Suggestions for HardOCP Eval Process

I gotta say I am impressed. After 20-odd years of Ziff-Davis and IDG fluff, this perspective is a very welcome sight. Congrats on this first system review, even if you didn't run it by Tim (a few grammatical errors, and "Pentium D Xtreme Edition 840"?) before you posted it. :D
 
i dont think it could of been better. it was nice to see how velocity talked about their hardware, also nice that nothing that we know of :eek: was held back to see exactly how the company is or hardware is.
 
a little price to performance chart with some other reviewed prebuilds would be cool, not sure how you would come up with it, mabye cost divided by fps on something? lol

this is gonna be good to show noobs who are afraid of building PC's :)
 
I thought the first review was excellent. I am looking forward to them, as I can see that I will finally be able to get the scoop on systems. The most revealing and useful thing in it to me is the tech support.

I would like to see info on how the system tested fits in with a companies entire product line. For example, will features we see in X system be in all systems by X's manufacturer? (IE Watercooling for the Velocity Micro System? Is that an add on? Standard? Part of all models?)

The only other question I had pertaining to this review was, what if you didn't know nearly as much about computers? If you didn't feel comfortable replacing the PSU and motherboard, would they have had you ship it to them? Would it have been regular shipping, or fast? I only say this because installing a new motherboard and PSU is a fair bit of labor, and to me it somewhat defeats the purpose of buying a prebuilt PC with a warranty.


Overall a truly excellent review. I am a subscriber to PC Magazine, and I always think "But isn't there more to it than that? What about so-and-so? Your review really answered all of these questions, and was up to the excellent level of all the other reviews here. HardOCP is the best review site on the net as far as I'm concerned, and to see y'all doing system reviews is wonderful.
 
twas a great review. puts maximum pc and cpu magazines to shame. with all the publishings u guys do, u could make a great magazine. but with that would come an assload of work. hope to see more reviews soon..... btw, is there going to be like a few reviews for each person working for kyle?
 
Truthfully I'd subscribe to an [H] magazine. I find what I read here both on the site and in the forums to be more educational than anywhere else I've gone to for my tech news, with maybe just a rare select few exceptions.

If there were some way to avoid making everything seem like a "building your own is better!!!1111oneoneoneone" viewpoint in doing a comparable build to complete setup kind of review, as in, pitting a custom built rig from the ground up vs.an out-of-box thing like this, I'd love to see it. I only say that because for the newer people it'd seem insulting, like there is no such thing as a good pre-built machine (frankly I've yet to see one myself that's worth buying outside laptops, but that's just IMHO). Obviously there are many advantages to building your own, such as being able to configure your machine the way you like it specifically and not what some company SAYS you need, but these reviews aren't for proving that purpose. Still, I think it would be nice to see a comparable build stacking up against it to see if these machines are really worth the difference in price, or have it where it'd be up to the reader to decide if the extra markup is worth the difference in performance in favor of convenience, whether the difference is positive or negative.

If there was a way to go at it from that angle, I think it'd help the system evaluation system.
 
[H] magazine would be saweeet!

The review is awesome Kyle and I look forward to more. I build all my own systems, but still enjoy seeing what prebuild machines have to offer.
 
I do hear ya on fluffy benchmarks, and I commend the tuning of each game to its best playable setting...

However, framerate numbers, and numbers in general, are basically completely worthless without some sort of baseline or comparison.

You don't spend $4465 on a gaming system without wanting to know that it is among the best available for gaming. This being an Intel system, you really need a comparison to something fast from AMD.

I suggest you take a page from your video card reviews... Specifically, the page that hardocp refers to as the "apples to apples" comparison...

Build a reference system for comparison... An Athlon64 4000+ with 1GB RAM stock speeds on an nf4 chipset, and both an X850XT and a 6800GT (or even ultra) run though the gaming paces at predetermined (and demanding) resolution/aa/af settings. You wouldn't have to retest the reference system with each review, so after the initial leg work was done the only additional benching would be to test the review system at the predetermined settings.

This would provide a perspective buyer with some very relevant comparison data to determine if a system stacks up to something that is among the top level hardware. The review is simply incomplete, and not worth near as much, without a comparison at least somewhat similar to what I've outlined.

On a side note, I think it is rather ballsy of VM to ship an overclocked and water-cooled system.... and you've proven why... if you sell an o/c system (and I've done it), you need to make damn sure it is stable. And shipping a water-cooled system is simply a risky situation.... UPS drops that thing and your cooler can slide off... With some Athlons, that would simply mean a toasted CPU. 4 1/2 grand surely eases their nerves about it, though....
 
