Is Corsair SCREWING their partners? #Helpful Post

during our secret shopper project we

discovered that while some pre-built

gaming systems offer a solid value in

terms of their performance with Tier one

providers like HP and Dell you can often

run into proprietary parts limited

upgrade ability and configurability and

questionable software load outs that can

affect the overall experience

so the popularity of machines that are

built from retail parts by smaller

system integrators like iBUYPOWER or

main gear is understandable boutique

builders in particular don't always hit

the best performance per dollar but what

most of these shops offer is a high

degree of customize ability and more

transparency into the actual components

you're buying now a lot of you watching

our channel would look down on the idea

of buying a pre-built computer but

consider this what if a well-known and

respected manufacturer came out offering

the type of system that would be similar

to what you would end up configuring for

yourself and at a reasonable price

offering a turnkey solution with a solid

warranty well that is what Corsair tried

to do with the Vengeance gaming PC 50

180 let's see if it's worth your

hard-earned money

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quality materials and then sells them at

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so let us cover the four pillars of any

gaming system price quality performance

and support which together help us

determine the value of this thing

after spread shooting the components all

together and checking non sale prices

through both Amazon and Newegg it turned

out that the prices of the parts came to

just over $2,100

this means that Corsair is marking up

this machine 12 to 13 percent or about

$300 over regular Street pricing but

it's not time to make a final judgment

here just yet

first let's dig a little deeper Corsairs

markup also includes assembly and two

years of warranty support on the

completed system and check this out

Corsair has multiple RMA centers for

their machines so depending where you're

located you might not end up having to

ship the machine which is currently only

available directly from Corsair all the

way back to them if you run into an

issue what's even better is they'll

cover shipping both to and from the

service depot and they'll even send you

replacement packaging if you tossed out

your original box that's pretty rad at

least on paper when it comes to the next

pillar quality well we'll start with

that aforementioned packaging our array

arrives protected with open celled foam

and had this peered contraption to

ensure that the graphics card wouldn't

snap out of the slot you know it's kind

of ghetto looking but hey if it works it

isn't stupid so no complaints there

cabling was neat on the front and

tightly bundled on the back chamber and

we didn't have really I mean any gripes

with the machines construction quality

overall we did wonder why they would use

a 240 millimeter AIO

to cool a non k processor in a B Series

board but the answer here is most likely

for the looks and a single 120

millimeter cooler would have made the

system look kind of asymmetrical the

only thing that really stood out here

was Corsairs use of an 80 plus bronze

750 watt power supply now to be clear

it's a decent 2nd gen unit from their CX

series and

five year warranty so I guess the logic

here was that more people would care to

have 750 watts than would care if it had

higher efficiency which is a trade that

they could have easily made moving on to

the performance in a massive surprise -

absolutely no one in games our machine

performed exactly as a core i7 eighty

seven hundred plus an RT X twenty eighty

should turbo boost on our CPU worked

correctly our GPU reached anywhere from

1935 to 1950 megahertz while gaming and

we never heard more than a low hum from

the direction of the tower no cooling

issues and no weird fan ramping behavior

or anything like that to report it's

almost like Corsair has a lot of

experience when it comes to PC cooling

now as for storage our SSD uses a fine

controller and it sits on an X two PCI

Express laws so as expected that puts it

somewhere in between a SATA SSD and an

enthusiast class nvme one

and while Corsair applied no performance

optimizations to the UEFI BIOS no

factory profile saved even everything

worked out of the box without an issue

now when it comes to pre-purchase and

post-purchase support well we didn't

have a chance to actually test the

latter due to this being a review unit

which was not secret shoppers so we

couldn't stage a tech support scenario

or anything like that maybe in the

future let us know in the comments if

you'd like to see that and as for

pre-purchase support well

disappointingly it actually does not

exist at all

you see Corsair presently has just four

machines available on their site all of

them none configurable with the other

three being Corsair ones with the

closest configuration their commanding a

much higher price while using the same

class of graphics card maybe ok

conspiracy theory moment here

maybe Corsair doesn't want to have a

sales rep because that person would just

spend all day down selling customers to

the Vengeance I don't know that's pure

speculation anyway let's get back to the

value conversation because it's the most

complicated part of this video

compared to configuring a system over on

iBUYPOWER trying to include as many of

the same components as possible corks

airs pricing actually looks really solid

for our vengeance PC but that doesn't

necessarily mean I'm happy with it

before I can explain why we need a

little bit of history now in spite of

their wide portfolio covering the vast

majority of PC components from cooling

to cases to RAM and storage Corsair

surprised everyone when they introduced

the Corsair 1 a fully integrated ready

to ship system like Windows

pre-installed in everything for gamers

not because anyone thought they weren't

capable I mean obviously there are

plenty of people at Corsair who know how

to assemble a gaming tower but rather

for business reasons by branching out

into completed systems Corsair stood to

alienate the same partners system

integrators like main gear and ibuypower

who I mentioned before that they rely on

for a significant chunk of their

business by effectively competing with

them directly and potentially unfairly

since Corsair obviously has more profit

margin on a Corsair power supply than a

reseller of Corsair power supplies could

now Corsair story at the time was the

one is unique it's too difficult to

assemble to offer this chassis as a

standalone case so it doesn't really

compete with anyone elses offerings but

like this one this is the Vengeance PC a

fully built gaming PC from Corsair using

all off-the-shelf components so is it a

great value well it is if you were gonna

buy exactly these parts anyway but it's

not if you were the kind of person who

was more likely to spend their

hard-earned money on raw performance so

Corsair was in kind of a unique position

here to use some of the extra profit

margin that they gained by being the

manufacturer of both the components and

the finished system to deliver great

performance and

flashy aftermarket looks but by choosing

a non overclockable cpu and a B 360

motherboard at this price point I do

feel like they fell a little short of

that goal if that was their goal and you

know I have to wonder if maybe this was

on purpose to avoid disrupting the

market whatever reason there was for it

the good news is that we have no qualms

about the quality of the system or

Corsairs ongoing existence if you ever

need support so as they continue to

expand into this business I think

vengeance gaming pcs are gonna get only

more interesting to gamers as time go on

that is the ones that don't feel like

DIY either for themselves or for their

friends because as it goes with

pre-built you could get a faster

computer if you built it yourself then

again maybe of course they're doesn't

care I'm sure they'd be happy to sell

you their components - excuse me master

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