Did anyone else get the sick feeling in their stomach after ordering?

[Grimezy]

So I've been looking for weeks now trying to get just the right spec for a new desktop. My 5 year old acer laptop is battered and I'm pretty sure it runs at boiling point temps most of the time. I decided "Hey, why not get a gaming rig? I'll be able to do all the normal stuff and I'll be able to play all the games that I grew up on like AoE2 and Counterstrike Source. Plus I love MMO's, etc which you can't get on the xbox. Plus my work colleague is telling me how great Guild Wars 2 is so I might as well."

So I finally came up with my build (with help from a few forum users!) and I've been sat here for about a week, every night, after working 9:00-5:30pm monday to friday, spending the weekend with my girlfriend nagging her about the pc that I want and teasing myself by always getting to the order screen but never being able to go through with it.

Then last night I'd been looking at my laptop screen for hours. By this time the heat from my laptop had radiated through my cooling tray down onto my knees. I couldn't take it anymore, I either had to order it or forget all about it and move on. I knew I wanted it as PC games suit me more and I'm considering a computing course at college or uni which it would be useful for. But then I knew I didn't have much space for a computer and that I barely had free time as it was. Plus I only had £1000 saved up.. And my rig was £999... So I did it.

I could barely sleep and now I've woken up this morning with the horrible feeling that I've done something wrong. My job pays really well so it will probably only take about 3 months to save my money back up but I just feel with it being so close to christmas it was a really rookie error. I didn't go out and blow my payslip when I first got this new job where as most of my friends would go out on the ale or spend £500 on wheels for their VW Lupo's.

I was saving to get a new car and I feel like I've just completely reset my mission to achieve that. It could work out well as I'd like to wait till I have 2 years NCB before getting a new car anyway but still. I just feel like I've done something wrong. Then I googled PC Specialist this morning and the 4th link down was "DO NOT GO TO PC SPECIALIST, TERRIBLE SERVICE" in a forum. After the 3 weeks I've been googling around for a gaming pc and the many times I've come on this site I have never once seen something like that. I know it's probably just my brain trying to make me regret it and I know that the people who have had a bad experience with PCS are the very very small minority as I've read so many good things about PCS. I just can't help but feel I've made a mistake just in buying a pc in general. I know I'll probably feel so much different once I've got it, I just want everything to be right. My girlfriend keeps telling me it was the right thing to do and I shouldn't have second thoughts but meh.

Sorry for the rant but there must be somebody else who has felt the same way after spending £1000 on a pc. Or even more/less than a grand as money means something different to everybody. I would just like some encouragement from you fellow forumers that I should stop worrying and that everything will be ok. And also to give me some things I can look forward to. I just keep saying to myself "I can't wait to see tetris on my GTX 670." but it's just not making it any better. These things need to come from other people!

Apologies again, anyone would think I'm a 5 year old girl rather than a 19 year old lad. #YOLO? *brings up bulletproof shield*

 

[Rakk]

I could barely sleep and now I've woken up this morning with the horrible feeling that I've done something wrong. My job pays really well so it will probably only take about 3 months to save my money back up but I just feel with it being so close to christmas it was a really rookie error.

I always feel like that when I spend a large amount of money, given what you say you did need a new PC, and if you feel like that when you buy something expensive all it means is that you know you had to work for your savings, you know how much effort went into it and more than likely you're going to be a person who is always careful with their money which is good

As for the one bad post you found, there will always be some like that, no company can keep 100% of their customers happy 100% of the time, it just doesn't happen. In the forums, posts like that are answered and generally resolved, they are never deleted (though vast amounts of swearing and offensive terms will be edited out) and often the person who wrote the post will come out of it happier.

 

[Wozza63]

I got a PC in december and its awesome, I love it, ignore the bad service posts, most of them are resolved and usually ended up being something silly

I will definitely be buying from PC Specialist again when this PCs time is up, although that will be a long while yet as I will be regularly upgrading

 

[Kalisnoir]

Always remember, more people who have problems will post about it than people who have had a good experience. I personally I never posted anywhere (even here) about my successful purchase. Put your mind at rest, things sometimes happen outside of PCS's hands and they are renown for great customer service but unfortunately people will see something wrong and jump the gun, posting with rage caps telling the world PCS is the devils work. Mostly the problems stem from during transit, sometimes it may be that there was a slight error during Q&A that wasn't picked up but they WILL fix it for you.

Also note that my PCS computer is now 2 years old, I spent £1700 odd on it and I will be buying another one next year or so.

