Dell scammed ma $1500 pc secret shopper 2part 4

mischievous music) (gunshot blasts) - We bought them. - Do you have roosters around you? - We unboxed them. - [Cameraman] They have extra, why? - We trialed their tech support. - I managed to pull it out all the way. - And now in our final act we're benchmarking all six of our systems to see which PC integratoroffered us the most bang for the buck when it comes to gaming and streaming performance. But, as regular viewers of the series have probablycome to expect by now, there's a lot more herethan meets the eye. Like thanking D brand forsponsoring this series. They're cool. And you're not, more on that later. (upbeat music) Ah, Alienware. I mean, Dell. After a wholly unimpressive sales and support experience, ourDell surprisingly at least came with the latest version of Windows the latest Windowsupdate and video drivers and also the usual slewof Dell support software, including everyone'sfavorite McAfee Antivirus which we promptly uninstalled, wait a minute, 12 months subscription. What? Did they actually end up charging us for that after we said not to, no way. - Well, not exactly. Dell seems to includea one-year subscription to McAfee on their G5 desktops for free. So that's all right, I guess,but here's the problem. First of all, any mention of a discount disappearedfrom our order entirely. And if you load up a G5 on Dell's website, spec it out with theappropriate hardware, fun fact, you can actually choosea dual channel memory kit for no added cost. You end up with a system that costs just over $1,600 Canadian, notanywhere near the 2000 we spent. Oh, and remember the warranty they tried to sell us which we actively declined multiple times? - [Sales Rep] So that's thereason we are suggesting you to take the warranty. (screams) - No, no, that's all right. - Well, they're still on the invoice just under much more obscure names. So I thought, did we actually get them? And I went to check ourwarranty status and sure enough it has four years ofextended onsite warranty and four years of premiumsupport, which if you add both to the online configuratorwould bring the total to just $2 off what we spent. - So they straight upcharged us for something we told them we didn't want. - (laughs) It gets better,for the icing on the cake, on Dell's site, you can't even select both of the warranty packages the rep included at the same time. It only lets you order one. - So in summary, then, not only did the Dell sales rep straight up scam agent Sarah, and by extension me out of over 300 Canadian rubles on services that we said we didn't want. They managed to deliver a system with the worst expandability, the least resilient packingmaterial, zero upgradability for either the powersupply or motherboard, thanks to the proprietary case and nearly the worstperformance of the bunch. More on that later,they even failed to help with a routine tech supportproblem over the phone. I am straight up furious, like Dell, you guys told us that secret shopper 2018 was gonna be part of aservice and support overhaul but it obviously didn't happen. And while many of ourviewers have been quick to blame the representatives that we spoke with, I believe this isactually a systemic problem. It is no secret that forcing employees torely on selling services like financing to make theircommissions creates this kind of negative customer experience. Honestly, it felt like shopping at a we finance all usedcar lot and it sucked. Dell, you came in deadlast, way to go losers. Based on the ordering andtech support experience and the actual spec of our system, our other tier one HP on the other hand looked very promising but both Windows and the Nvidiadrivers were nearly a year out of date from the time of ordering. I mean, I get it. They were probably clearingold ninth gen stock after the launch oftheir 10th gen desktops but it's not the bestexperience to spend an hour updating your brand new system. In terms of build quality, it was great to see amostly non-proprietary setup from HP though. And there were no apparent restrictions in terms of swapping inoff the shelf components. The secondary front storage Bay came with both power and SATA data already run to it for an easy storage upgrade. And the 750 watt, 80 plusplatinum power supply is standard ATX. Continuing with thetrend last time around, HP's omen command centerstill does basically nothing. I mean, you do at least get some controlover the included chassis RGB but aside from the utterlyuseless network optimizer there's nothing reallyto command in there. The rest of the pre-installed softwareis the usual compliment of HP support stuff. Along with a 30 day McAfeetrial, which we uninstalled. As for the bios, it's limitedto a basic HP support set up with only system tests andinformation pages available until you open up the advanced menu which isn't that advancedadding only some basic power, IO and boot options. The main issue we had last time around with HP's config was theheavily limited boost clocks on the CPU. And unfortunately, these sameissues are still present. I mean, how is that even possible? Stressing the CPU with y-cruncher, a pi calculation tool, we started at around 4,300 megahertz. All right. But