Extras

In addition to receiving the rig, iBuyPower provides you with all that you see below: Windows 7 64-bit Home re-installation disc, extra SATA cables, Gigabyte motherboard disk, and so on.

The system also comes with a Multimedia USB  keyboard and USB optical mouse, both with the iBuyPower logo. The included keyboard and mouse are pretty good, but hardcore PC gamers would more than likely opt to use more gaming-specific peripherals.

Getting Started

Getting started with the system was a breeze. iBuyPower pre-loaded the initial Windows 7 Home installation onto the hard drive, so there was no need to pop in and run the installation disc. Also, it was set to boot directly from the hard drive, so going into the BIOS and changing the boot priority was not necessary. All we needed to do was come up with a name for the PC (we chose Namor from Marvel…. eh, why not?) and then proceeded to enter the Product Key, which was placed onto the side of the case for convenience by iBuyPower, run the necessary Windows Updates (since some had come out while the system was in transit), and we were good to go.

After updating Windows, we inserted the motherboard disc to install the utilities, and get some drivers Windows Update might have missed. Some users prefer to put the motherboard disc in first, and then update Windows, but really either way is fine. For the purpose of the review, we installed all the utilities on the disc. This included Easy Tune 6, Smart 6, Auto Green, Norton Anti-Virus, and a handful of others. In all honestly, the only utility we used often during the review was Easy Tune 6. After the installation of the utilities was completed and Windows was fully up to date, we got to “personalizing” the desktop. Below is a picture of our desktop when we were done. Pretty cool-looking background, don’t you think?

Next: Benchmarking

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