Entered CNET Catalog: 02/25/2006
SKU: CNETIBUYPOWERVIIV350
Manufacturer: ibuypower
Product summary
The good: Quiet BTX design; low-profile case fits in tight spaces.
The bad: Room for only one hard drive; lacks TV tuner and MCE remote; limited Web-site support.
The bottom line: The iBuyPower Viiv-350 is a no-frills PC that meets all the requirements to wear Intel's Viiv badge, but it's missing many of the features we've come to expect from a serious Media Center system.
Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 03/07/2006
The iBuyPower Viiv-350 is housed in a black AOpen B300A BTX case that looks as much like an old-school desktop chassis as a living-room component-style case. It has room for one optical drive and one 3.5-inch drive, but the remaining bays are occupied by a dual-layer DVD burner and a media-card reader/floppy combo drive. Thanks to the BTX chassis, the system itself is very quiet. The low-noise output and the design of the case should allow the system to blend easily into most home-entertainment setups. Behind a door on the front panel are four USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, and headphone and mic-in jacks. Four additional USB 2.0 ports and another FireWire port are located on the rear panel.
The Viiv-350 is based on an Intel D945GBO motherboard, which provides integrated eight-channel audio with multiple analog output jacks and one optical S/PDIF jack. Onboard sound works fine for most users, but if you're serious about your audio quality and want to upgrade to a high-end sound card such as the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro, the low-profile expansion-card requirement is a deal breaker.
Although the system's 160GB hard drive is adequate for storing multimedia files, chances are it will fill up quickly, especially if you decide to use the Viiv-350 as an entertainment hub with lots of stored video files. Upgrading can be tricky because there's room for only one hard drive inside. Video is driven by an ATI Radeon 300 SE with 128MB of memory, which sits horizontally in an x16 PCIe riser card. It's better than onboard video, but not by much. Two traditional PCI slots and an x1 PCIe slot are available to accept low-profile expansion cards.
The iBuyPower Viiv-350 system brought up the rear in our roundup of Viiv systems. On CNET Labs' BAPCo SysMark 2004 application benchmarks, the Viiv-350 and its 2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 820 processor ran 35 percent slower than the Polywell Poly 975MCE-E system--which is understandable, considering the Polywell's high-end 3.46GHz Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 CPU. The iBuyPower's performance was more in line with that of the HP Media Center m7360n, offering statistically even scores. The HP has a 2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 920, which despite the higher number is virtually indistinguishable from the Pentium D 820. Even though it landed at the bottom of our first batch of Viiv systems, the iBuyPower Viiv-350 has enough horsepower to handle most casual multimedia workloads.
The system is not set up for serious gaming, as evidenced by its unplayable score of 5.6 frames per second on our Doom 3 1,024x768-resolution gaming tests. The included ATI 300 SE video card should be able to handle older games, such as Unreal Tournament 2004, at lower resolutions.
The Viiv-350 comes with Windows XP Media Center Edition, but if you want to take advantage of the operating system's DVR features, you'll have to install your own TV tuner card and get your hands on a Media Center remote control, as neither are included in the base price. Likewise, you'll have to add your own monitor and speaker system. The Viiv-350 bundles an OEM version of Nero's CD/DVD burning software and a copy of Age of Empires III, courtesy of Microsoft, and World of Warcraft, courtesy of Intel.
The iBuyPower Viiv-350 comes with a three-year warranty covering labor, but parts and onsite service are covered for only one year. The company's iCare Deluxe onsite-service program provides for up to two house calls in a one-year period. After that it'll cost you $165 per visit. Online FAQs and drivers are nonexistent, and if you click on a link for drivers, you just get a message that says, "Looking for driver download? Please visit manufacturer Web for information." Toll-free telephone support is available Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT.
Application performance (Longer bars indicate better performance)
 |
SysMark 2004 office-productivity rating | |
SysMark 2004 Internet-content-creation rating | |
BAPCo's SysMark 2004 rating |
Polywell Poly 975MCE-E (3.46GHz Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955, 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM, 667MHz)
220
320
265
Dell XPS 400 (3.2GHz Intel Pentium D 940, 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz)
190
276
229
Alienware Area 51 3550 (2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 920, 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz)
176
242
206
HP Media Center m7360n (2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 920, 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz)
165
243
200
iBuyPower Viiv-350 (2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 820, 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz)
162
236
196
Doom 3 (Custom Demo) (in fps) (Longer bars indicate better performance)
|
Doom 3 1,024x768 4XAA 8XAF |
Polywell Poly 975MCE-E (Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT PCIe)
99.1
Dell XPS 400 (Nvidia GeForce 6800 PCIe)
46.6
iBuyPower Viiv-350 (ATI Radeon X300 PCIe)
5.6
HP Media Center m7360n (Nvidia GeForce 6200SE PCIe)
2.7
Alienware Area 51 3550 (Nvidia GeForce 6200 TurboCache PCIe)
2.1
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.