then our temps immediately climbed into the high 80 degree range,which is, I guess, okay. And then after a few seconds with no appreciablespin up in the CPU fan, our clocks would drop toaround 3,700 megahertz and the CPU would draw exactly,exactly 65 Watts of power which happens to be therated TDP of this chip. Now we thought that it might be some kindof power virus mitigation. So we loaded up the blender BMW test. And unfortunately itexhibited the same behavior. As for the GPU, with FurMark running, HP's stock configuration for the system had theGPUs blower fan spinning at just 60% speed with temperatures hovering in the high 80s and the card clockingdown below its base speed. We tried manually tweakingthe fan curve in Afterburner and while it did yield better temperatures the clocks remained the samedue to power limitations. Now you can bypass these but it's just confusing, right? Like why is HP intentionallyhandicapping both the CPU and GPU in a gaming branded system? For noise? I mean like, okay, but, HP, there are other ways to solve this. Maybe, just maybe, a single92 millimeter exhaust fan isn't enough fora powerful gaming rig. With how well HP performed during the rest of thepurchasing experience and with how good the system was on paper this was kind of a letdown, but we'll let the performance numbersmake the final call. Onto iBUYPOWER. This system also came withWindows 1909 from late last year but their Nvidia driversweren't quite as bad as HP at only five months or so old. On the inside, you'll probably notice this, like the rest of our remaining systems,was pieced together strictly with off the shelf components. So there's nothing proprietary like we foundin, particularly, the Dell. It also seems like thisis the one manufacturer so far that listened to our criticism from last time around. You might remember thatwe were disappointed in the complete lack of cablemanagement from iBUYPOWER in 2018. Well, this year, the cables behind the motherboard traywere managed about as well as you can expect from aprebuilt and for bonus points the fans were pluggedinto the correct ports this time, that's sarcasm, by the way you don't get bonus pointsfor not screwing up. It's also the first of oursystems to come with a Ryzen CPU, specifically the eight core 3700X during our white cruncher stress test the iBUYPOWER machine maintaineda consistent all core boost of 4.1 gigahertz at just over 70 degrees. Not quite the 4.5 gigahertzmax boost that AMD advertises, but this is about what we would expect on an all core synthetic load like this on Ryzen. The GPU, an MSI RTX 2070 Super with a decentdual fan cooler managed to maintain clock speedshigher than base in our FurMark test and tempswere in the low 80s, as you'd expect on anNvidia card with GPU boost. This system also featureddual channel memory and it's worth noting thatwhile none of our tech support agents instructedus to reenable XMP profiles, after our phone calls, wedid go ahead and do this for this system and therest of them that allowed it so that every system wasputting its best foot forward. And we even set our power plans in Windows to high performance. Back to the bios though, on the included ASUSX570P it was two revisions or about four monthsold as of ordering it, which would be unlikely to make much of a difference in performance especially this late inRyzen 3000's life cycle but bios updates usually do improve system stability and compatibility, especially with the higher speedmemory that Ryzen loves. So it's one of those things that's just a nice touch andwould make us think, wow, you know, these guys really care. Overall a very solidjob so far, iBUYPOWER, and assuming that youdidn't somehow handicap your gaming performance it seems like this is your race to lose. CyberPower PC. Oh boy. Well, for the second season in a row they effectively didn't provide us with any guidance onthe ordering experience. - [Sales Rep] I don't know what you need or what you do not need. - There we go. - But we did at least managedto get a system from them. As we noted in the unboxingexperience, this machine did experience some minor shipping trauma but CyberPower did at least ship over replacement panels atour request for no extra cost. So I'm gonna put a littlegold star right there. For the record though, CyberPower, you need to make sure thatyou test your packing material because you were probablya good two inches on the backside from being thick enough. If you know what I mean. Software wise, this system also shipped with a near year old Windows 10 build, but with AMD graphicsdrivers that were only three months old. Not terrible, it's still not great. Oddly enough, though, westruggled to find any indication that the system came from CyberPower in the operating system. They didn't even bother toset a branded wallpaper. The only clue that we did end up finding was theirsupport information listed in the about your PCsection of control panel. Aside from the externalshipping damage though, the overall build quality is on par with the iBUYPOWERsystem we just looked at and CyberPower spentthe extra time to clean up the back of the motherboard tray and overall present apretty decent looking rig. Our only recommendations here would be