PC Specialist. (pcspecialist.co.uk)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	pcspecialist.co.uk
Date:	27/12/07 (1683 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great site, tonnes of options, good customer service, excellent PCs

Disadvantages: No individual component prices

After years of building PCs for myself and others, I had decided that I'd had enough and that this time I would get someone to do it for me. I was looking for a fairly powerful PC that could do all the usual stuff (office work, email, surfing etc.), not fall over when doing some graphics processing and was capable of running recent games. As my gaming genre of choice is the first person shooter, typically resource hungry on PCs, then the PC had to have a kick to it.

Browsing the web, there wasn't much between the various PC specifications offered by the usual vendors. They all offered pretty much the same components at roughly the same prices.

By chance, a work colleague showed me a copy of PC Advisor who had reviewed several PCs. Even though one company seemed to come top of their "charts" on a monthly basis, I instantly discounted Eclipse Computers as a quick web search indicated a huge amount of negative reviews.

Another PC builder that seemed to produce good computers and with little in the way of negative feedback, was PC Specialist. A quick browse through their website was encouraging. It was easy to navigate and the choice in components was extensive. As an additional measure, I canvassed the members of a popular message board that I am a member of with regards to PC Specialist and got decent, mostly positive feedback.

Despite the amount of money involved, it seems rather shallow to say that the difference between placing my order at PC Specialist and other PC builders was the fact that the PC cases that PC Specialist used were a lot more pleasing on the eye than the competitors. However, the look of the case was important to me. Another factor that made me favour PC Specialist was that they don't automatically void your warranty if you open the case. This has two advantages for me. I could open the case and check for damage or erroneous parts when the new PC arrived and secondly, I could transfer across any items from my older PC that I wanted to keep and didn't want to buy again. I had a TV card that I could still put to good use. As long as you don't damage the PC by delving inside, PC Specialist won't slap your wrists. The icing on the cake was that the prices were competitive with similar online retailers.

So, on December 1st, I placed my order. Using the website to order the PC was excellent. If there's one negative aspect of the site, it's that the PC builder doesn't list the price or manufacturer of every component, only some (and these are typically smaller, cheaper ones). You're forced to build your PC, have the price calculated and then return to the previous screen to tweak the specification if you end up spending too much or too little. I think that having the prices listed would reduce the amount of fiddling necessary, especially if you're not tech savvy and don't know if a GT graphics card is better (or cheaper) than a GTS one. It would also be nice to see which manufacturers are being used to build your new pride and joy, but that might be a personal thing.

By ordering online, I had an account created for me. An email was sent to my listed email address with password details and my card details were taken. The credit card was charged immediately. The email also indicated that the typical build time was 15 to 20 working days, which meant that delivery before Christmas might be a little tight.

Note: PC Specialist offers a range of payment options, including several finance and buy now pay later options. I chose to pay by credit card for the consumer protection it afforded.

Within my little account, I was given the option of changing the order, seeing the status of the build process, contacting PC Specialist and other handy tools. At the time, PC Specialist had promised that orders made before December 5th would be guaranteed Christmas delivery.

After the first week, I received an email on the 9th of December, informing me of the status of the order. I thought that was a nice touch and while it didn't say too much, I still felt confident that my order would be complete on time.

Unfortunately, after two weeks, I was growing a little concerned about the order and had not received any further updates. It had been sitting in "pre-production" status since the status first changed a few days after the order. I fired off a quick email late on Friday 14th December querying the status. Even before PC Specialist could reply on the following Monday, my order quickly progressed through "In Building" and "In Testing" phases and was in "Awaiting dispatch" before the end of the day.

Arriving home from work, I was pleasantly surprised to see emails informing me of the status updates to my order. As I had been monitoring my account impatiently during the day, this was not news, but it would have been handy had I ordered the PC using my work email account. Additionally, on the Tuesday, I was sent an SMS message to my mobile phone to let me know that my PC had been dispatched and giving me the tracking number for DHL. This was another small thing that just helped things along, especially given my impatience.

The order was dispatched on Tuesday morning and in DHL's grubby little hands. Sadly, it was Friday before it was delivered (I think that paying a £20 surcharge for delivery to Northern Ireland, the least they could do is deliver it the next day), but that's DHL's problem, not PC Specialist's.

When it finally arrived, the box was huge. When I got through the cardboard, there was another box inside, around the size of a PC's keyboard. It was labelled my "welcome pack" and it contained any CDs/DVDs I might need (i.e. drivers for the components), my Windows Vista DVD (the 'proper' DVD, not a restore disc), manuals (one for the motherboard and a general one regarding PCs) and any leads or adapters that were included with the components, including the all-important power lead.

The PC case itself was well packed with polystyrene meaning it wouldn't shift around within the bigger box. It was that well packed, getting it out of the box was a bit of a pain, but a welcome one.

The PC itself was excellent. It was well-built, the case looked better than I had expected from the pictures on the website and after entering my details, Vista booted up and I was ready to go. I've been using the PC for around a week now and things are still going well. Having a peek inside, the only manufacturers' name I didn't recognise was the graphics card's, the others were recognisable: Intel, ASUS, LG etc.

While things may change in the long run, I'm extremely pleased with my new PC right now. Even when, during my research in November, I thought that it was slightly over the odds for a PC of that specification, I sourced the components myself and came up with a price of £696 (compared to the £749 I eventually paid through PC Specialist) and that was a great deal. From my perspective, the difference of £50 meant that PC Specialist could take the hassle of sourcing the components, putting them together (always a task that results in bloodied knuckles Chez Duke) and finally test the new box. I could simply order, sit back, wait impatiently and then enjoy the finished article.

If you're in the market for a new PC, irrespective of your budget and requirements, I would suggest that you take a peek at PC Specialist's site. I was impressed by their service levels (all emails replied within three days), prices and finished article and they have a range of base PCs (from which you can configure your own desired specifications).

Summary: Great PCs at a competitive price