Defiance V - Do Not Buy

I ordered a Defiance V, and it took me one night of playing Payday 2 and having the laptop sit at 85-90'C, a red hot keyboard and serious light bleed from the bottom left for me to decide it wasn't the laptop for me.

Dispite the emails from their support team suggesting that the temperatures were normal, if it was running that hot for a game released in 2013, I'm just glad I didn't put something truly demanding on it and it would've cooked itself.

Once the laptop was returned, even though their support team had suggested the temperatures were fine, miraculously a re paste resolved a temperature issue, between that and the horror stories on this forum on the Defiance V temperatures I decided I had enough and no longer wanted the laptop, I am still currently waiting for my money and I think it is taking the **** a bit.

See timeline below and make your own judgement.


12/09/2018 Ordered
15/09/2018 awaiting dispatch - 3am
17/09/2018 dispatched
18/09/2018 delivered
19/09/2018 RMA 1 created
20/09/2018 RMA 1 Approved
21/09/2018 Collected
24/09/2018 RMA 1 Received by PCS
26/09/2018 RMA 1 update, now on work bench to be looked at
27/09/2018 RMA 1 update (Appology for having it for 3 working days, most likely automated workflow). 1am
27/09/2018 RMA 2 created 11am - Requesting that they keep the machine and provide me a refund. (Note they already have the machine at this time, minus the welcome pack and kettle lead).
27/09/2018 RMA 1 update - The Machine has been re-pasted which has reduced temperatures? Does that mean whoever did it last time did a s%%t job? Light bleed is a figment isn't too bad? eye of the beholder I guess.
27/09/2018 RMA 2 Approved
28/09/2018 RMA 1 passed to the refund department.
01/10/2018 RMA 2 Powercable and welcome pack collected
02/10/2018 Email about being passed to refund department, should this not have been done on the 28/10/2018 when it was initially passed to refund department?
02/10/2018 Email confirming that there was an issue present even after emails with their support suggested the temperature was fine. Note: "We can only appologise that you have had these issues, we are working to addressthese long term on this line of chassis", does this mean they are aware the chassis is not suitable? I think I will leave this here as I don't want to go into the realms of suggesting they are selling a product of not fit for purpose.
05/10/2018 I have emailed PCS to check status of my refund as money is still not in my account, and can take up to 5 working days, so as a minimum I will not now get my money back until 08/10/2018.

Overall, what a ****ing disaster nearly a whole month to buy, return and get a refund...


The Laptop I ordered:
Chassis & Display Defiance Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) + G-Sync
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 8750H (2.2GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 - 6.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Hard Disk NOT REQUIRED
1st M.2 SSD Drive 500GB WD Black™ M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3400MB/s R | 2500MB/s W)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor 1 x 200W AC Adaptor
Battery Defiance Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (66WH)
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Thermal Paste COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card 2 Channel High Def. Audio + MIC/Headphone + Sound BlasterX® Pro-Gaming 720°
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9260 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB Options 4 x USB 3.0 Ports + 1 x USB 3.1 Type C Ports
Keyboard Language RGB BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser Google Chrome™
Notebook Mouse INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 5 to 7 working days
Promotional Item FREE PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Battlefield 1 & More! w/ select Intel CPUs!
Pricing Information
Price (excluding VAT) £1,081.67
Price £1,298.00

It's unfortunate that you didn't post your proposed spec up here before buying, as you have noted there are many threads complaining about excessive heat from the Defiance V. I for one would have advised that you consider a different model of laptop, in my opinion (and I don't work for PCS) there is a design issue with that laptop.

I understand that you're disappointed, anyone would be, and you've had a very unpleasant experience. The Defiance V is (IMO) a chassis with problems, but if you step back and look at the service you've received it's actually very good...

You requested an RMA the day after you received it and PCS approved it the next day. Compare that with the likely response from a high street store or other vendors. PCS also agreed to refund you even whilst they still had the laptop in for repair. Again, not many other companies would be so accommodating. A 5-day wait for your refund isn't unusual nor unreasonable.

Regarding your point about the original paste being applied incorrectly, it's possible. People make mistakes, but equally sometimes stuff just happens.

Regarding PCS's comment about the chassis, I think that given the volume of reports of excessive heat on here that PCS are very well aware of a design issue with this chassis. Note that PCS don't build the chassis themselves so they are limited in what they can do.

