Opinions: Computer Hardware Suppliers

yellum

Please list which hardware suppliers you've used, whether they were good value and would you recommend them, add in typical delivery/shipping costs too if you could.

You can also give them a rating out of 5, with 5 being "Unbelievably good" and 0 being "Cowboys selling 286s for €1000 "

If you have not used a supplier please don't list any suppliers. Thanks.

PPC

Overclocker.co.uk - 4
Great service.
Little expensive

Theoverclockingstore.co.uk - 1
Took the money of my credit card before they had the stuff in stock and after a month i had to cancel cause they hadnt delivered.

phaxx

dabs.com - 4
Fast shipping, flat rate of £20 stg ex vat to ireland.

itdirect - 3
Good prices, shipping costs unknown because all my buys there have been in person, however their product range isn't as extensive as other places.

Ronan|Raven

www.komplett.ie

6 euro odd shipping, very fast (brother ordered a harddrive wednesday night arived friday lunchtime)

Good prices in general, have some good offers on.

5!

Gerry

www.itdirect.ie - 3

If you know what you want, the staff are grand. Prices on components reasonable, prices for system building accessories like mounting kits excellent. Prices for high end gear ridiculous.

dabs.com - 3

Good range except for cooling, shipping is fair, but takes too long and staff are not the best.

scan - 0

Stay away from these bastards. Search the tech board for threads about scan if you are bored Worst customer service anywhere, extortionate shipping ( I paid 35 sterling shipping for a dvd drive and a writer, and they sent me the wrong dvd drive )

ocuk - 3

Fantastic range of tweaking and cooling gear, excellent attention to detail. A unique store really. Support a bit dodgy, but not the worst. Had to send back a chip, they were a bit iffy about replacing it, but got it sorted ok.
Pricing is generally excellent, but always double check against other stores, and they do not always have the best pricing on intel cpu's, and peripherals.

<edit> shipping is disgracefully high, about 10 sterling minimum and 30-35 for a decent amount of gear. Cheers for reminding me phaxx </edit>

www.komplett.ie - 5

A much broader range than ocuk, this place only needs to add more networking, cheaper cases and cooling gear. Prices are not far off trade prices for most stuff, and they can actually undercut the trade price on high end products . Unbelievably fast and cheap delivery.
Highly, highly recommended.

I'll edit this post and add more.

phaxx

Just a quick note about ocuk - they quoted me £75 sterling for shipping a complete system to ireland, which I thought was far too much.

paws

Komplett.ie - 4.8 / 5

very good prices, super-fast delivery. Shipping: 26 euros for a mid-tower case, gfx card, mboard, CPUs, 2 hard drives, DVD ROM. Good value, especially considering speed of delivery. They lose 0.2 for my case being slightly dented on arrival, which I put down to DHL. Pity, but hopefully I can get it replaced easily enough.


Motherboard (motherboard.ie): 4.5 / 5

Ordered a very-hard-to-find-in-Europe Antec TruePower powersupply from them. They got it, and the sales guy (stephen) ended up hand-delivering it to my house. Now _that's_ customer service :-) They lose 0.5 for underquoting the initial cost of the PSU. Honest mistake though, and the service is more important than the cost.

Scan.co.uk - 1 / 5

One out of five. The worst company I've ever dealt with. Fine their prices may be cheap, but their customer service sucks. Their crowning glory was building my company a system from parts we'd specified, which was _supposed_ to work. They said it did, even gave the impression they ran burn-in apps on it. The computer is the worst PC I've ever had the misfortune to use. Two CPUs later, it's still stuttering inexplicably every few seconds. (replacing the CPUs (Athlons) did make a difference, but it's still got problems). We paid them an extra 80 sterling to make sure it worked...haha, what suckers we were.

That said, I ordered the guts of my first PC from them, and they shipped the whole lot (with 19" monitor and full tower case) for 20 sterling. Those days are long gone though....

Dabs.com - 3.5 / 5

Been a while since I've used them, but I never had much problems with them, apart from the infamous UK shipping.


paw

elexes

scan -1 you should never buy from them
shipping €70

dabs 3.7
the exchange rate is the real killer on this one

peats 3
there ok i guess lil expensive and dont know what there selling but do deliver nxt day im most cases

itdirect 4
very nice staff 5 quid to post anywhere and they do have knowlage of there parts

unity 2
( this one is on number 2 jervis st . ) can be cheap on some parts but outragious on others but dose take them ages to get you the parts you want as they order them as you ask for them .

marx computers 5
( did i get the name right ) they might not have the best prices but in the past ive seen them to be very honest and they do care about there customers have seen them go to great lenths to please some ( that would be energizer bunny )

computer city 3
there a trade only bunch they do sell cheep but there parts are great but then again when u are getting it fairly quick and cheep you cant argue can ya ??

koneko

I agree with the general opinion on Scan. They're awful. Especially to customers outside of the UK. Don't get me started on the shipping costs.

Komplett 4.5/5
Great so far. Very fast cheap shipping. Great selection. Only problem I've experienced is with RMAs. Weeeeks of waiting. Grrr.

OcUK 3.5/5
I would have given them more, if they weren't so expensive. Great products. Great customer service. RMAs were very speedy.

Theoverclockingstore.co.uk 1.5/5
Good selection of odd parts. Crap shipping. Crap service. I ordered parts over 2 months ago, haven't received all of them. Still waiting. Will be demanding a refund if I don't get the stuff by next week. Who wants to wait 2 months for a window kit??

