Price iBUYPOWER Gamer Power Intel A943i Gaming Desktop Review

Price iBUYPOWER Gamer Power Intel A943i Gaming Desktop Review

 

Product Description

Experience a new dimension of interactive gaming, media organization, and content creation with iBUYPOWR Gamer Power A943i. Equipped with a powerful second generation Intel I3 2120 proccessor clocked at 3.3GHz, computing and gaming would be a breeze. The Gamer Power A943i was designed to handle most of the current games that requires high processing power and intense graphic situations. Helping the Intel I3 2120 core processor, the desktop includes a dual channel 4GB DDR3-1333MHz and AMD Radeon HD6450 1GB. The powerful graphics card is a dedicated graphics card, which means no more integrated and sharing memory. It comes with 1GB of dedicated GAMING MEMORY! It will definitely take your game playing to the next level. iBUYPOWER Gamer Power A943i also come with 1TB hard drive which enhance your system data and game processing.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1770 in Personal Computers
• Color: Black
• Brand: iBUYPOWER
• Model: Gamer Power A943i
• Dimensions: 17.70" h x 7.50" w x 20.00" l, 28.00 pounds
• CPU: Core i3-2120 3.3 GHz
• Memory: 4GB
• Hard Disk: 1024GB

Features

• Intel I3 2120 3.3GHz Processor
• AMD Radeon HD6450 1GB (HDMI) graphics
• 1TB Serial ATA-II hard Disk Drive
• 4GB DDR3-1333 MHz memory
• Window 7 Home Premium OS

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Good Value Budget Computer
By D. Spencer
The i3 2120 cpu offers snappy performance for this budget computer system. Even with several programs open and running simultaneously, I have yet to stress this processor via typical multitasking (internet browsing, playing music, using Outlook for email, etc). Video editing or encoding will push this processor to it's limits, and using a computer primarily for such applications will be better served by a quad core processor such as the new i5 or i7 processors.

BUYER BEWARE that the motherboard they chose to use only has 2 DDR3 memory slots. This was my primary disappointment with this purchase and the reason it did not get 5 stars. Otherwise, this is a great deal for the money. I had planned to add an additional 2x 2gb memory modules to increase system memory to 8gb, cheaply. Now I'll have to pay double to replace the existing 2 sticks with 2x 4gb sticks.

Boo Ibuypower, I expected better from you, as all of your builds on your own website with this i3 processor and computer case use a Gigabyte board with 4 memory slots.

It seems they are using lesser parts for their Amazon.com customers - or this system was one built months ago that they just wanted to get rid of quick. Whatever the case, you can custom build a system like this on their website with the better (4 memory slot) motherboard for about the same price.

The downside is you'll be charged out the yin yang for shipping when buying directly from Ibuypower. As a prime member, the free 2 day shipping from Amazon.com was wonderful. I actually received this system in about 36 hours after purchase.

Thankfully, for most tasks and games, 4gb of memory that comes with this system and its nerfed motherboard will be sufficient.

For gaming, I have tried World of Warcraft (WoW) and Dragon Age II (DA2) so far. World of Warcraft plays surprisingly well with this system, despite the ultra cheap graphics card (Radeon HD 6450 - meant for HD video use, not really a gaming card).

I am able to use this system in WoW with high settings and get playable frame rates (graphics card overclocked using AMD's "Catalyst Control Center" which comes with the system). At stock clock speeds the video card could barely keep up with "good" graphics settings in WoW. This card safely clocks to the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) maximum and is stable, with no heat issues.

Using another program I went beyond the CCC max and found instability issues in WoW after about 30 minutes playtime when clocking the core to 750mhz and the memory to 925mhz. I did not want to mess with stock voltage, especially with stock cooling, so I don't know what this card could really do with a voltage increase and aftermarket cooling.

I was able to get stability at slightly lower clocks still above the CCC max, but found the card would get into the mid 80's Celsius, so I went back to using the CCC max overclock to keep the card at 80 Celsius or below. Technically the card should be able to handle up to 120 Celsius without frying, and before that it no doubt has a built in shut off for safety. But, the more heat the more it wears on the card over time, so I feel best at 80 Celsius or less. *Ambient room temperature was about 72-73 o F.

