Well, I received my order 6 days after placing it, which wasn't too bad. The machine I ordered was:
Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 750D FULL TOWER CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-4790k Quad Core (4.00GHz @ upto 4.70GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® SABERTOOTH Z97 MK1: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, THERMAL ARMOR
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2133MHz X.M.P (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 - 1 DVI, 1 mHDMI, 3 mDP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT Game with Select GTX 9 Series GPUs!
2nd Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 - 1 DVI, 1 mHDMI, 3 mDP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT Game with Select GTX 9 Series GPUs!
1st Hard Disk
500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
3TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD3003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£139)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100i Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£89)
Extra Case Fans
2 x 12CM Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof) (£9)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Windows 10 Upgrade
FREE Upgrade to Windows 10 with all Windows 7 & Windows 8.1 Purchases
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor
ASUS 27" ROG Swift PG278Q (£621)
Monitor Cables
1 x 2m DisplayPort Adapter Cable - Mini DP (m) to DP (m) (£9)
Speakers
Creative Inspire T3300 2.1 Speaker System (£48)
Warranty
3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour) (£135)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 6 working days
Quantity
1
I received a courtesy call on Wednesday saying my order would be delivered by Friday, and asking if I'd like any advice. We discussed the extra case fans in detail and decided that I'd like them put into a push/pull configuration with my H100i or, failing that, set to intake from the bottom of the case. The guy I spoke to then kindly told me he would speak to the guy who was building it right away to ensure that what I wanted was done and, if there were any problems with it, he would give me a call. He was really nice and let me babble on excitedly while I walked around IKEA.
I love DPD. Their tracking service is ace and I've never had a problem with them. I received a text message and an email on Friday morning telling my that my order would be delivered between 0930 and 1030. Around 0935 there was a knock on the door and my PC was delivered (unfortunately I was, at that moment, mid- stream and had a sudden panic that he would leave as I wasn't there to answer the door!). After a hasty rush to the front door, the delivery man give me two enormous boxes. I was a little dismayed to see that both had sustained damage during transit.
I looked at the writing on the box, which stated that if there was any damage, the delivery man must wait while I open the box and inspect the goods, then fill out a form. Now, these guys are under extremely heavy pressure to deliver quickly, so it was no surprise to me when the delivery an refused to do this. Instead he marked the boxes as damaged and went on his way.
I lugged the heavy boxes through the house and into the dining room where the machine was to be set up. With some trepidation, I opened the boxes. Everything was fine. Nothing inside had been damaged. PCS had done an excellent job of packing it. Still, I'm disappointed in DPD for causing damage to the boxes despite the many, many signs on the boxes labelling them as 'fragile'. Never mind. An excited bonalste sets about unpacking his new computer.
I open the box and remove the welcome pack. It is heavy and rather vast. Opening it up, I find all of my manuals, a PCS welcome booklet, a load of extras for the motherboard and the installation CDs:
I unload the box and see the foam insert that PCS have included for packing the case. It's a very nifty feature, and following the instructions I carefully remove it:
With the foam insert removed, I take a look in my case:
Hmm, no push/pull Config. At this point I grow suspicious and check the underside of the case. Nope, no fans there. No fan above the blueray drive either. In a rather bad mood, I put the case back together and go to sainsburys!
I come back feeling no happier, and telephone PCS. With much apologising, they order my two case fans sent out to me. There are several issues that I have with this. Firstly, I paid to have these fans installed by somebody at PCS. I didn't pay for me to have to do it myself. I'm not a very technically savvy person, which is why I didn't build the machine myself. All I have done previously is change GPU and add some RAM. So this didn't make me too happy at all. The other two offers open to me were PCS reimbursing me the cost of the fans. Now, I want these fans installed, so that was no option. Alternatively I could send it back for PCS to install them, but I had already removed the protective foam insert and had waited long enough to the computer to come to me - how much longer would that take? So I bit the bullet and told them to send me the fans.
Surprisingly, there was no offer of compensation of any type. We're I PCS, I would have refunded the cost of the fans and also sent them to me. After all, it took me about an hour to fit the fans yesterday (actually I only fitted one, and haven't been able to fit the second yet), which is worth far more than £9. Now, the reason I couldn't fit the second fan is that the cable isn't long enough to reach from the bottom of the case to the upper 4 pin connector, so I have had to purchase a male to female 4 pin extension cable myself. So I'm going to have to do the same thing tomorrow when my extension cable arrives, and it's also going to be ugly because I have no skill in cable management.
So yeah, I'm not too chuffed with the service offered by PCS on this occasion. I'll use them again because they are good value and they packaged well, but I'm surprised that the missing fans didn't get picked up during testing or quality control (it shows clearly in the front page of the BIOS that there are two missing case fans) and that there was nothing more than an apology on offer. I'm also surprised they PCS didn't offer to call out an engineer to fit it for me, which I would have expected. It's sad that they fell short this time. Hopefully when I upgrade in the future I'll see an improvement. I must say that I find this doubly baffling as the guy on the phone expressly informed me that he would organise the fans with the builder, so not only were they in my order, they were also discussed at length.
Anyway, I'm aware of how negative posts tend to make people backlash against the poster, so I'll end this by saying that I absolutely love my rig. I've upgraded from an old Dell Dimension 9200 that I bought in 2006, and this is faster by miles. My awesome new machine:
Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 750D FULL TOWER CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-4790k Quad Core (4.00GHz @ upto 4.70GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® SABERTOOTH Z97 MK1: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, THERMAL ARMOR
Memory (RAM)
16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2133MHz X.M.P (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 - 1 DVI, 1 mHDMI, 3 mDP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT Game with Select GTX 9 Series GPUs!
