iBuyPower Professional Series: Reversal of Fortune
by Dustin Sklavos on October 21, 2011 1:15 AM ESTConclusion: Feels Like an Afterthought
I want to be clear: the iBuyPower Professional Series isn't necessarily a bad computer. It'll certainly get the job done, and iBuyPower allows for enough custom configuring to make it worth your while. Being able to upgrade to faster NVIDIA Quadro GPUs is a decent incentive to go this route, and iBuyPower definitely competes on price.
The problem is that I just don't see any reason to buy it over competing systems from Dell or HP. In the case of the HP Z210 SFF we compared it to, HP's system is smaller, quieter, offers better power consumption, and probably most damning, has a superior warranty. If you configure HP's unit without the SSD, you can drive the cost down to compete with iBuyPower's selection, too. While iBuyPower offers three years of labor, they only offer a year on the parts, utterly inexcusable when individual warranties on each of the parts are going to be at least three years (and in some cases lifetime). HP starts at three years of labor, three years on parts, and three years of on-site service, that last point being something iBuyPower just isn't big enough to compete on.
There's very little going on with the iBuyPower Pro that makes me feel like it was configured by someone who understood the needs of enterprise users. This feels like a desktop where consumer parts were swapped out in favor of enterprise parts, and that's about it. The Corsair TX650 power supply is fantastic...for a gaming machine. Here it's overkill. The same is true of the Asetek liquid cooler, which as I mentioned before is more of a checkbox inclusion than something that actually adds value to the machine. The Xeon isn't being overclocked and has no need for exotic cooling. And the Cooler Master Silencio 550 enclosure is just the best from a series of consumer-oriented case choices; this should've been an Antec Solo II or SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E, something that would actually look like it belonged in an office.
I know boutiques have ways of competing with big box OEMs when it comes to building workstation desktops, but this isn't it. The fact that these towers are buried on iBuyPower's site suggests they're either not big sellers or just not that important to iBuyPower's business, and that's a shame. Other boutiques have embraced this potentially lucrative market (we'll be seeing more offerings from those boutiques in the future), and for iBuyPower to dismiss it with a machine like this is unfortunate. They can do better. Hopefully we'll see that in a future system.
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greylica - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
The Ge forces uses the same cores of the Quadros, but are are hardware and software hacked by Nvidia to separate ''content consumers'' from ''content producers''. They separate them as having money to work or not having money to work. Same thing from ATI and their FireGL Cards. You can find searching in the internet that a GTX 285 is faster than a GTX 580 in OpenGL applications. For example: some folks are so irritated with this that made a hack to GL read Pixels. When GTX 580 launched, I tought ''OOOOHHH'' Awewsome specs ! Then I said ''OOOOOHHHH'' slower than GTX 285 ???Bought 2 used GTX 285 and I'm very happy using my Linux Workstation with Blender...
Quadros with the same power as a GTX 285 in OpenGL are 4X more expensive, why Nvidia ? 2X the price isn't enough ???
Nvidia said that they won't fix their drivers for GTX 580, it's clear that they want to separate consumers from producers, but GTX 580 isn't the best card to compare with Quadros. The problem started with GTX 480...
jamyryals - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
Obviously the enterprise cards have different optimizations than the consumer brethren. The extra costs for enterprise GPU cards are for driver validation testing/support. In consumer cards you have many more people sharing those costs.Simple as that. It's not gouging, it's what the have to charge to make a profit in that business.
1 day of avoided downtime will pay for the extra cost. If something goes wrong you can get someone on the phone and get immediate service. Enterprise support is vastly underrated by many people, but it's extremely important to minimize risks to a delivery schedule.
Stuka87 - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
I am going to assume that you don't work in the industry that makes use of professional grade cards such as the Quadro and FireGL.There are hardware differences, but the biggest difference is i the drivers. The drivers go through a great deal of testing, and get certified to work properly with the software that they are typically used with (Such as AudoCAD, SolidWorks, etc). The drivers are also not always in a constant state of flux. Updates come less often, so they are far more stable.
I have no problems with the pro cards costing far more when it means there wont be compatibility or crashing issues. You using GTX cards for Blender is fine. But if you are running a business you can't afford to take chances like that. Things need to work, and they need to work the same way day in and day out.
greylica - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
Ok, I Work everyday with different equipments and I can tell that there is not a single problem in years using the combination Blender + Linux + Good OpenGL Cards. Believe it or not, I have a flickering problem With a Quadro FX3450 using Nvidia Quadro drivers that does not appear in GTX 285 using Subsurf Level 5 with a big displacement map.*''1 day of avoided downtime will pay for the extra cost.''
Agree, but some problems appear even with Quadros, and the only perception I have in years is that decent cards like 2XX series and OpenGL drivers are stable enough but performance are downgraded artificially in drivers in a manner that separates creators from consumers. After 4XX series, OpenGL performance are thrown in an abysm. Thanks to good (free software) coders, those problem doesn't affect conformant renderers running in CPUs or Multiple Small cores (OpenCL), and the only limitation we have for now is the fact that a big map can sometimes suffer from laggies. Thanks again to good (free software) coders, we can decimate visualization and turn Subsurf on for the Render time only. And Thanks again to good coders, we are now aware of the problems that are present in 4XX and 5XX cards, or others from now and up that are OpenGL performance hacked.
lockheart - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
Does IBP give a retail version of Windows 7 or do they supply an OEM DVD type recovery disk like other major manufacturers do? A lot of times we'd like to use Microsoft tools like ImageX and Windows AIK to make images of our operating systems and with OEM DVDs this is not possible due to the way the license keys work.haxor911 - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
They should have put quieter drives; but I think this is being marketed as a workstation not a desktop. The Dell Precisions we have here come with 15k RPM SAS drives and they sound like they are grinding rocks when working with large files.wyrmslair - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link
Yes, very few people overclock a Xeon workstation but many, many workstation users push their CPU's to the limit over long periods with rendering or other CPU intensive tasks. Trust me when I say that the advantages of a LC over AC system will show for many workstation users. How do I know this? I used to do these kinds of configurations for a boutique shop that serviced that industry and I was getting it straight from the horse's mouths. Most engineers and graphic artists (this was back when video rendering actually needed horsepower) where very aware of how well cooled or ventilated their systems were and had horror stories of overheating at some point. From what I still hear, things have not changed much in that respect in the WS market.Other than that, good job on showing how the boutiques can compete and do decent job of it even with their inherent weaknesses.
IdBuRnS - Monday, October 24, 2011 - link
"but oftentimes the end user will be better off going to a boutique like iBuyPower for their desktop and enjoying the generally superior build and component quality along with better customer service."ibuypower's customer service is freaking horrendous.
They deliver computers that have disconnected internal components, BSOD repeatedly upon first boot and when they promise to replace the computer after a multiple issues they just send the exact same computer back to you (on your dime) without any of the issues resolved and claim they never said they would replace the system in the first place.
They suck and you guys keep reviewing their systems and giving them good scores.
Adelwich - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - link
After extensively reviewing the components, I pulled the trigger on an ibuypower system that arrives tomorow. This thread, combined with similar threads elsewhere, gives me the fear and makes me wonder if i blew it.Am I doomed?Drittz121 - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Just do yourself a favor. STAY AWAY from this company. Yes they look good. But when it breaks and it WILL. All they do is give you the run around. They have had my system for over 2 months trying to fix the garbage they sell. Worse company out there for support. DONT BUY