Waitaminnit...if *I* build machines, and I send one out for a review...
and the power supply and mobo *POP*...would *I* send THE REVIEWER
the parts to install and HOPE HE can make it work?

Man, if these guys were Japanese, they'd have to fall on their swords.

$4K+ and one of the first ones they send out goes teats-up...LOL!

"Hello, American Express? I'd like to deny the charges on that computer I just bought..."

Ski
 
TheAcorn said:
Only in an [H] system review does the PSU fail :D
Click to expand...

Haha, I gotta sig that. :D

And I agree with a lot of the posts above.

Kyle/Morley/Whoever Reviews Pre-Built Systems, please refer to my other post regarding the actual evaluation review on my thoughts.

-J.
 
About time we get a forum directly for these, I'm kinda sick of Dells mixed in with the rest...
 
really liked the review. it was a lot more thorough than most (if not all) magazine reviewers, and i didn't have to sift through 17 pages of ads to find the next page of the article :)
 
Great review. I would have liked to see more information about how the reviewer thinks a non tech-savvy user would fare with the machine. Maybe have an average user come over when the item is first shipped and have THEM unpackage and setup the machine? How easy is it for them, having not done it dozens of time before? How easy is it for them to get the machine running, XP registered, etc? What about if they want to phone tech support? Is tech support just as friendly and useful if the caller ISNT from a review website, and/or doesnt know about computers? For example, if my dad had bought the machine, noticed the graphics anomalies and called in - he wouldn't know what they were talking about if they told him the GPU was overclocked. How would tech support handle this?
 
I loved the in-depth review of this high-end pre-built system, but based on your comments, the score for Stability (6) was WAY TOO HIGH. You need to hold the system to the same standard as you hold motherboards... moreso considering the price of this system.

If they are advertising an 850XT PE, and send you a too-hot, highly-overclocked 850XT non-PE, that is a problem. If they are advertising a retail product at 4.0GHz and have you clocking down to 3.6GHz for testing, which causes you to discover a deficiency in the attention to detail in the cooling system installation, both build quality and stability scores should suffer. And both should have been BUTCHERED by a failed PSU and motherboard, or you should have withheld the review for a second full unit to be shipped and tested. (Kyle, It's your shop, and you'd glady refund my money, I know. :) I'm just talking about how I would do it, since you asked for comments. )

Overall it does look like a nice system, but far from a bargain if they are not sending you stable video cards and processors at published specs. Stability should have been around a 2 or a 3, in my opinion, and build quality around a 6 or 7.
 
i'm dissapointed....

isn't "hard"ocp.com supposed to be for the "enthusiast" market? :confused:

what kind of "hard enthusiast" will go out and buy a pre-built machine? :rolleyes:

i'm sorry, but i just don't see the"[H]" in that.
 
what kind of "hard enthusiast" will go out and buy a pre-built machine?
Click to expand...

The kind of guys who are in middle management where I work. Mediocre at playing games, not technical enough to build a system, but want to have the "best" system and have the money to pay for it.

And there are a LOT of them, in their $350,000 "McMansions" (big cookie-cutter homes in a secluded development in the 'good' suburbs), driving their SUV to drop the kids off at daycare, etc. There is plenty of market, all the companies need are 1)a good product, and 2) a helluva lot of advertising.
 
One thing about the tech support section I didnt like was getting the head honcho involved. It would have been nice to see what tech support came up with themselves without firing an email off to Copeland.

One other thing. Was this a review unit that they made specifically for this review or is it one that was ordered through the same channels that we would order it through?
 
Hooligan said:
i'm dissapointed....

isn't "hard"ocp.com supposed to be for the "enthusiast" market? :confused:

what kind of "hard enthusiast" will go out and buy a pre-built machine? :rolleyes:

i'm sorry, but i just don't see the"[H]" in that.
Click to expand...


I think I'm going to have to agree with Hooligan on this one. While I applaud the approach Kyle is taking, much like he did when he "busted out" the video card shenanigans with doctored benchmarking programs, I agree that the majority of [H] are just that: people who want to build their own machines, then overclock them till they see sweat coming off the case.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't some [H] out there that want to buy prebuilt for one reason or another, but I think the majority fall into the DIY category.

On the other hand, maybe Kyle and team are also trying to appeal to a more broad audience, and gain more followship from nOObs who may not know too much about computers (we've all been there). In that case, the system evaluations would have much more value for that segment of [H] readers. For me, sure I'll read the reviews and see how these systems strain under the pressure of a thorough evaluation, but I'll never buy one. I don't think I could ever buy a prebuilt compuer again (unless I was flipping it on Ebay).