to opt for a power supplywith all black cables. Some better color coordination on the memory and to go for an NVMe SSD. That last one is the biggest, especially in a system that costs $1,400. The Intel 10700K boosted nicely between 4.6 and 4.7 gigahertzunder full synthetic load while maintaining a cool 68 degrees. And on the flip side, duringour FurMark stress test the AsRock RX 5700 XT,which was the only AMD GPU in our lineup, reacheda smoldering 87 degrees while hovering slightly belowits advertised base clock. On the plus side, though, the bios version was at least the latestavailable as of the order date. So that's cool. Now are y'all ready to see theslowest PC out of the bunch? Whether it's the fact thattheir cheapest system barely fit into our budget in the first place or the fact that they have to spec a lower than default case to make it work. It's no secret that Origin doesn't caterto peasants who only have 1,500 US dollars tospend on a gaming system. It shipped with the latest major build of Windows 10 and the most up-to-date Nvidia drivers we've seen yet, just over a month old, dang, with the onlyshortcoming being the bios which was one revision old. Again, not expectingany performance issues. It's just a little disappointing when you're paying this much for a system to be set up properly. They were, however, the only company to save apre-configured bios profile which included both XMP settings as well as some tweaks to the fan curves. Like everyone else inthis competition, though, they failed to instruct AgentSarah to enable their profile after our RAM receiptingdebacle, so oopsie. Cable management upfront is the best that we've seen so far and it better be. But around back, while it was on par with the othersystems, it didn't wow me, you know, somethingthat I was hoping for at this kind of markup on assembly. The 10400 processor that came in our system stayed supercool at just 62 degrees with the excessiveincluded AIO water cooler and maintained a respectablefour gigahertz on all cores just like what Originhas listed on their site. And while running FurMark, the 1660Ti managed reasonable temps and a small bump over base clocks, which,well, is unsurprising for this size of a cooler on a GPU that draws this little power. It comes down to this then. Origin, if you're gonna sellsystems in this price bracket you should at least try to offer some sort of reasonable value. It doesn't need to ship in a wooden crate. I don't need a $50 visa cardand I don't need the mouse pad and t-shirt. That is easily a hundred to $150 in value that I wouldhave rather you guys just put towards, well, a better computer or just be expensive andown it like Voodoo used to. If I click on the $1,500system, you should just have a little pop-upthat says, oh, I'm sorry. You must have taken a wrong turn. Last, but not least, Maingear The first time around on secret shopper we struggled to find anything wrong with the build quality ofthe system they sent us. And again, that seems to be the case. Cable management is solid, the cooling layout makes sense, and they even zip-tied theextra slack on the CPU fan. Nice. Speaking of the CPU fan, underneath it as you might've guessed,is another Ryzen CPU. Specifically a 3600X six core. Under our y-cruncher synthetic load it maintained a reasonable 80 degrees with all core boost clocksaround 4.1 gigahertz just like the 3700X in the iBUYPOWER system. And that is right about what we'd expect. In FurMark the not factoryoverclocked GPU boosted about a hundred megahertz over base with temps in the 80 degree range. What's interesting here though, is that while the actual marginthat Maingear charged us, that is to say the price over the parts cost, isnearly the same as Origin, they managed to deliver abetter overall spec system by quite a lot which should theoreticallyperform noticeably better. I do wish they had opted for an NVMe SSD for asystem in this price range. But other than that,it's a pretty nice build. If you can swallow what basically boils down to a $350 build and service fee. And so in summary, thisvideo is pretty long already. So if you want to seeall the specs, hit pause. Now the main highlights for me are HP and iBUYPOWER's inclusion of an RTX 2070 SuperGPU, and NVMe boot SSD. And that's all withoutmaking crippling compromises to the config elsewhere. Another standout wasMaingear and iBUYPOWER's use of AMD processors to deliverbetter bang for the buck. Remember guys, themotherboards are also typically more affordable at a given feature set if you go team red. Many of our manufacturersended up wasting money on things that I wouldn'tconsider necessary, like liquid cooling on not over clockable CPU'sor Origin's inclusion of an overclocking capablemotherboard with a locked CPU. Surprisingly though, RGB didn't end up being an obvious value killer. With iBUYPOWER managing to include as much or more RGB than anyone else while also shipping the best speced machine. Specs are cool and all. How do they perform? To no one's surprise, iBUYPOWER's superior config offered thegreatest performance overall, with the HP and CyberPower systemstrailing slightly behind, depending on the game. We can easily see thebenefit that AMD cards have in F1 2020 as