 

[Adli]

that's perfectly normal, its a lot of money after all.

i was a little worried when i got this laptop but 2 months later and i don't regret buying it at all, even after the recent release of the Optimus IV

 

[rickne]

Ditto. It was glorious out performing my friends desktop in a coolermaster case the size of a small planet the other day with my Vortex 3 with a single 680 card.

 

[steaky360]

Reiterating comments from above - Felt ill for a few weeks after I made my purchase until it was delivered Well worth it though! I'm sure you'll have no issues but as mentioned earlier, if you do, they will get sorted.

 

[tom_gr7]

When I bought my rig, or anything for my rig, i felt like few clips below.

[video=youtube;0MiVjitccnE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0MiVjitccnE[/video]
[video=youtube;WlT1gM04uHw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlT1gM04uHw&feature=player_detailpage[/video]

 

[Grimezy]

Haha thanks guys, you've all really helped. I am really excited about it, I guess I just want it to arrive and all be here so I know it's worth it.

And I completely agree with the comment about people normally post things when they've gone wrong. I used to work in the facilities dept of a Uni and students would come in all day long saying "this has broke, this has broke, I pay this much money and my fridge leaked, blah blah". No one would ever come in saying "I woke up this morning and everything in my room was fine, it was brilliant, my lights work, the fridge worked, the cooker worked" so I can see what you mean! They actually gave me a very bad impression of where I worked even though they were probably the small minority.

Just a quick question off topic. If I play an old game like Age of empires 2 on a 32inch LCD HDTV with my pc, will the screen stretch and fill the full 32 inches or will it have black boxes round the side as it can't handle the resolution? It wouldn't be the end of the world and I haven't really thought about it till now but it was just on my mind.

 

[steaky360]

The size (inches) of the screen doesn't matter to the resolution of the image (unless I'm misunderstanding haha - it happens) - Your rig will likely be fine displaying images on your TV as I would imagine the maximum resolution is 1920 x 1080 and your PC should have no problems with that! The fact its 32" doesn't make a difference.

 

[donegal]

This is a great post samgri. It shows you know the value of money and you aren't reckless and that you care. Your girlfriend is encouraging and supportive when you needed it - that's worth the price of the computer alone!

I ordered mine on the 5th October. I checked it out with the guys on this forum but I kept researching things and discovering things and made change after change but nothing I think anyone here would take issue with. It is now the 12th working day and I just got my email 'In testing' !! :yes:

Woot!! In quality control!!

 

[Grimezy]

This is a great post samgri. It shows you know the value of money and you aren't reckless and that you care. Your girlfriend is encouraging and supportive when you needed it - that's worth the price of the computer alone!

I ordered mine on the 5th October. I checked it out with the guys on this forum but I kept researching things and discovering things and made change after change but nothing I think anyone here would take issue with. It is now the 12th working day and I just got my email 'In testing' !! :yes:

Woot!! In quality control!!

Thanks man, Im feeling a lot better now to be honest. I keep telling myself that there's people who spend £1200 on a macbook.. and lets face it there's no comparison.

And congratz let me know how your rig is, i bet you can't wait!

 

[donegal]

Thanks man, Im feeling a lot better now to be honest. I keep telling myself that there's people who spend £1200 on a macbook.. and lets face it there's no comparison.

And congratz let me know how your rig is, i bet you can't wait!

Well, barring accidents I know I am going to get it this week. It's like preparing the house for a new baby! I have cleaned out the study, done all the file backups on to exterior hard drives, and tomorrow I shall put up a 'workbench' where I can make sure everything is running fine before I unplug the old computer.

I anticipate having this new computer for at least four years. It's pretty tasty in terms of cpu and memory (far more so than my old one and I have had that nearly four years). I have spent the same as you - £1200 - I bought a new monitor too. That makes it £300 a year which is £6 a week. A small price to pay for 24/7 use all year, every year, for work and leisure.

 

[Grimezy]

Well, barring accidents I know I am going to get it this week. It's like preparing the house for a new baby! I have cleaned out the study, done all the file backups on to exterior hard drives, and tomorrow I shall put up a 'workbench' where I can make sure everything is running fine before I unplug the old computer.

I anticipate having this new computer for at least four years. It's pretty tasty in terms of cpu and memory (far more so than my old one and I have had that nearly four years). I have spent the same as you - £1200 - I bought a new monitor too. That makes it £300 a year which is £6 a week. A small price to pay for 24/7 use all year, every year, for work and leisure.

