're back in 16 gigs average as five ddr4 so just for the sake of this video let's let's just say that this is pretty close to what we're sort of aiming at right in terms of performance and price but you can go a step further and actually configure these individual components so we're click the configure button here and you can see here we've got every single category pretty much of our system starting with the case you can upgrade your case it starts you at the NZXT s340 if you want an elite an additional 30 bucks which is MSRP they're not they're not up charging for any of these components whether it be an NZXT part or not you're gonna be paying MSRP for all this stuff which is fantastic so let's say yeah I want that elite I want that tempered glass side panel let's move on to cooling right now they've stuck us with a cryo rig h7 very respectable cooler you could go to the h7 Lumi for an additional 25 bucks or scale up to one of their kraken liquid Aereo's I'm cool with the h7 for now on our motherboard we have an MSI z2 70 a pro which you know has has some basic features it's not gonna do crazy amounts of overclocking but at the same time we have a 7500 we can't overclock anyway but if you wanted to no problem twenty bucks more will get you the 7600 K then maybe you want to go back to cooling and say you know what maybe I do want to crack it I'll add that in there and obviously the price is gonna go up the frame rates gonna go up the flexibility here is is really nice additionally we've got graphics and again we have a gtx 1066 you bite model here goes all the way up to a GTX 1080 Ti you'll notice that you don't have every single model of every single component here we have five options for a GPU and they kind of each tick a different tier of performance and price we have three options for power supplies looks like they're partnering with EVGA here Ram it looks like g-scale you get some g.skill options with the rip just 5 a little bit more cost effective than the tried NZ but that is also an option you can scale all the way up to 32 gigs it looks like - 16 gigabyte sticks that's obviously gonna set you back a little bit as RAM it is not cheap don't need to tell you guys that and then storage we've got you know you want to say - based SSD even got us an nvme option here going all the way up to one terabyte you can do up to 2 terabytes for that for that SATA base drive also your mechanical storage goes anywhere from one terabyte to 4 terabytes on a Seagate Barracuda now once you've configured all of your core components then you can get a little bit more personalized here with your color scheme so this is obviously gonna be limited to the color options for the case for example the s340 elite only comes in white black black and red black and blue or you can do hyper beast for an additional 100 I'm gonna keep it simple with a nice black and white color scheme and you even have the option to add in some cable mod extensions for your system just to tidy it up a bit more or to make it look a bit more presentable in various colors as well that's an additional cost of course and then we've got extras extras here NZXT stuff for the most part you got your NZXT puck USB 2.0 expansion there is a gigabyte Wi-Fi bluetooth adapter you got your grid plus and your hue plus and rounding out with software they're gonna be installing Windows 10 home unless you specify otherwise that you'd like to upgrade to pro for 30 bucks more now once you get to this checkout page you get an itemized list of all the various components that you just selected and their relative MSRP s and I think this is where the service shines the most is that you are only paying MSRP for everything meaning that even your your DRAM or your GPU in particular are not affected by the inflated mining prices so if you look here the 1070 ti 8 gigabyte model is an EVGA Super clock gaming model MSRP s for 580 dollars u.s. that is the amount that you are going to pay for that card if you use the LD service as opposed to buying that same card ala carte on Amazon which I've already looked it up retails anywhere from 1,400 to $1,700 of course you can try your luck at a different 1070 TI like this water-cooled one that's only $900 what a deal so this is one of the few times guys that I'll actually suggest going with a pre-built service like this one over building a system yourself if you need a gaming PC right now because it is a terrible time to buy some of these components ala carte whereas you can just get it for a really really good deal not even a good deal you'll get it for MSRP here which is just the price it's supposed to be technically but you won't get robbed of hundreds of dollars and granted yes you still have to pay the hundred dollars than the 99 dollar service fee but that really pales in comparison to the extra hundreds of dollars you'd be spending on a GPU so altogether and I also have to you know give them a shout-out that's it's $99 just like they advertised on their home page there are no little hidden fees they're not tacking on five dollars for this BS thing and ten dollars here I'm not trying to nickel and dime you it's 99 bucks the rest of the cost of your system is MSRP so I really do appreciate the business model here I think NZXT has done a great job with the site as well it's a very lovely site looks nice super clean easy to navigate and all that jazz so on that note they actually had me configure a system myself a week ago and they shipped to me they shipped me the system that I configured in stuff so let's let's take a look I haven't even opened up the box what's in the box actually completely forget what I ordered it wasn't at all what I just did here on the screen but camera angle alright guys so here's the system out of the box just got this little cover on it here because I wanted to give you guys a nice big unveiling I haven't even taken a look under it myself so it'll be a surprise for me to to some degree um I actually forgot to film the unboxing portion I thought I was I went through the whole I went through all the motions I was talking and laughing and it was great turned out I forgot to record on the camera I was only recording audio so just want to let you guys know that it came very well protected at least at first glance we'll take a look under the hood in just a moment but it came with surrounded by this really tough egg crate phone which is super high quality and probably probably does a pretty good job of absorbing sound so I may actually use it for