It's annoying to have wasted almost a month of your time but I'm quite confident that had you bought a laptop from almost anywhere else you'd have had to fight much harder for your repairs and refund. In addition, and for the benefit of new users reading this, posting your intended spec on here gets you the collective experience of some very knowledgeable and experienced people, almost none of whom work for PCS, so their advice and opinions are unbiased. We can almost always prevent the purchase of an unsuitable PC or laptop.

I'd second everything ubuysa has just said. In fact, most retailers insist outside of their initial return/refund window that they are given two attempts to repair an item before they then even begin to consider replacement/refunds.

It's never nice when something we've ordered, waited for to be built and sent and then when we finally get it in our hands, we end up with an issue or issues.

Don't write off an alternative chassis - I don't know your particular use case, but the Recoil II seems to get very good reviews and PCS now have a 17.3" version to buy

Hi Ubuysa,

Thank you for your response.

Overall I do believe they have been accommodating, and always have been as I also got my PC from them some years ago. but I believe they could've started the refund process whilst waiting for the power cable and welcome pack were being returned.

This was mostly a vent to be honest, hence why I posted it here as opposed to a more public forum or social media account I'm not quite in nuclear mode yet, but if my money isn't back by Monday I think that may be a different story.

And, so they have a written record of the issue with the chassis to enable them to approach the supplier for a resolution and which will hopefully aid those thinking of buying in the future.

In my opinion, valid or not I do not know, if there are known issue with the chassis, they should either not sell said chassis or reduce the options to within the chassis capabilities. A customer should not have to post the specs to a public forum for other members of the public to tell them there is a problem.

The laptop in it's default state, without any upgrades, overclocking or additions should be able to function and run to the maximum of its capability between now and the end of time without cooking itself.
(I should've mentioned in the first post but the laptop was reaching those temperatures on a cooling pad, with all the windows open in the room.)

For now though I think it has put me off the idea of a desktop replacement and will return to the upgrade cycle I have for my desktop.

stevenrobinson432 said:

Hi Ubuysa,

Thank you for your response.

Overall I do believe they have been accommodating, and always have been as I also got my PC from them some years ago. but I believe they could've started the refund process whilst waiting for the power cable and welcome pack were being returned.

This was mostly a vent to be honest, hence why I posted it here as opposed to a more public forum or social media account I'm not quite in nuclear mode yet, but if my money isn't back by Monday I think that may be a different story.

And, so they have a written record of the issue with the chassis to enable them to approach the supplier for a resolution and which will hopefully aid those thinking of buying in the future.

In my opinion, valid or not I do not know, if there are known issue with the chassis, they should either not sell said chassis or reduce the options to within the chassis capabilities. A customer should not have to post the specs to a public forum for other members of the public to tell them there is a problem.

The laptop in it's default state, without any upgrades, overclocking or additions should be able to function and run to the maximum of its capability between now and the end of time without cooking itself.
(I should've mentioned in the first post but the laptop was reaching those temperatures on a cooling pad, with all the windows open in the room.)

For now though I think it has put me off the idea of a desktop replacement and will return to the upgrade cycle I have for my desktop.

Click to expand...

Whilst I'd tend to agree with everything you've said, what no one here has, is full details of how many Defiant V's they have sold and what proportion have exhibited the issue. Generally speaking, people only come here to complain about an issue rather than praise a fully working device.

It may well be therefore that we on the forums have biased information.

I do believe that PCS have pulled various machines in the past when it's become apparent there are issues.

Tony1044 said:

Whilst I'd tend to agree with everything you've said, what no one here has, is full details of how many Defiant V's they have sold and what proportion have exhibited the issue. Generally speaking, people only come here to complain about an issue rather than praise a fully working device.

It may well be therefore that we on the forums have biased information.

I do believe that PCS have pulled various machines in the past when it's become apparent there are issues.

Click to expand...

Hi Tony,

Thank you for your response, I agree people do generally complain in reviews so yes there may always be a slightly biased information.

The problem with this is that when I contacted support about the temperatures I was told it was fine yet when it was returned they agreed there was a problem. So another possible variable would be how many of those satisfied customers have queried the temperatures, been told they are fine by support and gone about their day believing they have a fully working device.

stevenrobinson432 said:

Hi Tony,

Thank you for your response, I agree people do generally complain in reviews so yes there may always be a slightly biased information.