JMHO
 
BoogerBomb said:
One thing about the tech support section I didnt like was getting the head honcho involved. It would have been nice to see what tech support came up with themselves without firing an email off to Copeland.

One other thing. Was this a review unit that they made specifically for this review or is it one that was ordered through the same channels that we would order it through?
Click to expand...

I agree, i kind of wish that Copeland HADN'T gotten involved, since i doubt he would do the same for me.

Did you guys order the system through their website, or did you send out requests for systems to review? A nice addition to the website portion of the review would be how easy it is to order through the site. Things like how many custom options you get, how well they explain different options, how much fluff they try to get you to add on to your order.

Overall, i think it's an excellent review. Now i actually know something about the full experience of getting a system from this company, instead of the fluff that PC Magazine and others churn out. They don't really tell me anything that i couldn't figure out just by looking at the specs. Keep up the good work!
 
RogerX said:
The kind of guys who are in middle management where I work. Mediocre at playing games, not technical enough to build a system, but want to have the "best" system and have the money to pay for it.

And there are a LOT of them, in their $350,000 "McMansions" (big cookie-cutter homes in a secluded development in the 'good' suburbs), driving their SUV to drop the kids off at daycare, etc. There is plenty of market, all the companies need are 1)a good product, and 2) a helluva lot of advertising.
Click to expand...

Last I checked guys who are in middle management, mediocre at playing games and not technical enough to build a system do NOT visit HardOCP.com

I repeat myself.... what kind of ENTHUSIAST will buy a pre-built machine???
dictionary.com:

en·thu·si·ast Audio pronunciation of "enthusiast" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-thz-st)
n.

1. One who is filled with enthusiasm; one who is ardently absorbed in an interest or pursuit: a baseball enthusiast.
2. A zealot; a fanatic.
 
Hooligan said:
Last I checked guys who are in middle management, mediocre at playing games and not technical enough to build a system do NOT visit HardOCP.com

I repeat myself.... what kind of ENTHUSIAST will buy a pre-built machine???
dictionary.com:

en·thu·si·ast Audio pronunciation of "enthusiast" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-thz-st)
n.

1. One who is filled with enthusiasm; one who is ardently absorbed in an interest or pursuit: a baseball enthusiast.
2. A zealot; a fanatic.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's about getting the enthusiast to purchase a prebuilt computer, rather evaluating a system from an enthusiasts point of view, and in this case, from the rather exceptional point of view of an systems integration industry veteran. Look at the guys who staff the paper rags and you'll see journalism students...
 
Hooligan said:
Last I checked guys who are in middle management, mediocre at playing games and not technical enough to build a system do NOT visit HardOCP.com

I repeat myself.... what kind of ENTHUSIAST will buy a pre-built machine???
dictionary.com:

en·thu·si·ast Audio pronunciation of "enthusiast" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-thz-st)
n.

1. One who is filled with enthusiasm; one who is ardently absorbed in an interest or pursuit: a baseball enthusiast.
2. A zealot; a fanatic.
Click to expand...

It is clear to me that you have not read the full review or the editorial linked in the review as we directly answered your thoughts in those articles. Thanks for sounding off though.
 
I will sound off on my pet topic, hard drives. If you have followed my work in Disk Storage Systems, you will know that I am a huge critic of synthetic hard drive benchmarks, as well as RAID-0 on the desktop. I also find it somewhat disappointing that all of the choices for this model's "Hard Drive 1," presumably the boot drive(s) are RAID-0. With such a setup, it's a good thing they include the restore disk to compensate for the reduced reliability of RAID-0 ;)

The strengths of RAID-0 stand out a little bit more on a system built for heavy SMP such as an EE 840 based rig, however, there remain the twin phenomenon that conspire against RAID-0 on the desktop, file locality and frequent seeks. Heavy multitaskers are best suited to have independent spindles to service each of their intense tasks separately, rather than have a RAID-0 array where both drives are tied to one request from one program at any given time. Also, users who do heavy content creation work will be better served with the RAID-0 array on a scratch/storage array rather than a boot array. Curiosly enough, RAID-0 is not an option where it would be best suited, while it is automatically chosen where it is weakest.

Also, another observation on Velocity's comments about retail components being better than OEM components - I hope that 250GB WD wasn't a retail drive with a mere one year warranty - you are much better served going OEM on hard drives, where WD sticks to the three year warranty.

