PC Tech Thread

Ha. Think others have given better advice than I could/can but if you need someone’s help swapping some parts in/out I’d happily help.

The Alienware is gone!!! Dammit! Any parts that are out of place? I had another look at the motherboard and the cheaper alternatives are less than £50 difference with no SLi support, so I thought might as well.

Still would love to get an even better graphics card but man, these things are so expensive!

You snooze, you lose.

The @ExTra buying a PC saga is going to rival @Dammit's various sagas soon!

Nope, sorry to disappoint, but I have sent off my parts list to Scan today now, just waiting for them to get back so I can pay. Case closed...

Brilliant. Glad you went with Scan.

Since singing their praises about them on here I've started working with them on a project. Have nothing but good things to say about them still.

They are not the cheapest but sometimes it’s worth paying a bit extra for good after sale service. A friend of mine wants to build the PC for me and he says I was stupid to not shop around and buy my bits from different places, but Scan’s prices are only marginally more on some of the parts and they only charge £170 to build the PC and it’ll come with the same 3 years warranty. I’d say that’s a winner.

I just realised I have actually been dithering for a whole year now... but fact is my first set of 3D courses are starting in Feb so I really need this machine now to write the course and work on the class examples... 😬

So what are you doing with them? 🤔🤓

So what are you doing with them?

We're both members of the same manufacturing and construction supply chain research group.

I'm a very exciting chap.

Certainly more exciting then my life, sir! :-)

Sending you a PM, might need your help... please...

Dont worry about it, took me a year to choose a Mac once, between a choice of two...
I think you were right to pay for build, while it is simple, yours is a work machine so to have a warranty and a level of support is well worth it, I had a perfectly good PC die on me and I had no idea what it was so pretty much just binned it.
Which reminds me, I need a new Mac...

If you need my edu discount again, just let me know. 😎

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to buy my PC today - it had been difficult to get a final quote from Scan as their 3XS systems weren't exactly what I wanted so I can't buy online, and they have always told me I could send them a parts list and they will let me know if any parts ain't compatible and adjust accordingly etc and let me know total cost, so I have done just that.

After my initial email of my parts list sent on Monday, I have been chasing daily since Wed with phone calls, everytime I called, they are either busy dealing with customers in the shop or doing something else and the promise of getting back to me by the end of the day didn't quite happen until just before lunch today. I understand it is Black Friday week so I didn't push particularly hard until last night, but if they always prioritize online and in shop customers, then where does it leave 'mail / custom' customers?

Anyway, I was still excited to finally get the quote but it is a questionable one - the parts list I sent them came to a total of £2212.38, without labour / delivery (because I can't add these to the parts list) and I missed a WiFi adaptor. I was always told their build cost is typically £150 - £170, they cannot overclock AMD and delivery is something like £13 for the lot.

The WiFi adaptor they recommended is £13. So that should make a total of £2408.38 all in at most.

Their quote comes to a total of £2471.37 (delivery is only £9.99), so that's £65.99 more than what I expect to pay. The quote didn't list the RRP of all the parts, but instead they have turned my build into a 3XS system with upgrades so some of the parts have been absorbed under a single 3XS unit cost...

When I called them on the phone to ask, they said in actual fact neither the ram nor the GPU I want are in stock, but they will look for alternatives, if the parts ain't in stock, why include in the quote when I said I was happy for them to swap equivalent parts for the final quote in my email?

They also didn't seem interested in discussing with me there and then on what alternatives and the chap sounded really rushed on the phone, which he probably was extremely busy, but I don't want to rush into dropping £2.5k when I am not 100% sure what I am paying for.

I also said I can only do Sat delivery and happy to pay extra for that, there is clearly an option on their website, but they weren't sure if it's actually possible?

So I am now going Overclockers, their individual parts are more expensive marginally, but after speaking to them on the phone, how they quote a custom build seem to have a much higher level transparency... We will see...

I hope this is just a one off experience and I have just been unlucky, but if you are going to go Scan with a custom build, check you quote carefully...

Look at Novatech too

Just looked them up and they sound solid. Maybe I’ll shoot them an email too...

It’s a real shame Scan didn’t work out... 🤷🏻‍♀️

Sorry I didn't reply to your PM. Received it when drunk and subsequently forgot to reply.

Sounds like you've had a torrid time at Scan. Why not just persist with them? You've dithered for a year, the company has a Google rating of 4.6/5 from 4,000 reviews. You've had a shit time because you've gone outside their ordering process and the human beings involved have screwed up. Why not try to sort it out with them, maybe see if they will discount?

Nah, you are alright mate, I read some of the negative reviews with a pinch of salt and when things go wrong, Scan, OCUK and other similar companies are just as bad. The negative comments did give me a good giggle though. Like if you overclock a machine or install your motherboard incorrectly, how is it the shop’s fault?