The problem with this is that when I contacted support about the temperatures I was told it was fine yet when it was returned they agreed there was a problem. So another possible variable would be how many of those satisfied customers have queried the temperatures, been told they are fine by support and gone about their day believing they have a fully working device.

Click to expand...

Again, I agree that that's not good enough. Clearly those kinds of temperatures aren't normal and as Oussebon points out, no matter what the hardware is - whether a laptiop or dekstop - it should be able to run at 100% of its capacity without either cooking itself or throttling itself.

I would say that one of the most commonly seen issues with PCS tends to be around a lack of, or simple miscommunication. When I bought my own Defiance II a few years back (and not to rub salt in the wounds, but it's still going strong some three and a bit years later) my initial experience wasn't a good one. Lack of communication, contradictory information and I even had to have the first unit replaced due to faults.

PCS didn't initially cover themselves with glory but when asked to act, they did so quickly and fairly and ultimately that helped mend the impression.

Again though, I am in agreement with pretty much everything you're saying but I do hope the experience won't put you off trusting PCS again.

No worries on the salt, I am glad your laptop is working fine and as expected.

I think you are probably on the point with the "Lack of communication, contradictory information", maybe if they hadn't been so adamant it was fine and had just said that doesn't sound right send it back as soon as it was mentioned, rather than me having to push for it and then leading me to find contradictory information here I may not have been so annoyed.

By them saying it was fine, then admitting there is a problem and finally admitting there is an issue with chassis, understandably anybody would be confused, annoyed and distrusting of anything they said from then onward.

My PC that I got from them 5 years ago is also still running strong and 2 friends who I recommended to PCS both have great machines that are still going well.

Case: COOLERMASTER SILENCIO 550 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4820K (3.7GHz) 10MB Cache
Motherboard ASUS® P9X79 LE: INTEL® SOCKET LG2011
Memory (RAM) 32GB KINGSTON HYPERX BEAST QUAD-DDR3 2400MHz X.M.P (4 x 8GB KIT)
Graphics Card 4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 770 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk 500GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD5003AZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)*

*I have added a few TBs' since.

My suspicion with the Defiance is that the systems can be fine, since the Defiances were always a popular branding by PCS and I assume they must sell hundreds of these things or more, but that the chassis is much more prone to giving these issues than it ought to be given recent gens of CPU. PCS looking for Clevo to implement a fix to further reduce the incidence of issues wouldn't necessarily be inconsistent with that.

But I haven't looked up the clevo chassis online to see whether experts on various notebook forums also have this view. I'm only basing that suspicion on there having been a half a dozen or a dozen people complain of issues rather than fifty or a hundred which is probably what you'd expect if all the Defiances were borked.

Even if this is the case that doesn't account for what seems to be a relatively high number with temperature issues slipping through quality control processes.

I'd definitely be peeved as even the best service in the world wouldn't entirely make up for the concern over buying a £1500 system that on delivery was better suited to roasting chickens than its intended use.

PCS seem to have a bit of a gap in their lineup here to be honest. You have the Recoil and Optimus which are a bit lower down, but offer no 1070 or gsync. There's the Octane which is fine but is a beast and much more expensive. But for someone who wants a regular-ish sized laptop with a gsync screen (regardless of the 1070 or no) the only choice is the Defiance, which feels hard to recommend...

Hi Steven,

First of all, I am sorry to hear this was not the chassis for you and I do understand your reasoning. Comparing the opinions I hear on here and some of the feedback I do hear from customers with chassis, I personally could not agree that the chassis itself does not work. Admittedly (and I would by no means ever say otherwise) this laptop can run rather warm under load due to the high specification of the components. Officially, the temperatures this machine generally runs at are within specification of the chips, the processor is rated anywhere up to 100 degrees and will only thermal throttle over 95 degrees. Anything outside of 95 degrees is an issue and naturally we would want the machine back in order to resolve these.

Regarding your RMA, I have spoken to him and the technician does believe that you machine was performing to specification as we had said. He did try a re-paste in order to hopefully improve temperatures given the nature of your RMA. To clarify, in this case the issue my colleague mentioned in his email (on the 2nd) was a separate backlight issue you were seeing. Regarding the time frame, unfortunately new RMAs being booked do not notify the technician of a change in how you wish us to process your return. I do hope that once you were in direct communication with us about this that your requests were dealt with efficiently.

I do hope that your feelings about this particular machine do not tarnish your opinion of our other products and I will gladly assist you in advising on a future specification if you wish.