A bit O/T ... UK PC vendors ...

[al]

"nightjar .uk.com>" > > For top end stuff I usually use - good

Noticed there is

also - both shops seems similar!

a

[al]

Yeah ... Intel's very latest Hyper-whasited chip costs mega buck compared to the "normal" one of the same clock speed. Don't see the point in spending £200 more on a tiny gain.

a

[Michael McNeil]

The idiot seems to know what he wants so what does hew need to post here about it for. He's dead keen on nursing it along too. What is he getting out of it? By all means let him spam here with a good techie forum if there is one. But not fill the bloody servers with the tripe.

[al]

Actually, if you'd have read the thread properly, you'd see that I have always known exactly what I wanted in terms of spec - that wasn't the question. The question was about quality high end manufacturers over here and what other people may have done in a similar situation. I was frustrated that the only place I could find a really attractive machine of that spec for a really good price was in Canada.

Strange you should bother reading it if it's a topic you're so opposed to ... Tell you what, here's a free tip - click the little minus sign at the start of this thread and it will become a lovely little single line entry with a plus sign in your news reader! Do you often feel compelled to do things you don't like just because you see them ..?

a

[Colin Wilson]

is affiliated to tekheads, which was IIUC started by someone who was once worked for (part owned ?) overclockers.co.uk

Customer service is done right at Tekheads though, which is more than can be said from their previous gaff ;-)

overclocker.co.uk is run by aria - a company with an unenviably bad reputation.

[Huge]

"There's duty on *everything*."

(A nameless customs man to me, at Heathrow Airport.)

[Andy Hall]

He neglected to say that on some items it's nil......

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[al]

Another one! So we have:

So is the general consensus that first and last are good ... piggy in the middle bad!?

a

[Grunff]

Now that's one company I do have personal experience with, and would definitely recommend anyone to avoid them. They make GUS look like RS.

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 19 Jan 2004, al wrote

FWIW, I don't think you should be looking at on-line/national type operations -- your specs and knowledge are too good for that.

You could undoubtedly source and build this thing yourself, but if you don't want to do that I figure you should ask around in your area for a local "geek guy company" PC builder; discuss what you want with him -- you know pretty well as much as he will, so it's not an uneven discussion; set a reasonable budget (my guess: a *lot* less than 2K); and have him put it together and get it running for you.

That way, you:

(1) know precisely what you're getting

(2) can customise it with somebody who knows the merits of "this MB vs that MB" and "this card vs that card"

(3) have a legal comeback if something's not right

(4) forge a link with a grateful "local geek company" if something needs fine-tuning in the future.

My tuppence, anyway...

(And, no: I'm not a local-geek-company. But I've used them...)

[al]

Wow ... that's quite a reaction from a few fronts - I did a google on them and found *a lot* of negatives! Looks like those guys don't have a lot of fans.

a

[al]

Thanks for the suggestions, you may be right. I've certainly got quite a few more good resources to look at now, so thanks a million to all who replied. Think I'm just going to have to do a bit more homework and do the sums of home build v. luxury box makers. I'll let you know what I get in the end anyway ;o)

a

[Andrew Gabriel]

I would back that too -- I used to use them to supply all the PC's to my previous company. All kit made up to my spec. On the rare occasions something did die, replacement part recieved next day, without any hassel or the need to send the dead part back for testing first.

On one occasion I was temped to buy a disk drive from Simply because it was £15 cheaper than WoC. Drive was DoA, and had obviously already been used. It took a day on the phone to get it sent back to Simply. Never made that mistake again, and stuck with WoC.

They'll let you completely customise, but you might need to email or phone. IME, they'll even order in things which they don't normally stock.

Possibly -- I used them for exactly this reason. I needed machines which were rock solid. I still have some of their machines in service, and they run with uptimes limited only by reliability of the mains supply, but easily more than a year.

[sks]

Overclock has nothing to do with Tekheads.

Tekheads was started by 2 former employee's of the overclockingstore.co.uk

[John Rumm]

I would go along with that...

I know a company that is happy to tackle specialist PC requirements - I work for them ;-) If you want to drop me an email, I would be quite happy to get you a quote against your spec.

[al]

I might take you up on that - I've saved your details till I get some time at the weekend. Where are your lot based out of interest?

a

[Colin Wilson]

My bad, there`s so many with a similar name and i`m losing the plot with them all now :-}

[John Rumm]

We are in Southend-on-Sea....

(but then Amtrak will deliver most places ;-)

[R W]

I don't follow it either, but it doesn't suprise me one bit, judging from the problems a colleague of mine is having with them.

[Left Nothing]

I have asked a few questions in this group in the past, now a post has come up where I have alot of knowledge, thought I'd give something back! :-)

I have worked in the PC industry for many years now and during my time have visited many of the tier one and smaller suppliers' facilities.

I can tell you that contary to what many people proberbly beleive, the tier one suppliers *do* test their products compatibility and reliability for some time prior to releasing them to market. This is done (in the main) to reduce their after sales costs, the more reliable their product, the more money they make!

They have teams of people carrying out this testing, working alongside the suppliers of components to produce the best quality product they can that meets the price points expected by the market (i.e. us, the customer).

Why am I telling you all this? Well, if the OEM sells less than 100k units pa, they have no chance of obtaining the kind of support offered to the major OEMs. Which means PCs purchased from the smaller players [< 100k units pa] have more chance of failing or causing compatibility issues than from major suppliers [statistically] generally speaking.

I have heard the term 'Optimising' used in this thread, unless you have strong links with the component manufacturers, there is very little 'optimising' that can be carried out on todays hardware. (Major OEMs can have drivers re-written, firmware changed, BIOS's re-written etc... simply put small OEM's don't have a hope of competing with them on 'optimising' for both speed *and* reliability).

That spec of PC if built by a major OEM would proberbly retail around

1,500 UKP. 2k should get you bigger HDDs and faster processor. The problem will be finding a major OEM with your exact requirements.

For the record, I would not personally consider VPC to come close to the major OEMs in terms of testing and reliability. Trust me, any OEM can win 'awards' if they provide the *reviewer* the right hardware at the right time!

If I were spending 2k on a PC, I would _only_ buy it from a major OEM. I like the comfort of knowing that it has been tested by a *team* for compatibility / reliability, have backup incase of issues arrising in the future e.g. software / driver / firmware updates but most of all the warranty in case of failure.

L.N.

P.S. For those wondering, NO, I don't work for any of the major OEMs but I have visited the manufacturing facilities for 90% of them!