New PC in the UK?

Seasons Greetings everyone.

I was wondering if anyone from the UK could recommend a good place to go for a custom build PC (or indeed a bad place to avoid). Anyone?

Personally I would say avoid PC World like the plague.

Otherwise, have a look on ebay. You can get some pretty good deals on either fully built PCs or parts to build your own.

I'd personally advise http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk

Got a fully built one from them about three years ago that worked flawlessly (and the current one still uses the chassis and power supply along with some other parts from it).

Aria's good on parts, delivery and tech support. They're a firm favourite of mine. They used to do custom PC's in the gladiator range, but now they just do pre-builts. A friend got one from PCSpecialist, that's working out well so far.

aye id argee. pc world for odd parts but nothing more. its rare to find someone there who knows what they are talking about. plus their pc's arent really that good for gaming.

i like Overclockers.com they seem quite good.

PCSpecialist, as mentioned above, does seem to have a bad habit of forgetting things or accidently supplying the wrong parts, but if you have the warranty plan, all delivery to and back is free, and you can easily correct them over the phone (work hours only!) or via website email.

Laptop, for example - forgot bag and DVD software - one phonecall, and two days later, bag and DVDs arrived via post.

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I was looking at pcspecialist so it's nice to see them recommended. Another one I found was computerplanet.co.uk, anyone heard of them?

Thanks again.

A mate of mine bought a top spec system from PCSpecialist about a month ago, since he'd heard good things about them. Considering the amount of money he was spending, (well in excess of £3k), he got constantly messed about with being told that components were not available so his order would be delayed etc. This happened repeatedly, even though he paid extra for "express" construction and it took almost six weeks with several less favourable substitutions of components.

In the end he threatened to cancel his order if it wasn't delivered by the end of the week and even then it arrived a day after they promissed. This may be just bad luck on his part, but he said he'd certainly never get a system from them again.

On the other hand, I got a system from Scan in August, they were brilliant. They kept me informed of every step of cotruction via email and they have a web page where you can see how far along in the build they are. I've no complaints about their service or product at all and would recomend them to anyone.

It's a very personal thing I guess. You pays your money and takes your choice.
Good luck with it.

I've ordered both components and devices from Overclockers with no problems at all. They deliver the next working day more often than not and their service is excellent.

I do have a duff LG monitor I bought from them two years ago which keeps losing power and resetting. Rather than replace it they refered me to LG tech support which I found a little disapointing, but appart from that you could do a lot worse.

Sorry to mildly threadjack this for my own purposes but...

looking for a new graphics card to be ready to run 'ultra-mode' when GR comes out, currently have the rather aging ATI Raedon X1950 pro so need a bit of a spruce up for GR.

Looking in the price range of £150.

lol, Back here in Sweden I'd say Dell is actually a good buy. Standard components that never give you any problems and decent, but not great, prices. Good warranty and delivered to your door.

Then again, there's nothing - absolutely nothing - special about them. The monitor I got is a great monitor, but not tiltable, no USB hub in it, no speakers or speaker/headphone connections etc. Basically a really good, but very simple monitor. Same goes for the rest of the stuff.

Generally speaking though, I'd stay away from any brand name PC and really, really check what you're actually getting.

I'd say check on line and look for a computer fair. Depending on where you are there are some very good ones around about, and often you'll get a PC built to your spec in next to no time. You get to choose what goes inside it, and they will build it for you.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I had a mixed experience with PC Specialist. On the one hand, got a fairly hefty PC for a pretty reasonable price. On the other, when it arrived it had serious case damage - it looked like it'd been dropped from a good 4-6' as one corner was utterly smashed. I suspect it was the courier company (City Link) as I've had other pieces of equipment arrive via them with damaged boxes (though thankfully not the equipment itself), but obviously neither company is going to say "yeah, we drop stuff and don't bother checking for damage".

To their credit PC Specialist did get me to send the PC back for a replacement without any fuss. However, I suspect they just transferred all the components to a new case as when I got it back it fairly quickly started locking up and crashing on a regular basis (even just sitting at desktop with nothing but Winamp running). Long story short it went back and forth for 2-3 months with them always insisting they couldn't find a fault and me getting lockups and blue-screen reboots within a day or two of them returning it. Eventually got the memory replaced (no fix), motherboard replaced (improved, but still crashing) and then the soundcard (finally all was ok). One of the guys on the phone said they'd send me a games pack to compensate, but that never materialised.

All that said, it did eventually get resolved and while they were always insisting they couldn't find a problem they weren't actually uncooperative. And since it was all finally resolved the PC has been great ever since. This all took place about 4 years ago, maybe out of date as testimonials go, and that is 4 years of trouble free PC after the initial 3 months.

So, uh, I dunno whether to recommend or avoid them


(I actually had a Dell prior to this and while it wasn't anything special and probably 15-20% pricier than the equivalent from a place like PC Specialist, in the 4 years I had it only suffered one graphics card failure which they replaced within a couple days as it was still under warranty)

To quote Dr_Mechano, sorry to mildly threadjack this for my own purposes but...

I'm looking for my first laptop and I really want something that can manage CoX and maybe Guild Wars on the lowest graphics settings so I can use it for modest gaming while away from home. My ideal budget's £400 or less but I can stretch it to £500-ish if I have to.

I've found laptop shopping quite baffling, so if anyone has a personal recommendation I would bow to your experience and very much appreciate it.

My housemate got his on the evening of the Thursday before Christmas from Chillblast. It was DoA (we presume the courier company shook it or dropped it by the fact that when it was sent out again, they packed it internally with foam unlike the first time). Chillblast seriously got their fingers out to get the PC back to them, repaired and back to him before Christmas. The PC is also seriously quiet and well ventilated.


This customer service experience contrasts with mine. I got mine from Mesh. The PC itself is fine although not as quiet as the Chillblast one, but when I've had problems, it took them 10 days to get an engineer out to repair it on site as per the warranty (dead graphics card), and ages to sort it out when the mother board died in the later return to base period of the warranty. They don't consider the fact that you're without a PC for weeks a major problem, and treat you with a certain amount of contempt.