Independent Computer shop
Independent Computer shop
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Discussion

Engineer1

Original Poster:

10,486 posts

226 months

Thursday 28th January 2010
quotequote all
I am looking to price up a fairly powerful Workstation PC, (budget won't allow me to buy it yet unless the price is right) and was wondering if anyone knew any independent computer companies or shops ideally in the West Midlands that could build or supply one. I'd prefer to spend my money with a small firm rather than Dell or Similar.

Scraggles

7,619 posts

241 months

Thursday 28th January 2010
quotequote all
I know a guy in telford, he has built 2 pc's for a friend and have recommended him to some other friends

pm me your email address and will forward it to him

asked him a pile of numpty questions and got all the right answers, even some of the serious questions suggested I did not have as much knowledge as I thought I had....

edit - he gave me a very nice spec of a pc to give me an idea of what he can do, MICE and a pile of other qualifications

Edited by Scraggles on Thursday 28th January 18:16

roger482

112 posts

254 months

Thursday 28th January 2010
quotequote all
Try Martin, he has built 3 high end systems for me, all excellent.

http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/EasyPC-Ltd__W0QQ_arm...

bigburd

2,670 posts

217 months

Thursday 28th January 2010
quotequote all
I tend to avoid one man bands - done my fair share of home builds - thesedays for desktop/tower PC's I tend start looking at Dell's online outlet.

In my experience the independents I have used in the past like Millenium in Oakham now tend not to build their own and provide your standard HP/Lenovo etc. To run a sensible small business the money is not in the hardware knowledge, it is the software.

Plus remember any issues are always the responsibility of the retailer and not the manufacturer. I feel this makes things much easier if you buy a Dell or HP etc rather than a heinz 57 of a PC from joe bloggs.


Actually the only other alternative I would suggest is SCAN.CO.UK


Graham

16,376 posts

301 months

Friday 29th January 2010
quotequote all
I've been around the pc market for about 20 years now and there is no such thing as a good cheap pc.. the margins are so small that the only way you make a cheap pc is to cut corners.. even if that just means buying in random parts without actually testing them together..

building your self might save what 25 quid... I'd go for a bigger branded non brand if that makes sense... Always check what dell will do first as they sometimes have stupid offers.

for a branded non brand I'd suggest stone computers. they are big enough to have national next day on site but not as big as someone like dell. I think they sell to public now ( mainly LG and education supplier)

Frankeh

12,558 posts

202 months

Friday 29th January 2010
quotequote all
The value is in the warranty imo.

plasticpig

12,932 posts

242 months

Friday 29th January 2010
quotequote all
If you are intending to use it for CAD applications (your profile suggests you might be) I would buy a workstation that is certified by your CAD software vendor to work properly with the software. HP,Dell and others sell certified systems.

Andrew[MG]

3,344 posts

215 months

Friday 29th January 2010
quotequote all
bigburd said:
Actually the only other alternative I would suggest is SCAN.CO.UK
One of the few places that I'm happy to buy computer components - excellent service!

Scraggles

7,619 posts

241 months

Friday 29th January 2010
quotequote all
forwarded the PM to the contact

warranty is ok, but most are return to base with the risk of personal files being accessed frown

no issues so far, apart from using city link couriers to drop my pc out of a first floor window, at least that must be what caused the drive bay chassis to become bent out of shape, apparently as I had signed for it, tough luck

Post office courier was great smile

DavidHM

3,940 posts

217 months

Friday 29th January 2010
quotequote all
Scraggles said:
warranty is ok, but most are return to base with the risk of personal files being accessed frown
If that's an issue, multiple external 1TB+ drives for all data or a drive tower with frequent backups. Only O/S and applications within the machine.

Scraggles

7,619 posts

241 months

Friday 29th January 2010
quotequote all
Clarification from PC builder friend

Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator who works for a large Midlands based business IT company that is Gold certified Partner, he is a dell certified Systems engineer and a HP accredited platform specialist as well as many others....

Current system is a 1 TB boot drive with a 2x 500GB raid 0 array that was vista, vista is being wiped at the moment, the boot drive seems to be faster than the raid smile

My local pc shop was useful when new to PC's but when they let slip that some guy had asked them to build him a top rated PC and charged £7500 for a system worth £2500 max, think their phrase was a spastic retard....and they thought it sooo funny to rip him off frown

Nice kit for sure, just an unprofessional attitude, one of the workers quit soon after.

Frankeh

12,558 posts

202 months

Saturday 30th January 2010
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Raid 0? You renegade!

Smiler.

11,752 posts

247 months

Saturday 30th January 2010
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Scan will build you anything for a price. I see you work with 3D CAD.

I built a workstation last year with parts sourced from Scan based around an Intel S5520SC mobo.

With dual Xeon CPU's, 12GB RAM, NVIDIA Quadro GPU, 4 x 250GB HDD in RAID 10 & Vista 64, it's very fast.

Will run all the Apps I need concurrently with no problems.

Good luck with sourcing an Intel SC mobo at the moment though.

Scan would use Supermicro - it's what they use in their 3XS systems.

V8mate

45,899 posts

206 months

Sunday 31st January 2010
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Independents can rarely compete on price with the 'big boys' for one simple reason: the cost of the OS.