System configurations:
Alienware Area 51 3550
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 920; Intel 945G chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 128MB Nvidia GeForce 6200 TurboCache (PCIe); Hitachi 250GB 7,200rpm, SATA
Dell XPS 400 (Viiv)
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 3.2GHz Intel Pentium D 940; Intel 945P chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 (PCIe); two Maxtor 250GB 7,200rpm SATA; integrated Intel (RAID 1)
HP Media Center m7360n
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 920; Intel 945G chipset; 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6200 SE (PCIe); Maxtor 300GB 7,200rpm SATA
iBuypower Viiv-350
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 2.8GHz Intel Pentium D 820; Intel 945G chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB ATI X300 (PCIe); Seagate 160GB 7,200rpm SATA
Polywell Poly 975MCE-E
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 3.46GHz Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955; Intel 975X chipset; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 533MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT (PCIe); two WDC WD740GD-00FLC0 74GB 10,000rpm SATA, two Maxtor 7Y250M0 250GB 7,200rpm SATA; Integrated Silicon SiL3114 SoftRAID 5 (RAID 0)
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 User Rating: 
2/10
this company sells defective computers
Pros: cheap prices
Cons: your computer will break
Review: I never write reivews, actually this is the first review I have ever written, and I'm writing it because I feel compelled to share with you how bad my experience with this company has been.
I purchased 2 computers from IBuyPower, mainly because they are priced so competitively. To make a long story short, here is a list of the problems I've had with the computers: the motherboard power cord wasn't attached on one; two hard drives failed on me; the power switch was defective on one; the motherboard blew up on the other; and when they shipped back the computer after "repair" they forgot certain drivers.
As the other reviewer noted, "customer support" is incompetent, slow and unhelpful. Whilst talking to them, one gets the feeling that the support staff would rather get back to playing HALO 2 then to help fix your computer. The turnaround time is incredibly slow (weeks to months) and insufficient for any person who uses their computer regularly. Their solution to most problems is to reboot and, if that doesn't work, send you a new hard drive in a week or two onto which they expect you to re-install the OS. Make sure you send back the old drive, too, or they'll knock you another $100 for it.
In summary, save yourself the hassle and DO NOT buy from this company. If the computer is for your kids or a throw-away extra machine, MAYBE the cheap price would be worth it. But certainly for your main CPU, no individual could ever depend on the machines and support from this company, let alone a business.
I purchased 2 computers from IBuyPower, mainly because they are priced so competitively. To make a long story short, here is a list of the problems I've had with the computers: the motherboard power cord wasn't attached on one; two hard drives failed on me; the power switch was defective on one; the motherboard blew up on the other; and when they shipped back the computer after "repair" they forgot certain drivers.
As the other reviewer noted, "customer support" is incompetent, slow and unhelpful. Whilst talking to them, one gets the feeling that the support staff would rather get back to playing HALO 2 then to help fix your computer. The turnaround time is incredibly slow (weeks to months) and insufficient for any person who uses their computer regularly. Their solution to most problems is to reboot and, if that doesn't work, send you a new hard drive in a week or two onto which they expect you to re-install the OS. Make sure you send back the old drive, too, or they'll knock you another $100 for it.
In summary, save yourself the hassle and DO NOT buy from this company. If the computer is for your kids or a throw-away extra machine, MAYBE the cheap price would be worth it. But certainly for your main CPU, no individual could ever depend on the machines and support from this company, let alone a business.
User Rating: 
4/10
Limited upgradeability. A 1/2 trick pony...
Pros: Eh.. Are there any?
Cons: Cramped case. Limited upgrades
Review: Just watching the video makes me want to cringe. 1/3rd of the case is taken over with a massive cooling fan system. Doesn't look like you can even stick much in the way of expansion cards into the beast either. Certainly nothing more than a 1/2 height card and certainly not a full length card.
There's barely enough room for one internal hard drive - and that's buried under the optical drive.
Having some experience with these overly cramped cases - I'm here to tell you they're a MAJOR pain in the neck when it comes to getting in there and doing any sort of maintenence on them.
And given it's most likely a proprietary motherboard, should anything go wrong requiring replacement, finding a new board might not be as easy as for a regular, normal style case.
I should mention that the box seems to have plenty of USB ports - at least 6 (2 in front, 4 in back) plus a pair of Firewire ports. For what it's worth, external drives just don't cut it as a replacment for a built in EIDE/ATA or SATA drive. The bandwidth just isn't there.
And having a bunch of external devices hanging off the USB ports seems a bit contrary to modern style. Most people want to get RID of wires, not add a bunch of new ones to the rat's nest that most computers seem to naturally generate over time.
There's barely enough room for one internal hard drive - and that's buried under the optical drive.
Having some experience with these overly cramped cases - I'm here to tell you they're a MAJOR pain in the neck when it comes to getting in there and doing any sort of maintenence on them.
And given it's most likely a proprietary motherboard, should anything go wrong requiring replacement, finding a new board might not be as easy as for a regular, normal style case.
I should mention that the box seems to have plenty of USB ports - at least 6 (2 in front, 4 in back) plus a pair of Firewire ports. For what it's worth, external drives just don't cut it as a replacment for a built in EIDE/ATA or SATA drive. The bandwidth just isn't there.
And having a bunch of external devices hanging off the USB ports seems a bit contrary to modern style. Most people want to get RID of wires, not add a bunch of new ones to the rat's nest that most computers seem to naturally generate over time.