Now that I have addressed that sample specifically, I will move on to my comments in general, focusing on storage again, on evaluations. I would really like to see real world storage tests, at least a "small file" game test, a "big file" game test, straight file transfer test, large and small - perhaps music files for small and movie files for large. You have already installed Far Cry for the video card runs, that's a good "small file" game, with over 800 files of less than 128KB out of less than 1100 in the whole installation, while World of Warcraft is a good "big file" game, with eight MPQs ranging in size from 68MB to right at 1GB (my installation once again). It may also be desireable to test the load time of a workstation application like Photoshop as well as save/load times in such an application. IOMeter, HDTach, Sandra, etc do not account for locality when benchmarking hard drives, that's why there is no substitute for application level tests. My two cents.
 
Hooligan, please stop thread crapping. There are other suited forums to complain about this.

-J.
 
DougLite said:
The strengths of RAID-0 stand out a little bit more on a system built for heavy SMP such as an EE 840 based rig, however, there remain the twin phenomenon that conspire against RAID-0 on the desktop, file locality and frequent seeks. Heavy multitaskers are best suited to have independent spindles to service each of their intense tasks separately, rather than have a RAID-0 array where both drives are tied to one request from one program at any given time. Also, users who do heavy content creation work will be better served with the RAID-0 array on a scratch/storage array rather than a boot array. Curiosly enough, RAID-0 is not an option where it would be best suited, while it is automatically chosen where it is weakest.
Click to expand...

Here's an interesting thought-- did Velocity Micro include a hard drive back up / protection software, just in case one hard drive of the RAID 0 array fails? It would be nice if they do include this. I know other companies, although mostly professional system builders, that include this.

-J.
 
some of the guys are saying this isnt really for hardocp, and how none of us would buy a prebuilt. well i kinda looked at it like, if i see how xxx system runs w/ xxx parts,, i knida can see what the parts are capable of. also, for the guys that do buy prebuilt, this is the BEST place to check them out. all the other people just say like 5 sentences and thats it. And other than that, they would be basing thier purhase off the manfucators marketing, and this is often misleading.

I think it wouldn't be very good to have those price to preformance charts. b/c all thas gonna be is x amount of frames per second. when a real system has nice sound card, nice speakers, moniter, case, hell even mice and keyboard. so its unfair to rate it just on fps.
 
Great review Kyle.

I would, however, like to see a few things though. The first review that you guys put out is great, don't get me wrong, but there needs to be a comparison aspect to the review, not just putting the frills of the system on a 1-10 scale (though it is necessary). What I'm trying to say is, if you guys could possibly bench the system against a -similar- prebuilt system to see how well they have tweaked the machine. Also, detailed specs would be nice, such as the mobo, RAM, etc...(though I'm sure they all use high end parts, if they're going to make it to your review bench).

Aside from all the important specs of the machine that's readily available to any customer, I think the most important aspect of a system builder is how well they tweak their machines. Are the RAM timings nice? Did they OC to a reasonable amount (if this is part of the system)? Are all of the drivers up to date and set up for optimal speed and quality?

Little things like that are what really differentiate the Dell and the custom-built high performance machine, even if they have the exact same specs.
 
I liked it, and was impressed that you actually docked points for VM's shortcomings, even the "oops we sent you the wrong video card" type. I don't think that many other "fluff" type reviewers would have done so. I would look forward to seeing reviews of systems that don't cost $4000, though, because as you guys have said, one of primary purposes for reading these will be to see what computers to reccomend to my family, friends, and co-workers. And I don't think many of them will be buying $4k computers any time soon.
 
That was an awsome review, complete and gave the reader an excellent idea of what service to expect from VM and their quality. I think budget system review would be nice too.
 
A couple of ratings comments:

The system noise, video card, and system stability were quoted as downgrade reasons in more than one category. Kudos for completeness and for pointing out where one problem can affect more than one area of consideration for a system, but it does seem a bit like double jeopardy.

As I read the scores and saw scores like 7/10, 9/10, etc starting to line up, it "felt" like the system would get a score of around 8/10, not 7.5. It's not a big deal. but without a verbal explanation of what 7.5 means (average, above average, recommended, not recommended, etc), 7.5 seems pretty low after looking at the other specific scores.

Anyhow, other than those little nitpicks I thought the article was a nice change from the generic plug it in and run benchmarks "reviews" we see everywhere else.
 
Talonz said:
Aside from all the important specs of the machine that's readily available to any customer, I think the most important aspect of a system builder is how well they tweak their machines. Are the RAM timings nice? Did they OC to a reasonable amount (if this is part of the system)? Are all of the drivers up to date and set up for optimal speed and quality?

Little things like that are what really differentiate the Dell and the custom-built high performance machine, even if they have the exact same specs.
Click to expand...

I think they have mentioned this in the review in the first couple of pages but those are good points to check out.