the studio here let's go ahead and take a look under the hood to see a if our system arrived in one piece and be how she looks how those professional NZXT builders did in their assembly process so there we go three two one go oh well I guess that's kind of anticlimactic well that's good this is a good sign because it indicates that they have provided some additional protection inside of the case as well take that guy off and we do have some nice packaging material here and voila look look get here look at her there hey now you guys feel free to gawk over this gaming PC all you want I'm gonna quickly read off the specs of the system because quite frankly as I mentioned I kind of forgot what they were so obviously we have the s340 in glossy white not the elite because we've just got a standard acrylic side panel window here but still looks very nice and I like how they kept the the plastic wrap on there that means I get to do it myself Oh I'm gonna put this away before I damage it we've also got the Intel Core i5 7600 K you're damn right I got an unlock SKU and that is being cooled by the cryo rig h7 the motherboard in there is the MSI Z 270 SLI being paired with eight gigs of Ripjaws five g.skill memory at twenty six sixty six megahertz our graphics card is the MSI GTX 1066 gigabyte gaming X which retails MSRP for a little over three hundred bucks I think you can't find a much cheaper than around five hundred dollars at the moment on on various retailer sites so definitely gotta steal their storage we had the crucial MX 300 525 gig SSD with a with no mechanical I think I opted out of a mechanical drive is that right did I not get a mechanical yep no hard drive so this is just an an based system as is but obviously very easy to just pop in a mechanical drive should you wish to do something like that the total cost for this build including the $99 service fee was twelve hundred and eighty for us which isn't bad now the one cost I have not gone over yet is shipping cost and that's of course gonna largely depend on where you live where you need the system to be shipped to power this thing on alright system power on and everything's lighting up looking good GPU fans are spinning I should also let you guys take a look at the cable management I didn't really get a good look at it myself looks like they did a pretty good job I mean utilizing all the tie-down points with zip ties for your main cables your ATX is right behind the cable bar where it should be they've stashed a lot of stuff down in the power supply basement that's kind of part of what it's designed for and it looks like there's even room to spare if you wanted to add in additional devices other little random things there's there's also plenty of room just behind the motherboard tray that they've kept really clean for you those are look at our power supply very very very plain and simple I think I just got the bare-bones sort of EVGA 80 plus bronze one it wasn't like a supernova or anything like that but yeah it looks everything looks pretty good back here what I'd like to do now is hook up some peripherals to this guy boot it up again and jump into one of the three games that we selected during our configuration process to see if we can hit the frame rates that were advertised to us by NZXT don't get me wrong I am rooting for the system to to win and deliver those numbers but if it doesn't I will be getting my money back on this system which is zero because I did not pay for it but I think it'll still be sort of fun to compare and also just to validate just how accurate NZXT T's projections are compared to the real system when it finally arrives so let's go ahead and book this sucker up alright so we've got the system up and running we're gonna be playing some pub G which is one of the games that I selected when configuring the system and I'm gonna make sure that everything is on Ultra settings here it's got a full-screen 1920 by 1080 the actual quote that I was given from NZXT was that I'd be able to run this game on Ultra settings in 1920 by 1080 at 65 FPS so that's what we're gonna look for here in the top left corner of our of our game so we can see the fraps counter there and let's just jump in so here we are in the desert map and we're getting anywhere from you know 65 70 FPS which is exactly where we want to be this is what NZXT is guaranteed us and lo and behold they are pretty darn accurate and obviously 65 FPS here is an average so occasionally we will see some dips below that number it's also gives me a confidence that their numbers are pretty accurate for the other titles on their list as well and finally I want to give you guys a quick look at the desktop just sort of the preinstalled applications we've got cam a couple msi apps like the like drag and I and the MSI gaming app because we have an MSI GPU after all GeForce experience and steam which I think most PC gamers are gonna want installed anyway fraps that was my doing this was not here but overall very light on the pre-installed software which I do appreciate good job NZXT alright y'all so summing things up here I'm pretty impressed with just the sort of approach NZXT taken with this pre-built configurator I think the whole process from start to finish definitely feels like it was created by a group of PC enthusiasts who understand what PC gamers like you and I are looking for in a prebuilt desktop should we decide to go that round at the same time the whole process is simple and easy enough for an inexperienced builder to hop onto the website and and say hey look I want to play these games at these frame rates click click click and automatically have the perfect so-called perfect PC configured for them in a matter of minutes so that's actually really cool and you know not gonna leave out the fact that you can still get some components for MSRP going this route as well which is insanely valuable I'm a fan of BLD I think that's probably one of the best ways to go about buying a prebuilt if you are gonna go that way looking forward to hearing your thoughts as well feel free to let me know honestly honest opinions on BLD thank you guys so much for watching be sure to toss a like on the video if you enjoyed it and feel free to subscribe to the channel for more tech stuff coming at you really soon you can also check me out on floatplane if you want to watch my videos a week early without ads all like the link to that in the description below guys thank you so much again have a good one and I'll see y'all in the next