Custom Built Computers.
We do not generally offer to build new computers for new clients, as our
PC's are not as competitively priced as many brands, and unfortunately
price is as far as most potential customers can see. However we believe
quality and true value over the lifetime of the computer are more
important than a cheap initial price. Existing clients having
experienced our service levels and dedication to quality (and those who
appreciate quality) are welcome to
ask us to quote them for their next PC, which will be custom designed to
match their requirements.
Why Do We Believe Our Machines Are Better?
- We believe the machines we build offer superior value compared to the
mass produced machines sold by many high street retailers or those
produced by many of the industry giants.
- Whilst big brand machines are usually built down to a price target, our machines
are built up to a performance and quality target.
- All out products are built using industry standard components,
offering full compliance with industry standards. This helps ensure
trouble free operation and easy upgrade paths for your machine. Many top
brand machines do not offer this.
- When you buy from us, all you dealings with be with the person who
actually builds your machine.
There are a number of area's in which we believe our machines are
better than many others.
Industry Standard Components:
Firstly, many of the "big box shifters" use proprietary components in
their machines. The vast majority of machines today are built around the
ATX standard, (A newer standard called BTX is slowly becoming available,
but this is not widespread having little support at present) this helps
to ensure that any component built to this standard is interchangeable
with those of another manufacturer. Many of the larger manufacturers use
proprietary components which do not fully comply with this standard, as
a result, should you desire to upgrade the machine you may have to
return to the original manufacturer to obtain a compatible part.
We believe that if you wish to upgrade, you should have the choice of
deciding who should upgrade the machine, and what brand and
specification of component's are used. In the same manner, if a
proprietary component should fail (after your warranty period) you may
need to have the parts sourced from the same original manufacturer,
usually at a far greater cost than the industry standard equivalent. As
a small manufacturer we clearly do not have access to such non-standard
or proprietary parts, nor would we ever want such access. We believe it
is far better to have a machine built using industry standard
components, with no hidden surprises.
Operating Systems (Windows):
Increasingly PC manufacturers supply their machines with
recovery or rescue disc's, rather than a full original Windows disc.
These disc's contain your operating system (Windows), device drivers and
often other software. They will enable you to set up your machine with
all relevant devices correctly installed etc, it makes setting up the PC
a simple and usually painless affair. Yet we (and many others) feel this
is far from a good thing. Why? Well it will set up the machine in the
manner the manufacturer sees fit, not the way you want it, and not
necessarily in the way that best suits your needs. Many of these utilise
a hidden partition on your hard drive (depriving you of disk space
you've paid for), so if your hard drive fails and needs to be replaced
how do you transfer these files to your hard drive? The simple answer is
you can't, the failure of this one component could therefore leave you
stranded, missing vital files, with purchasing a new copy of Windows as
your only option! If you later decide to upgrade your PC, the rescue
discs may not have the required files to support your new device's, as
they were not part of your original setup.
And it doesn't end there, when contacting their support, you will often
be told to insert your recovery disc and follow the prompts onscreen,
this can effectively reset you machine to the state it left the factory
in, often wiping out all your files and settings, removing any other
software you have since installed.
And it can get worse, it may turn out that you had a problem with faulty
hardware rather than software, but by then you could have already lost
all your files for no good reason.
Another difficulty emerging is the practice of not supplying any
recovery discs at all, this is unfortunately becoming more and more
common. In this situation the manufacturer will provide a facility for
you to create a recovery disc yourself using software already installed
on the PC. This creates an array of new potential pitfalls, most users
will not perform this procedure, so when a situation arises whereby they
actually need such a recovery disc they may not be able to access the
software in order to create one. Additionally, the software often allows
you only one attempt to create your recovery disc, should anything go
wrong you could easily be left with no recovery disc and little prospect
of creating/obtaining one. Even if you do successfully create the
recovery disc, it will still suffer the pitfalls associated with
recovery versus full Windows discs as detailed previously.
Still not enough reasons to avoid recovery discs? Well you're paying for
a copy of Windows, you have a right to an actual Windows disc. The right
to receive the full product you have paid for, the right to be able to
set-up and configure your machine the way you want. Whilst the supply of
these rescue discs is a legal method endorsed, and indeed encouraged by
Microsoft, we do not believe they are in the consumers interest. We
always supply proper, full, original, genuine Windows discs, component
driver discs, and any others required for your new PC.
Upgrade Potential:
Should you decide to upgrade your machine at a later date, a number
of obstacles can arise. Some of these have been covered above, but it
doesn't end there. Most machines are built to a price, this often limits
the upgrade path available for any given machine, as many of the
components may already be stretched to their limit, power supply's may
not have enough spare capacity to reliably run additional drives or a
more demanding graphics card, the motherboard
may not be capable of accepting a faster processor (CPU), it may not be
possible to upgrade your graphics card to the latest available
models.... The list goes on.
