So I've had my new desktop for a little over a week now. I ordered on the 30th Jan 2012 and it was finally delivered the 2nd March 2012. That's over a month waiting and was quite frustrating.

I originally used the live chat to find out if anything was holding up the order and was told nope, it would be ready to be built. Then it got built and was waiting for going into test ... for ages ... and after querying, the hard drive was out of stock. The order was sadly hit by the hard drive shortage and it was simply a shame that communication of this was poor up front. But once the stock came in, everything was fast tracked and I received the computer. Delivery and packaging were top notch. You even get told a delivery window on the day of delivery.

As for the product itself, I am extremely impressed! I've been using laptops the past few years (both a MacBook Pro and a desktop replacement), so build quality, performance and stability have been my biggest concerns. I've always build desktop PCs in the past but wanted to get the custom built flexibility but without the hassle of putting it altogether myself. I checked around for Dell and all the other machines on companies like Ebuyer or Dabs, but couldn't find what I really wanted.

The desktop they built me is very fast, quieter than I expected and well, simply just works. Playing a couple of games (Battlefield 3 and Portal 2), they both look absolutely amazing. I've had years of missing out of PC gaming which consoles simply can't match for first person shooters.

One thing I noticed however was the RAM I ordered was 1600Mhz but the bios said it was running at 1333MHz. I posted on the pcspecialist forum (on a weekend) and got a response almost immediately with step by step instructions on how to set it to the right speed. There is a great online community with this company full of people who will certainly help out. I've even noticed people asking what their spec is like before ordering and they will get responses on how to get better performance for the same price.

In summary, yes I had some teething problems with the delays in the order (which at least can mostly be attributed to the hard drive shortage across the whole industry), but the computer, build quality and value simply are excellent.

Would I buy from pcspecialist again? Yes, yes I would.

I give 4/5 because I asked specifically if an item was out of stock holding it up, and after being told there wasn't, only to find out 2-3 weeks later that there was, I was a disappointed. They couldn't explain why, but I have a theory that the stock isn't tied to specific orders and a fast track order could have cut in line. I could have chased them more and would have found out sooner meaning I could have changed the hard drive and had the computer sooner. They also have a strange concept of a computer being built and ready for test (which an email said), despite not having a hard disk.