-J.
 
overall the review was the best I've seen. Until, that is, i got to the conclusion, where the "whatever out of ten" scores were presented... is it me, or was the tech support lacking (on hold for an hour, eventually getting good service, but only because you are in contact with the president of the company) and the stability? 6/10? wouldnt a system crash immediately put that at a 1 or 2? stability issues placing a system at or around 6, to me would be aratifacting, random reboots, bluescreens, etc. a crash resulting in damaged components would shoot a system right to the bottom for me. my point is, i think the review itself was great, but he summary in points was a little off point form what you were saying int he review. and i do think the out of ten scores are important for providing a base way to compare systems that have been reviewed.

Nat
 
natpond said:
overall the review was the best I've seen. Until, that is, i got to the conclusion, where the "whatever out of ten" scores were presented... is it me, or was the tech support lacking (on hold for an hour, eventually getting good service, but only because you are in contact with the president of the company) and the stability? 6/10? wouldnt a system crash immediately put that at a 1 or 2? stability issues placing a system at or around 6, to me would be aratifacting, random reboots, bluescreens, etc. a crash resulting in damaged components would shoot a system right to the bottom for me. my point is, i think the review itself was great, but he summary in points was a little off point form what you were saying int he review. and i do think the out of ten scores are important for providing a base way to compare systems that have been reviewed.

Nat
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Well the fact of the matter is that VM replaced the non-stable parts with ones that worked perfectly. Should you not find value in a metric being applied, well then, don't pay it any attention. I wrestled with the idea of putting them in there or not and I think they are a neccessary evil. Advanced folks are not going to see the value in them, but rather pull it from the text and some other folks are going to want one page and that is it...
 
Kyle and Cris,
Nice review, and your initial mission statement about Why you were going to do these reviews are Soo spot on. For those of us known by our friends ect as "the computer wiz" some days it is not advisable for us to build a system for an aquaintance friend: "Hey my old compter just died. Man can you build me a great comuter that wont die? Oh, my son and ALL of his friends will use it to game on and stuff. Oh, and I dont have much money. Oh and when I got problems you dont mind *US* calling you right? ...Errrr.... WAIT!!!! Heh, any of You ever been there? I know I have: "Actually sir I am a little busy right now. Have you tried Dell Computers? I hear they are great! They also make gaming machines..." So Kyle and crew my hats off to you! Now I can say hey go visit www.hardocp.com and check out their system reviews!
Ok now for the one part that I had minor issue with. Your rating system being a check list numeric and then at the very end giving a divorced / subjective seperate number rating is some what confusing to me. I can easily see a stressed out consumer reading that last part about this end number rating not being refrenced to the above ratings and saying "DO WHAT? What kinda bull is this?" Personally I read it all the way through and actually agreed with the end result of 7.5, but in my opinion you really need to fine tune this so that the numbers actually do mean something that directly correlates to the end result. All in all a very solid review.

Peace
 
Diriel said:
Personally I read it all the way through and actually agreed with the end result of 7.5, but in my opinion you really need to fine tune this so that the numbers actually do mean something that directly correlates to the end result. All in all a very solid review.

Peace
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Thanks for the kind words!

How exactly do you think your suggestion should be executed?

I think our 7.5 represents an average score for a machine that should have been way above average. Still, it was simply subjective at how we arrived at that. Do you have a formula in mind that we should apply? (In my world, the Bottom Line score is going to be 70% Stability..)
 
Diriel said:
Have you tried Dell Computers? I hear they are great! They also make gaming machines..." So Kyle and crew my hats off to you! Now I can say hey go visit www.hardocp.com and check out their system reviews!
Peace
Click to expand...

Overall I loved the review. I've spent the day pondering it's usefulness but the way I look at it is this. I can't wait until you start reviewing more affordable systems. I'll never refer anyone to a $4000 PC but it's a GREAT place to start for THIS site.

I will look at these reviews as better information for myself when that friend or family asks me "I need a PC, what should I buy" because right now I just say Dell. That's what most tech's I know say because of great price points and quality.

But once these types of reviews take off I will now be better informed about the products available on the market yet have the integrity the [H] has created and maintains.
 
Grimmda said:
Overall I loved the review. I've spent the day pondering it's usefulness but the way I look at it is this. I can't wait until you start reviewing more affordable systems. I'll never refer anyone to a $4000 PC but it's a GREAT place to start for THIS site.
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I am with you on this. We will start at the high end and once we get our format down, we will move into mainstream as the readership develops a bit.
 
Excellent to hear that things will be broadening out of the high-end. I'm looking forward to seeing something I could get my friends and family actually reviewed by someone who knows their stuff (you).
 
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