£1750 build to beat a iMac

Here's my best effort, instead of trying to beat the £1750 iMac I instead attempted to match it using equal or slightly better components (beating it seemed too easy as you hadn't specified just performance, or quality/noise/wattage/etc).

YOUR BASKET
1 x Dell UltraSharp U2713HM 27" Widescreen LED Monitor - Midnight Grey £431.99
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7870 OC Windforce 3X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £173.99
1 x Intel Core i5-4670 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £169.99
1 x Seasonic 400w FANLESS '80 Plus Platinum' Modular Power Supply £99.95
1 x Gigabyte Z87M-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £97.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H80i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler £78.95
1 x BitFenix Phenom MATX Cube Case - Arctic White £74.95
1 x Corsair XMS3 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX8GX3M2A1600C9) £56.99
1 x Rollei Youngstar Action Camera - 5MP 720P/30FPS £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £49.99
1 x Microsoft PL2 Wedge Mobile Bluetooth Keyboard (U6R-00006) £49.99
1 x Microsoft PL2 Wedge Touch Bluetooth Mouse (3LR-00001) £39.95
1 x Creative D80 Wireless Bluetooth Speaker - Black £28.99
1 x TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N PCI Adapter (TL-WN951N) £21.98
Total : £1,443.40 (includes shipping : £14.75).

A saving of £300 (at the expense of system support/warranty and resale value ofc)

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A few questions I envision:

1: Why a £430 Dell monitor when a DGM one is cheaper?
A: It has Dells premium panel warranty which is on par with Apples policy on iMac screens, you do not have the same warranty with lower screens, compromising on this to try and beat the Mac devalues the whole point.

2: Why that card? and why a windforce?
A: That card pretty much matches the GTX775m in the Mac and is very quiet as is an iMac.

3: Why a non-K i5, and that board?
A: An i5 with the same speed as the Mac, you can't overclock the Mac and it also has a feature rich quality board.

4: Why a Seasonic PSU? and fanless?
A: quality vs quality, and again iMacs are virtually silent.

5: Why a Corsair water cooler?
A: Again silence, it seems like I'm making a big deal out of it but its a strong feature of an iMac.

6: The case?
A: Pretty aluminium thing.

7: Keyboard/Mouse?
A: Windows equivalent of the iMac ones.

8: Why the hell that camera?
A: Cheapest webcam I could find on the OcUK store lol.
 
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jonnyp1993 said:
as much as i hate to say this. imacs systems are pretty damn fast.
i dont know if its there OS or if its the hardware.

but for what your asking for and the budget. i dont think you will beat the mac :(
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apple are proud to say they only have 15% of the market but make the most money because of massive profit point on the builds.

you can distort an apple spec for spec and have change
 
P4Clock said:
apple are proud to say they only have 15% of the market but make the most money because of massive profit point on the builds.

you can distort an apple spec for spec and have change
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huq6.png


Massive profits of builds, certainly not?!

YOUR BASKET
1 x Corsair Vengeance SODIMM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C10 1866MHz SODIMM Kit (CMSX16GX3M2A1866C10) £139.99
Total : £148.69 (includes shipping : £7.25).

 
subbytna said:
Ok to settle an argument I'm having with some apple fanboys, can someone spec me a rig to include
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I'm not really sure what point you're trying to prove. For certain people, Macs are the way to go - what if they don't have space for a tower, for instance? I own a MBP (and a Windows desktop) as when I bought it in early 2011, it had better build quality, screen, keyboard, and trackpad than anything else on the market, and OSX is fantastic on a laptop.

Yes, you could get me a higher specced Windows laptop than that for the price I paid, but it wouldn't do certain things which are important to me.
 
Manic what do you mean "it wouldn't do certain things"

number crunching or rendering or?

One of the fellas said "I couldn't install a mac OS to a pc" ...had to laugh at him :p
 
ubersonic said:
Weird, Apple manage to do it fine :P
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spoffle said:
It's quite easy, the problem is that some hardware is incompatible. If you make sure you get compatible hardware it's very straight forward and barely any different to installing Windows.
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my ols i5 750 system was a perfect candidate for an hacking tosh, all parts was on the apple approved list, but it would just lock up on OS install.

