Geforce Battlebox in SA: cost of building your own

Nvidia has announced the Battlebox program, which seeks to give gamers a single go-to solution for gaming at high resolutions like UltraHD 4K (3840 x 2160). Nvidia is partnering with boutique PC retailers in the US to promote Battlebox and allow users to order systems ready to go with a 4K monitor.

To better understand if such a program would work in South Africa, MyGaming approached Evetech, a premier boutique PC retailer, to answer our questions about Battlebox and the high-end gaming market.

“Battlebox is not available to South Africa at this time,” said Evetech senior manager Ryan Mostert. “The initiative was not yet made available to us unfortunately, but if the opportunity does arise that we are given a chance we will definitely consider it. Customer interest in the GTX 780 is not that high with the average buyer.”

“The main interest lies predominately in the GTX 770 cards at this time, although in our higher-end builds, the GTX 780 is definitely a popular card in both SLI and single card setups as they make up the brunt of the card choice in the R20k+ line. We are definitely planning on adding a selection of 4K monitors when there is local availability, and more models hit the market. We are also aiming at making a new section with our own twist of offerings of the BattleBox.”

Evetech NZXT Phantom 820 SLI build

This raised the question of just how much of Evetech’s sales were comprised of high-end bespoke systems. After all, South Africa has previously been labelled by Steelseries as “the most advanced gaming country in Africa,” and our growing appreciation in high-end hardware seems to be fuelling that.

“Currently our high-end percentage sits at around 65-70% of our main sales , are on machines around R13k upwards, with about 5% going into the extremes of R30k and up,” replied Mostert. “High-end machine popularity has definitely been showing a growth over the years, and more and more people are digging deep in their pockets to satisfy their need to play the newer games smoothly.”

Do it Yourself

So it seems that, at least in the case of Evetech, people aren’t worried about spending more money on better-performing computer components. Considering that a regular Battlebox uses SLI GTX780 cards and high-end system components, we decided to pit a rig of similar specification from Evetech against the same or similar list of components you might find at other retailers online.

We’ll be taking Nvidia’s own system recommendations and comparing specifications against pre-built Battleboxes on the Geforce website.

The table below shows the prices and specifications of two computers that could be considered Battleboxes available from local retailers. The lowest prices are highlighted in Bold. For the purposes of this roundup, products listed as “Sold Out”, “Contact for availability” or “Out of stock” will be included in the table. Although Nvidia’s program requires that a UltraHD 4K monitor be part of the package, we’re not including that in the final price.

Prices are listed in South African Rands (R). Please note that pricing on these products is tentative, and subject to change thanks to our fluctuating exchange rate. Where an item is not available from a retailer, another with close specification will be substituted and marked with an asterisk.

First Battlebox	Evetech	Rebel Tech	Wootware	Ikonix	Titan-Ice	Prophecy
Corsair Vengeance C70	—	1243	1341	1299	1379	1315.45
Corsair GS800	—	1277	1371	1328	1399	1325.48
Intel Core i5-4670K	—	2822	2795	2847	2999	2954.42
Corsair Hydro H80i	—	1113	1245	1164	1299	1154.93
MSI Gaming Z87-GD65	—	2723	2877	2750	2949	2982.01*
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 8GB	—	1113	1227	993	1099	1154.93
2x MSI Gaming GTX780 3GB	—	16,630	16,968	19,124	17,398	17,054.58
OCZ Vertex 128GB SSD	—	1449	1560*	1553	1579	1373.13*
1TB Western Digital HDD	—	776	826	772	829	797.54*
LG 24x DVD-RW	—	169	199	168	179	169.29
Windows 8 64-bit	—	980	1123	1049	1099	1026.03
Final Total	34,240	31,807	32,224	34,611	33.857	32,924.20

Second Battlebox	Evetech	Rebel Tech	Wootware	Ikonix	Titan-Ice	Prophecy
Cooler Master Cosmos II	—	4370	4450	4349	4549	4472.12
Corsair HX1050	—	2532	2663	2603	2699	2627.13
Intel Core i7-4770K	—	4156	3999	4139	4299	4223.60
Corsair Hydro H100i	—	1362	1400	1343	1429	1324.22
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme Z87	—	5826	6344	5794*	5499	5723.42*
Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 16GB	—	2369	2595*	2327	2449	2432.76
3x MSI Gaming GTX780 3GB	—	24,945	25,452	28,686	26,097	25,581.87
Corsair Force GT 240GB SSD	—	3034	2924*	3350	2999*	2857.87
2TB Western Digital HDD	—	1111	1174	1106	1179	1147.41
LG 24x DVD-RW	—	169	199	168	179	169.29
Windows 8 Professional 64-bit	—	1714	1896	1799	1899	1795.15
Final Total	52,540	51,588	53,096	55,664	53,277	52,087.84

While this isn’t a setup I would recommend (I’m only choosing the attractive parts out of Evetech’s pool of offerings), Battleboxes won’t be cheap. Neither the GTX780 nor the Titans that Nvidia recommends are going to be affordable for the time being and any of the games Nvidia is promoting would work just as well with, for example, a 4GB GTX680 pair in SLI.

Perhaps gaming at UltraHD 4K resolutions with all the bells and whistles turned on does require a Titan or three, but lets not forget that 4K monitors are still a niche market. Far more gamers are playing at 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1440 or even the lowly 1366 x 768 resolution.

But make no mistake, playing on a GTX780 SLI setup is incredible. As the games industry undergoes a paradigm shift thanks to the next generation of consoles, all this computer hardware will finally be put to good use. If console ports raise the bar high enough, this may introduce a healthy spike in upgrades and spur the industry into price drops.