Anyway, I didn’t want to make last my post longer than it already was as it wasn’t the whole story, but here goes:

Their mail orders, which is what my order falls under, they have a single point of failure. All mail orders have to go through this guy who has actually consistently not been good. I remember the first time I emailed him (or rather Scan) with 4 questions about a month ago with a parts list. One of the questions was build cost, he replied to tell me the faster ram was better with a link to the more expansive ram and no answer to any of my questions. Fair enough, the faster rams are probably better, but what about my other questions? And I think for the sort of machine I am wanting, asking 4 simple questions wasn’t that OTT... he eventually gave me a quote of a 3XS system that couldn’t be configured online, so it isn’t a 3XS system then... he also changed everything to basically Asus, Corsair and Seagate. While they are good brands, except Seagate, I had really bad experience with it. Why change what a customer has chosen without communicating with them first? Particularly, the actual models or functions are the same. He also went for a smaller cooler because the case I chose wouldn't fit, would it make more sense to go with a larger case? I pointed it out and he swapped for a larger case that could more than host a 360mm AIO cooler but kept the 240mm AIO in the quote. The 240mm is probably enough but again, it would have been nice to explain or make a note rather than just change it in the quote without mentioned it.

So I left the whole thing cold for a while because I was busy anyway. When I picked up the phone again last week to ask if I really have to speak to this guy again and very politely and briefly explained why, they told me categorically and absolutely he is the only person who can deal with my sort of orders . So I thought OK I’ll give him another go, history basically repeated itself. Except this time with my updated parts list, he didn’t change the brands I chose, but he still managed to change it to a 3XS system that can’t be configured online. So again, is it or is it not a 3XS system? I really have nothing against 3XS but if I wanted that, I’d have gone online and clicked away.

What force a customer into their own brand if they don’t want to? The up side? I’d get their 3XS welcome pack consists of an anti fray mouse pad and a mug. Yay!

On the subject of discount, remember I said I sent the email on Mon and didn’t get a reply till Fri? So when I called on Wed, I was more than reasonable to ask if they could reserve the parts that are low stock for me and also lock down the price as of Wed while we wait for this manager to reply so he could take his time and I wouldn’t lose out? They gave me a flat no - if you want the parts, you’d have to pay now and they’d deal with price difference refund if necessary. I wasn’t comfortable with it so I told them this and I said in that case, can this manager get back to me by the end of the same day, I got a yes but this never happened. The same conversation basically happened on Thu and again on Fri.

By the time he got back to me, I actually felt really pressured into paying. In my chaser email, I cheekily asked if they do student discount, not only didn’t he ignore that question in its entirety, he also told me the quote was only valid until the end of yesterday because of Black Friday. I mean I have never seen any quote would expire within 5 hours.

In the end, I think computer parts are compute parts, they don’t talk, they either work or they don’t. It’s the human beings that matters, if anything were to go wrong with this build, I dread to think having to speak to half a dozen of people to not get any issue resolved.

OCUK seems to have very similar rating and the really bad reviews share very similar storylines. So at least first impression with them was more professional.

I don’t know... maybe I’d go to PC World this afternoon... (only joking)

I do believe the many good google reviews means this company a good company. Maybe they are just not the choice for the kind of order I want. But on this occasion, I have lost faith so maybe next time when I need something more straightforward, I’d give them another go...

Fair dos. I've spent a six figure sum with them in recent years, mainly on non standard stuff. Perhaps that is why I've had such a good experience with them.

You have built some 3XS in the past, right?

I mean they are great and when I was waiting for their reply, I was tempted to just go with one of them and be down with, but in the end it’s either the ram or the CPU or the SSD ain’t ideal for me... They should never had told me the mix and match whatever I want service exists... I would have gone for a 3XS and be none the wiser... 🙄🙄🙄

Have you ever had to return stuff under warranty? Most of the bad reviews seem to suggest Scan tends to wash their hands with warranty claims? But the fair, OCUK got the same press.

Only for myself.

Yes, my warranty experience has been second to none. Even swapped out a part that I broke myself. And that was before I became a business customer.

They are genuinely, without exaggeration, the best customer services outfit I have ever encountered.

Also, the build quality is by far the best I have ever seen.

Totally agree that you've fallen into an ordering process that they are ill equipped to handle.

Maybe I will edit my posts here and turn it into an email to Scan, not as a complaint, but more an experssion of disapointment and a bit feedback... not sure if that'd be a waste of time?

On a slightly unrelated subject, would be be weird to ask whoever ends up building my machine to send me the retail boxes of the parts as well? Some of the boxes are quite cool and I am after any stickers there might be in them...

The last 3xs PC I bought came with all of the stickers in the support pack. No idea if others do that or indeed if scan do that as a matter of routine.

One of the things I loved about the scan ordering process is that they sent me photos of the assembly of my last PC for every step and then provided me a link so I could watch it being stress tested live when it was being overclocked.

The kids PC has been shutting down randomly for quite a while.

I've recently tried to do something about this, and yesterday installed new RAM, a new SSD and did a clean install of Windows 10. This hasn't cured the random shut down.

What should I do next? Change the PSU?

I'm a bit annoyed as I've spent 20% of the price of a new PC already. Now, part of me is thinking just cut my losses.