Windows installed fine with nothing been changed.
 
i think buying an imac is dumb (no offense to anyone who has an imac :)) but for at least £300 less than the price of an imac, you can have the same hardware on a pc and greater flexibility.
 
P4Clock said:
my ols i5 750 system was a perfect candidate for an hacking tosh, all parts was on the apple approved list, but it would just lock up on OS install.

Windows installed fine with nothing been changed.
Click to expand...

*shrug* I've done it on non-approved hardware and it went smooth.

I've seen others do it on approved hardware and it went even smoother.

Maybe there's some PEBKAC going on? :p

hakank68 said:
i think buying an imac is dumb (no offense to anyone who has an imac :)) but for at least £300 less than the price of an imac, you can have the same hardware on a pc and greater flexibility.
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I'd like to think the main reason people buy iMacs is for the aesthetic appeal, as they do look very nice, that part is undeniable.

In which case, I wouldn't call people dumb for it, as it's no different to buying other fashionable items, they often come with a disproportional price tag.

I would say buying an iMac for high end computing is what you should consider as dumb.
 
spoffle said:
*shrug* I've done it on non-approved hardware and it went smooth.

I've seen others do it on approved hardware and it went even smoother.

Maybe there's some PEBKAC going on? :p



I'd like to think the main reason people buy iMacs is for the aesthetic appeal, as they do look very nice, that part is undeniable.

In which case, I wouldn't call people dumb for it, as it's no different to buying other fashionable items, they often come with a disproportional price tag.

I would say buying an iMac for high end computing is what you should consider as dumb.
Click to expand...

this is a personal opinion but i think a watercooled pc arround the same price tag looks a lot better to me than an imac
 
As has been discussed many a time on here, you can build a system faster than the iMac for less cash, including the display.

As has also been discussed on here, with not just the iMac but with any all-in-one (whether that be Dell, HP, or whoever), you're paying for the form factor, the R&D that has gone into creating the thing, the labour to build it, the support you get afterwards, etc.

If you are able to build yourself and need a powerful machine, can run Windows, and can support the machine yourself, then yes, building is a great option. However comparing a pile of parts against a complete, ready-built solution is really missing the point. Said pile of parts is useless to the average Joe or Jane who cannot built a PC and cannot fix it when it goes wrong (and, if we're talking specifically about if they want OS X, the Hackintosh route is certainly not as easy as just buying a Mac, and wouldn't even be a consideration for 99.9% of potential buyers).

A better comparison would be AIO machines from the Windows side vs. the iMac, however the options on the Windows side are considerably poorer than the iMac and are similarly priced. At the same time, if we're talking about a tower vs the iMac, we're approaching the same comparison issues as found with a self-built system.

It's a bit like comparing an unbuilt Caterham to an M3 or C63. The Caterham will undoubtedly be faster and cost significantly less, however very few (ie. virtually nobody) would have the ability to build the thing, and few would pick it over the other two as a daily driver.

As for Mac vs Windows...it's a bit like having a heated debate about a certain flavour of crisps being technically superior to another. It doesn't really make sense - it comes down to personal preference at the end of the day.
 
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hakank68 said:
i think buying an imac is dumb (no offense to anyone who has an imac :)) but for at least £300 less than the price of an imac, you can have the same hardware on a pc and greater flexibility.
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I actually have a friend who owns iMacs, and uses them for Windows, seriously. His reasoning is that the £300 you refereed to is worth it for the higher resale value when you upgrade, and the warranty/build quality/silence/etc.
 
ubersonic said:
I actually have a friend who owns iMacs, and uses them for Windows, seriously. His reasoning is that the £300 you refereed to is worth it for the higher resale value when you upgrade, and the warranty/build quality/silence/etc.
Click to expand...

It is true. If you don't need that much performance, resale value on Macs is ridiculous.
 
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