2nd Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 - 1 DVI, 1 mHDMI, 3 mDP - 3D Vision Ready
Free Item
FREE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT Game with Select GTX 9 Series GPUs!
1st Hard Disk
500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
3TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD3003FZEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
16x BLU-RAY WRITER DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET (£139)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100i Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler (£89)
Extra Case Fans
2 x 12CM Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof) (£9)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Windows 10 Upgrade
FREE Upgrade to Windows 10 with all Windows 7 & Windows 8.1 Purchases
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Monitor
ASUS 27" ROG Swift PG278Q (£621)
Monitor Cables
1 x 2m DisplayPort Adapter Cable - Mini DP (m) to DP (m) (£9)
Speakers
Creative Inspire T3300 2.1 Speaker System (£48)
Warranty
3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour) (£135)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 6 working days
Quantity
1
I received a courtesy call on Wednesday saying my order would be delivered by Friday, and asking if I'd like any advice. We discussed the extra case fans in detail and decided that I'd like them put into a push/pull configuration with my H100i or, failing that, set to intake from the bottom of the case. The guy I spoke to then kindly told me he would speak to the guy who was building it right away to ensure that what I wanted was done and, if there were any problems with it, he would give me a call. He was really nice and let me babble on excitedly while I walked around IKEA.
I love DPD. Their tracking service is ace and I've never had a problem with them. I received a text message and an email on Friday morning telling my that my order would be delivered between 0930 and 1030. Around 0935 there was a knock on the door and my PC was delivered (unfortunately I was, at that moment, mid- stream and had a sudden panic that he would leave as I wasn't there to answer the door!). After a hasty rush to the front door, the delivery man give me two enormous boxes. I was a little dismayed to see that both had sustained damage during transit.
I looked at the writing on the box, which stated that if there was any damage, the delivery man must wait while I open the box and inspect the goods, then fill out a form. Now, these guys are under extremely heavy pressure to deliver quickly, so it was no surprise to me when the delivery an refused to do this. Instead he marked the boxes as damaged and went on his way.
I lugged the heavy boxes through the house and into the dining room where the machine was to be set up. With some trepidation, I opened the boxes. Everything was fine. Nothing inside had been damaged. PCS had done an excellent job of packing it. Still, I'm disappointed in DPD for causing damage to the boxes despite the many, many signs on the boxes labelling them as 'fragile'. Never mind. An excited bonalste sets about unpacking his new computer.
I open the box and remove the welcome pack. It is heavy and rather vast. Opening it up, I find all of my manuals, a PCS welcome booklet, a load of extras for the motherboard and the installation CDs:
I unload the box and see the foam insert that PCS have included for packing the case. It's a very nifty feature, and following the instructions I carefully remove it:
With the foam insert removed, I take a look in my case:
Hmm, no push/pull Config. At this point I grow suspicious and check the underside of the case. Nope, no fans there. No fan above the blueray drive either. In a rather bad mood, I put the case back together and go to sainsburys!
I come back feeling no happier, and telephone PCS. With much apologising, they order my two case fans sent out to me. There are several issues that I have with this. Firstly, I paid to have these fans installed by somebody at PCS. I didn't pay for me to have to do it myself. I'm not a very technically savvy person, which is why I didn't build the machine myself. All I have done previously is change GPU and add some RAM. So this didn't make me too happy at all. The other two offers open to me were PCS reimbursing me the cost of the fans. Now, I want these fans installed, so that was no option. Alternatively I could send it back for PCS to install them, but I had already removed the protective foam insert and had waited long enough to the computer to come to me - how much longer would that take? So I bit the bullet and told them to send me the fans.
Surprisingly, there was no offer of compensation of any type. We're I PCS, I would have refunded the cost of the fans and also sent them to me. After all, it took me about an hour to fit the fans yesterday (actually I only fitted one, and haven't been able to fit the second yet), which is worth far more than £9. Now, the reason I couldn't fit the second fan is that the cable isn't long enough to reach from the bottom of the case to the upper 4 pin connector, so I have had to purchase a male to female 4 pin extension cable myself. So I'm going to have to do the same thing tomorrow when my extension cable arrives, and it's also going to be ugly because I have no skill in cable management.
So yeah, I'm not too chuffed with the service offered by PCS on this occasion. I'll use them again because they are good value and they packaged well, but I'm surprised that the missing fans didn't get picked up during testing or quality control (it shows clearly in the front page of the BIOS that there are two missing case fans) and that there was nothing more than an apology on offer. I'm also surprised they PCS didn't offer to call out an engineer to fit it for me, which I would have expected. It's sad that they fell short this time. Hopefully when I upgrade in the future I'll see an improvement. I must say that I find this doubly baffling as the guy on the phone expressly informed me that he would organise the fans with the builder, so not only were they in my order, they were also discussed at length.
Anyway, I'm aware of how negative posts tend to make people backlash against the poster, so I'll end this by saying that I absolutely love my rig. I've upgraded from an old Dell Dimension 9200 that I bought in 2006, and this is faster by miles. My awesome new machine:
Playing Flight sim with everything set to custom, sliders all the way to the right on everything and all effects turned on, as well as extremely hefty 3rd party software. No from drop. Beautiful. Playing Rome 2 on maximum possible settings (once again, custom beyond ultra) at 60fps. Not great and not using my beautiful ROG Swift to its full potential there, but I'm not going to complain about that. Yeah, I'm extremely happy with this machine. It starts up in about 20 seconds. Amazing.