WoW doesn't come close to using much of the i3 2120 capability nor the 4gb of memory this system comes with. I've even tweaked WoW and the system to increase the performance of WoW. I was able to increase frame rates but WoW still will not use more than about 15% of the cpu on average.

Dragon Age II, on the other hand, does make use of 100% of 1 core before I did a system tweak. It required a system tweak to spread that out to the 2nd core and the virtual (hyper-threading) cores, and now performs better. I play Dragon Age II on medium settings smoothly with the overclocking and tweaks in place.

For both games, and no doubt any modern games, the graphics card is going to be the weak link of this system. After some research, it seems the Radeon HD 6770 or equivalent Nvidia card would be a good upgrade after purchasing this system and should work with the power supply (haven't verified this by testing).

Amazon.com has one HD 6770 for only $120 with free 2 day shipping for prime members. That graphics card is about 10x more powerful for gaming - a great deal for this budget system for those with a little extra to spend for an immediate upgrade.

ANY GRAPHICS CARD BEYOND THE HD 6770 IS GOING TO NEED A MORE POWERFUL POWER SUPPLY UNIT for sure. Before buying a video upgrade for this system, check the card's power requirement and make sure it will not be too much for the power supply of this system. As for the exact specifications of the power supply for this system, your guess is as good as mine because this is another piece of information Ibuypower did not include in their Amazon.com item information. My best guess is that it is a 450 watt or 500 watt psu based on the components of the system (the HD 6450 needs a 400 watt psu minimum, and Ibuypower usually uses more than the AMD recommended bare minimum for stability reasons).

I set the motherboard's performance setting to "extreme" and have had no problems. It came already set to "turbo," the medium setting, by default.

With this system I purchased the 22" Viewsonic monitor found here: [....]
It works very well with this computer system and has very good contrast and brightness. I have noticed no blurring with movies and games. It is very light and thin being LED backlit. I highly recommend it to go along with a purchase of this computer system. There is also a 24" model from Viewsonic available on Amazon.com at a great price. Make sure it is the LED baclit version. AT such prices there is no reason to by the older technology LCD monitor.

The AMD Radeon HD 6450 graphics/video card also has AMD's Eyefinity technology as well as DX11 for games. Google "Eyefinity" for more information. WoW received a nice frame rates boost by enabling DX11 in game. I think it gained about 15-20 fps just from enabling DX11 and is the primary reason this card can play WoW at high settings smoothly.

If you have a tight budget you would like your computer purchase to fit within, this system is a great value and performs very well for its class.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
does the job adequetly and without any weird instability errors in games good for the price for sure!!
By Kid Prometheus
I am always leary of buying prebuilt PC's for games this is not really a true game machine but it seems to play what I throw at it, you (might) need some cooling fans, though to install these it must be externally and that is funkeah! I installed mine on the outside and wired it that way from a back open perifrial. the case is BTX so it may not be necessary if your not playing Divinity 2 a mirical I got that one to even work! the ATi Video is pretty good for a machine of this price It holds up surprisingly well, last night I tried Risen and Divinity 2(MAXed settings of BOTH games!!! 1920x1080 and t-buffer enabled all refresh 60hz and V-refresh enabled also. This before my fan jury rigging/ out of the box(no special fans or anything) it worked but I am leary of running such software on an uncooled box.(even BTX) it comes with a single rear exhaust fan and a CPU fan the video and all else is passive. For most circumstances this is more than adequet just don't overclock it. I am to assume intel chips need less cooling than AMD so I'm probably just "blowing it" with the added fans. It is considered a "casual gaming machine" not a hard core and not to be run on latest unless you do what I did(and I am thinking of removing those fans they sound hideous and funky like an early '60's Outer Limits sci-fi horror spaceship computer) with out the added "fanage" ;)=) the PC is very quite and actually peaceful. Too see the price