Absolutely! I spent £1000 and plan to run it through my HDTV. Not ideal but ill see how i go for now as we're quite short on space! Is yours going to be for gaming? What are you planning on spending the most time on?

 

[donegal]

Absolutely! I spent £1000 and plan to run it through my HDTV. Not ideal but ill see how i go for now as we're quite short on space! Is yours going to be for gaming? What are you planning on spending the most time on?

I'm not a gamer but am slowly being seduced by the dark side after reading this forum. I mainly want it for photo and video editing and general computer usage. I use Photoshop Elements and Premiere and Lightroom.

I played games years ago - Elite, Doom 1 and 2, MS Flight Combat sim, and enjoyed them but slowly other things took over. I have just discovered an Elite-type program called Pioneer and can't wait to try it out.

I suppose what I really want is a do-all computer. If I wanna play games I want it to be able to with a fair degree of ability. But mainly photos and video (the latter of which is very time consuming on a slow machine because of rendering) is the primary concern.

 

[Grimezy]

I'm not a gamer but am slowly being seduced by the dark side after reading this forum. I mainly want it for photo and video editing and general computer usage. I use Photoshop Elements and Premiere and Lightroom.

I played games years ago - Elite, Doom 1 and 2, MS Flight Combat sim, and enjoyed them but slowly other things took over. I have just discovered an Elite-type program called Pioneer and can't wait to try it out.

I suppose what I really want is a do-all computer. If I wanna play games I want it to be able to with a fair degree of ability. But mainly photos and video (the latter of which is very time consuming on a slow machine because of rendering) is the primary concern.

Ahh fair enough I imagine I'll start getting into things like that in the future especially if I decide to go back to college and take up computing science or something. I generally don't game much on my consoles anymore to be honest, I can't sit and play FPS's on my own on console and all I really play are things like Fifa and the missus bought me the new F1 so I have a blast on that when I can. I'm hoping that my pc will relight my FPS personality and I'll also be able to play my strategy games and rpg's. I saw an awesome FPS style medieval game called Chivalry last night which I'm probably gonna buy, looks pretty decent.

PC has entered pre-production ^^ Waheeeey.

 

[donegal]

Mine is still in QC being hammered I hope.

Then I saw the posts by khaos on build quality which he is not happy with. I will be standing at the street door waiting for DPD with my magnifying glass :detective:

 

[Grimezy]

Mine is still in QC being hammered I hope.

Then I saw the posts by khaos on build quality which he is not happy with. I will be standing at the street door waiting for DPD with my magnifying glass :detective:

Hmmm, I've read a few negative ones but I think it's best to just wait and see what happens. I've also started reading quite a few positive ones so that's reassuring. I doubt I'll be home for my delivery so it will have to be in the capable hands of my brother! -.- Unless DPD have a very accurate delivery notification that would allow me to nip home from work?

 

[donegal]

...Unless DPD have a very accurate delivery notification that would allow me to nip home from work?

Apparently they have. To within an hour and it usually works I think.

In all honesty, I have every faith in PCS otherwise I wouldn't have ordered from them. My son has had his PCS laptop for two years now and he swears by it.

And it should be remembered also that PCS allow the negative posts on their forums where a lot of outfits delete them (if they have a forum that is). I think this works in their favour because publicly they are showing the ways they are dealing with problems (which are inevitable - except with my computer!!)

And how come your name changed??

 

[Wake]

I can comment from experience. I bought a Dell desktop 6 years ago - still going, great 'investment' at £1400.00. I then bought a Rock Pegasus 670 laptop for travelling - £1700.00 - sent back before I had had it 10 days. I bought a Zepto 6625WD - £1500.00 - went back 7 times in 12 months then Zepto went into liquidation when it was getting 'repaired' - never saw it again. I bought an Asus to replace it - £599, had it 3 years, no issues. Bought a Chillblast desktop 15 months ago - gone back 4 times for repairs so far. Bought a Samsung laptop - returned after one day (last Saturday). I have just ordered an Optimus IV - £785.00.
My advice is:
Buy from the UK if you live in the UK
Read the forums - some of these people know what they are talking about
Get a good warranty - silver service here appears good
Aftersales service is more important than your initial spec - don't forget that - my Chillblast has been returned but the service is fantastic and if they built laptops I would have ordered from them
Always pay by credit card - the Zepto - still in Denmark - I got the money back from HSBC once I had proved Zepto went bust...this paid for the very nice Desktop upgrade

As a comfort for you - if I had any misgivings about PC Specialist I wouldn't be buying from them and, given my experience, you know I am serious