CyberPower's 5700 XT managed to outperform even the2070 Super equipped machines and then was on par in Modern Warfare. So if you don't care about game streaming or features like RTX voice,it's a pretty solid option. It's also clear that HP's power limitationsdid hurt them here even in real-world applications because we would expect it to perform on par with the iBUYPOWER system or even better considering it's Intel CPU. But it didn't. As for our Maingear system, it held a respectable leadover both the Dell and Origin Who, no surprises here, bothhovered near the bottom. As for streaming though, to test the CPU and coding capacity of each system we set up every machine toencode a six megabit, 1080P, 60 FPS x264 stream ofthe F1 2020 benchmark. Then one by one increasedthe encoding quality until the encoding processstarted to drop frames. Unsurprisingly, our CyberPower, iBUYPOWER and Dell systems were all able to record with the x264 slow presetwithout any hitches. While our Maingear system pulled out a reasonable max preset of medium. As you might have predicted based on the issues we had withpower throttling on the HP, it couldn't push anything past the default very fast preset. Yikes, oh, and the Originsystem capped out at fast which makes sense, givenits piddly core i5 10400. Now it's time to crown a winner. For the second time in a row, iBUYPOWER is taking home the prize. When we last secret shopped them, their tech support was a bit of a nightmare and it'sdefinitely improved. They technically didn'tget our system booted during the call, but they atleast diagnosed the problems and they offered us anRMA to get them fixed. And just like last time,it's very hard to find fault with their recommendedconfig for the money. In second place, I expected to have HP, butdue to the severe power limitations that crippledour system's performance, even in gaming, that crowninstead goes to CyberPower. I still think these guys havea lot to learn when it comes to their pre-sales experience, but for a company thatseems to sell predominantly through other retailerslike Amazon and Best Buy I can kind of see why it mightnot be a priority for them. During our tech support calls they provided videotutorials, which was nice, but their technician's refusal to stay on the line to guide agent Sarah is honestly unacceptable in my book. And also what is this cooling layout, who designed this thing? It's just weird. I mean, I guess thecomputer stayed cool enough but it's going to be a dust nightmare in the long run. In third place, we've got Maingear. Their ordering experience was great. As long as you can accept the fact that you're buying a more boutique system and paying a premium for it. Their customer serviceexperience was second to none. Their build quality was excellent. And while they clearly can't compete with a high volume manufacturer,like iBUYPOWER, on price, if you like a qualityproduct with great support, a Maingear might still be right for you. In fourth place, we've got HP. Seriously guys, you wereso close to awesome. The tech support was solid. The ordering experience wassolid, but you done goofed the part that actuallymatters, performance. Please HP, figure out whatit is that is limiting the power delivery or Idon't know what it is, fix it, fix it for good. In fifth place, Origin PC. Their ordering andcustomer service experience was flipping awesome. It's just that it's only natural for the worst performing system out of the entire competitionto end up near the bottom. Yeah, it's well built and it does come with24/7 customer service. So I guess if you decide to set up your new rig at three in the morning and RAM sticks need re-seating,that might be useful. So like Maingear then, if you want tech support reps that sound like they really do enjoy talking to you, Origin could be a great choice,but you have to understand that you are not gettingthe best bang for your buck. Even among the boutique builders. At least not in this price bracket. Last and definitely least. Dell. You guys straight up scammed me out of several hundred dollars by selling agent Sarah warranties she explicitly deniedwanting multiple times. I would, it's at the pointnow where I would strongly recommend that anyonethat's bought a prebuilt from Dell in the last little while double check your invoice to make sure that they didn't tack something on there that you didn't know about it because I am still (beep) livid about what happened here. Dell, you suck. And you know what else sucks? You, for missing out on the LTT X D Brandspecial edition sticker bomb and Linus face drop, do better next time. Yep, I am literally advertisinga D Brand product right now that you can't buy and they've asked meto rub your face in it. So there you go. You can't have it anymore, this. What a weird sponsor those guys are. Right? So that's it. We've wrapped secret shopper two. Thank you guys so much for watching. I sincerely hope itwon't be two years again before the next one, but these things are honestlyan absolute butt ton of work. So I'm not gonna make any promises. Make sure you're subscribed though. Just in case we do it. Oh, if you guys are lookingfor something else to watch now go check out the previous secret shopper. It was great.