If you are buying the very latest, fastest,
top spec machine available then it may not be possible to ensure every
possible upgrade, after all, who can offer a 100% assurance that the
machine can accept a component that is not even available on the market
yet? However with any other level of machine it should not be an
unreasonable expectation to be able to upgrade later. We always strive
to ensure our machines will not have any such limitations. Our machines
wherever possible will always have a greater upgrade potential than the
vast majority of the big brand alternatives
Build Quality:
There are other areas in which we believe our products can often be
better, for example.......
(some of the following items contain technical terms,
if you would like clarification on any of the items discussed on the
pages, please give us a call, we would be happy to go through them with
you)
Audio pass thru cable. This enables you to listen to a CD without
processing the sound thru your CPU, it passes the audio signal directly
from the CD/DVD drive to your sound card. These are not always fitted by
every system manufacturer - we always fit one for you.
Whilst many newer PC's are fitted with SATA Drives, IDE drives are
still often fitted, CD/DVD drives are still generally IDE. Many
manufactures will use one IDE channel to support two devices, this saves
them a few cents as they do not have to fit a second cable. Wherever
possible will will fit each IDE device with a dedicated cable and
therefore a dedicated channel, thus maximising the performance of
all such devices.
Floppy drives, many manufacturers believe the floppy is dead and no
longer include them as standard. That may seem reasonable as the floppy
is almost dead, but its not quite gone yet with many people still
requiring them. This is why we still include one in our standard builds
(you can optionally delete it if required) rather than charge you the
exorbitant prices some ask to add one to your new machine, some
manufactures charge up to €35 to add one, but its only a €10 part!
Hard drive configuration. Most manufacturers supply your hard drive
as one large unit, this was fine in the days of 10GB hard drives, but
for a long time now partitioning a hard drive has been considered best
practice. This is the practice of operationally splitting a hard drive
into two or more partitions. Only one drive is physically fitted, but it
appears to windows as a number of drives. Why is this important? Because
if you store all your data i.e. photo's files documents etc, on a
separate partition to windows, it adds a degree of security to them.
Should your machine ever have to be reset to factory and have its
operating system re-installed, storing your data separately could mean
you do not loose any of it as you would if the hard disk was not
partitioned.
Note: This is not a substitute for backing up your data, as physical
damage to, or complete failure of the hard disk may result in loss of
data regardless of partitioning.
Thermal paste. This is the substance that is sandwiched between your
CPU (Pentium. Athlon etc) and its heatsink. New heatsinks and cooling
assemblies will always have some of this supplied/fitted, usually a
silicon based type, and that's what virtually every system builder uses
(i.e. the one supplied with the heatsink), however we don't, we take the
time to remove this and apply a high quality, highly thermal conductive
silver based compound instead. Why do we do this? Well although it takes
us a few minutes extra to do, and adds a bit to the cost, it does
provide very real benefits. It increases the heat transfer rate from the
CPU to the heatsink, thus enabling your CPU to run on average 2 to 6
oC cooler. This will increase the life of the CPU, and on systems
with smart fan speed control (e.g. our AMD Athlon64 systems) allows the
fan to rotate a little slower thus making the system a little quieter, a
little cooler and with a fraction less power consumption (It may only be
a fraction, but in these days of energy awareness every little helps).
Some of the above may only appear to be small differences, but they are
differences we feel show the care and quality we put into all our
work.
The car comparison.
If you were to buy a car purely on the printed specification it
might be hard to justify the price difference between manufacturers. For
example one could check out two different models, both have 5 doors, a
1.6l engine, fuel injection, 5 speed gearbox, stereo CD player, etc etc.
Yet one is nearly twice as expensive as the other, why? Well perhaps one
is a Toyota whilst the other is a Lada, very similar on paper, but very
different in terms of build quality, performance, longevity and
ultimately value
for money.
The same can also apply to computers, there's a lot more to choosing a
PC then just the price.
Want Any More Reasons?
We build PC's primarily because we are enthusiasts. This is not to
say its not a business, but we are not interested purely in notching up
sales. We need little in the way of advertisement, as the vast majority
of our business comes from "word of mouth", and that's just the way we
like it. We're quite happy to personally discuss your requirements to
ensure any machine we supply correctly meets your needs. We have no
interest in growing into so large a company that we cannot offer a
personal service, as stated before we are enthusiasts, we would
rather stay that way and offer you, the customer the best possible
value.
We may not always compete with others on price, but they rarely
compete with us on quality
Read examples of the
problems we've encountered in our workshop due to the practice of the
"Big Box Shifters"
Thanks for reading.