[dudeydan]

I was thinking of ordering a new custom built computer for gaming, and i've come to a conclusion that i'm going to be using one of these two websites. Does anyone think I should go for pcspecialist instead of dinopc, or vice versa? I used the webite to find out the price and they come to rougly the same (£1,146.12 for Dino PC and £1210 for PCSpecialist)

Also the delivery time looks alot better coming from Dino PC as PCSpecialist i've heared takes upto a month while Dino PC takes a week to two. Also Dino PC have nicer looking and bigger cases

Thanks all Dan

[Chris2153]

Hi Dan,

I've been looking at buying a custom build for the past three weeks and have looked at so many custom build sites! From looking at reviews I would avoid PC Specialist as they have had some awful reviews (90%) that I have seen across the years (see ciao)! Having said that so have Mesh and even Evesham have some complaints! Safe to say it's worried me and I even considered trying to build myself. I just came across DinoPC and was looking for reviews, I found this http://www.pcpro.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic. ... a02303b481

They do appear very good value for money and seem to list exactly what their components are. I may order from them soon. Let me know how you get on!

[fillythebish]

There are two active topics for both of these companies. PC specialist seems to have the most happy customers. There are already a few complaints in the DinoPC topic.

I recently got mine from PCspecialist, my specs are in the PCspecialist topic. It runs like a dream and is super quiet. Seems very well built so far. Im playing Oblivion and Stalker on max settings and it doesnt even seem to struggle at all.

You can find out all your pc's parts if you phone them up and they'll tell you what to expect at the moment. They change the parts depending on whats cheapest at the time to keep costs down, but they are in no way cheap products.

gfx card was made by Gigabyte its an 8800gts
DVD rewriter is LightScribe
Monitor is HannsG
Not sure of Harddrive, I havent checked.

There all good components.

But its a mind field making a decision, if you search google for every cutom builder in the UK you'll find good/bad reviews for all of them.

[TomHarling]

Buy one from http://www.scan.co.uk . They ar very very reliable and you get free shipping if you are a CPC forum member.

[Chris2153]

http://www.ciao.co.uk/www_pcspecialist_co_uk__6267622

These particular reviews scared the hell out of me, particuarly as the best one was fropm Sept 2005.

[Chamberssr]

I have to say that with the 150+ thread in the Vendor forum, none of the experiences seem to match those stories from the link you posted.

I've had mine for over a year and it's been fine. Like 98% of the people who posted in the big PC Specialist thread on this forum, I'm more than happy with the service and find it difficult to see that it's the same company!

I can't comment on Dino, never used them.

Hope it works out whatever you decide.

[fillythebish]

Those are some bad reviews, I'm glad I never experienced any of those problems with mine.

But from what I've seen on this forum and on the pcadvisor forum they have more happy customers than dissapointed ones.

[Finger_Smith85]

I’ve just ordered a Max top end system from DinoPC Totalling £2700 odd. it was ordered 28/7 and i was given an ETA of mid week this week, but nothing as yet but i knew it was a bit optimistic giving me that date with the amount of hardware i required.

On the upside they have been quick to reply to any queries ive had and have made some money saving suggestions as some of their sites most expensive components are not necessarily the best. They have also suggested different RAID types depending on whether i wanted max performance or not. I will keep everyone updated on how the system runs when I receive it .

the only thing that lets this site down is the poor selection of Sound cards & monitors. But each of these I have ordered separately. but for price of the compents they are offereing, they cant be beat.



Spec:

Intel Extreme £701.47 base price


Customizations:

CPU:
4590 - Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme QX6850
£509.00

CPU Cooler:
481 - Thermaltake Golden Orb II
£24.09

Motherboard:
758 - Asus Striker Extreme
£120.50

Memory:
522 - 4.0GB Corsair Twin2X 800mhz XMS2 (4x 1GB)
£103.10

Hard Drive:
0614 - 74GB S-ATA Raptor 10,000RPM
£49.60

Second hard drive:
0615 - 150GB S-ATA Raptor 10,000RPM
£153.99

Third hard drive:
0613 - 500GB S-ATA2 3.0Gb/s
£72.29

Optical Drive:
502 - 18x Double-Layer DVD+/-RW


Graphics card:
0643 - 2 x NVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra PCI-E 768MB
£667.10

Operating System:
0552 - Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
£84.39

Software:
0571 - Norton Anti-Virus 2007
£17.39

PSU:
606 - 1000W Dax Modular PSU
£42.90

Case:
592 - Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BNA
£33.50

Warranty:
1002 - 3 Year Gold Warranty
£149.00


ORDER TOTAL:
£2,748.32

[Finger_Smith85]

its finally arived 7/8, lets hope its throughly tested, il keep you up to date

[Finger_Smith85]

DinoPC, shocking so far, the box turned up with a broken handle indicating it had been dropped. Immediately after booting and getting the correct drivers on i realised windows had been put on the wrong HD and the other different not even formatted so windows could even see them. i then was experiencing random crashes/memory dumps etc to which the help line which seems to be run by one man only started suggesting things to overcome and ensured me it was thoroughly tested before leaving the factory. i was waiting for a new A:\ to come so i could run my own memory tests and set my raid up and install windows on the correct drives then notices windows suggested try updated the BIOS is it did not seem to directly support the CPU (which i though was strange) using the ASUS BIOS tool i downloaded and it began to flash the BIOS, typically enough i had a crash hafl way through the flash rendering the PC dead. the one man band on the end of the phone then proceeded to blame me even tho id been in contact everyday that week telling him its not been right since delivery but was given the impression that he didn’t really wanna get it picked up and was just happy he had the £2,700. but left with no choice he said he’d get someone to pick it up the next day, its the next day @ 16:50 am im still waiting.

I am left with a difficult decision, was it faulty because it was damaged in transit or are Dino pc simply not doing a good enough job. They have one last chance to prove them self. Or im condemning them to the bin. await my conclution :

[TomHarling]

My dad asked me to build his latest PC, but I got http://www.scan.co.uk to build the PC for me. I contacted them and they let me select all of the hardware to my exact spec. Plus I got free P&P.

You should get a refund immediately - use your statutory rights.