Have used a few places in the US that were generally bad. Most of them don't do international orders anymore, others charge extortionate shipping prices. Others just can't be bothered do anything properly (OCZ anyone?).

I generally just use Komplett now. Hopefully I won't have any faulty products anytime soon :P

Saruman

Scan are great for prices but if anything goes wrong with delivery or faulty goods it takes a year for anything to happen.. rated -489

Komplett have almost as good prices, cheaper shipping and seriously fast delivery.. i orderd a load of stuff on a friday and got them monday. Rated +5000
I am currently testing their returns procedure on a blown cpu though... still waiting and been over a week.

koneko

I'd like to revise my rating for theoverclockingstore.co.uk from 1.5/5 to a big fat 0 out of 5.

The parts I order are never in stock. Then when they are, they still don't ship them until you ring them several times complaining. I've been waiting 2 1/2 months for parts and have finally asked them to give me a full refund. Sick of waiting. Stay well away if you have a choice.

Boohoo

bugler

Marx Computers: 5. Have bought quite a bit off these guys. Always prompt shipping, and have been absolutely brilliant towards me with regard to technical difficulties I experienced. Even offered to test out parts that I didn't even purchase from them.

Komplett: 4/5. I haven't dealt extensively with them, but the experiences I have had have been positive. Shipping was a bit slow on a CPU(around a week), oddly, as a cd-drive got to me next day. As mentioned already, great variety and great prices.

Overclockers UK 4 : Only a couple of purchases off these guys. Shipping was prompt enough and not that expensive, though it was only a TA

aidan_dunne

Have to agree with the others here about Marx Computers. They get a 5 from me too. The people there know their stuff, prices are fairly reasonable and the service is pretty quick. I've normally received goods from them within 3 days and on one occasion where there was going to be a delay for them to get stock back in they contacted me and asked if I still wanted to go ahead with the order or cancel it because it was going to take longer than expected. I thought this was very considerate of them as most other companies wouldn't care less and you could be left wondering where your order was.

So Marx gets a 5 and a big thumbs up from me!

JohnBoy

Dabs - 4

Have ordered from em in the past, and have an order in with them atm, i have to say i like em.

Had problems with an order in the past where I basically ordered the wrong stuff but I was paying by EFT (in work) and they said the eft would'nt clear till friday, I rang on thursday to see if I could rejig my order, and they said sorry, it's too late the stuff has shipped, but don't open what you don't want and we'll sort summat out.

It did take about 2 months, but I was busy and not really chasing them down, but they took back about half the order (5 items) and allowed me to re-order new stuff, and they paid all the sipping.

But that could be cos we're a business, but that was our firts time buying off them.

Where can I get good fans cheaply over here?
and a Lite-on FS020

The only places I can see that carry em are overclokingstore
and they are expensive enuf, and with a bad name.

john

daveJAM

Komplett - 5/5
Unbelieveable fast delivery, pretty much overnight from Norway,(I'm not sure if it was out of stock or if all their stuff comes from there but the dhl tracker told me thats where it was). Thats another thing they give you the codes for dhl without having to email and ask for it. And they're cheap too, only €20 for a midi dragon. And obviously I got a good price on the goods too.

Winters

Komplett: 4.5/5

I have removed .5 as i am still waiting for my stuff... though some of it is out of stock ..

Great prices... I have to say bad things about Peats but i got a 80GB Seagate 7200rpm Hard Drive from komplett for €113. Found it in peats today for €305.. can you beat that?

I would aslo give Peats 4/5

Really good but there prices can be a bit high.

Gerry

Yeah peats are such a joke for hard drives. IBM 120 gig is roughly 450 euro. Theres a guy who works in peats posting on these boards (sorry can't remember your name ). Care to give your opinion on these prices?

CuLT

Komplett.ie - 4.5 / 5

Same reason as Winters, the prices are great, fast to respond to email queries, I even got a direct contact phone number when I asked. The guy spoke very good english

Still waiting for an item to come into stock, it's worrying me as i'll be on holidays soon and i don't want it to arrive after i leave

Dell - 4 / 5

One mark off as its an OEM mobo, ie, no tweaking. (A friend got a hi-spec one recently)
Good delivery time (surprisingly) about a week.
Its black , can't argue with that.

Winters

Originally posted by Gerry
Yeah peats are such a joke for hard drives. IBM 120 gig is roughly 450 euro.

Found a worse place.. On Friday i was waiting for peats to open so i could get some stuff (forgot what i wanted when it opened so never got it :rolleyes: )

I had to waste 15min so i decided to go to Dixons (Had already been in Malpin for 20min and was gettiing strange looks from the security guard ). I went over to there pc parts. I spotted a 60GB 5400rpm HDD for about €250 or so. I laughed and then left.

The moral of this story is never buy from annoying Dixons/PC World/ Currys for they will overprice you. Now isint that good advise.

strat

www.Peats.ie - 4
nice site, prompt reasonably priced delivery, prices are a bit expensive but have a large catalogue of stuff

www.overclockers.co.uk - 3
ergh - the prices here i usually find hard to beat, thats why i bough off them 4 or 5 times i think, all fine - delivery a bit steep i suppose but i got stung once though. ordered a geforce 3 ti 500 and a few fans and i waited and waited and waited - the money was taken instantly but the card never arrived, after 3 weeks of fone calls to their "customer service" centre, telling me it was out of stock and awaiting delivery then being told it was infact delivered and i had recieved and signed it ?! eventually after speaking to a supervisor i managed to cancel the order and get refunded

www.theoverclockingstore.co.uk 5
www.tekheads.co.uk 5
cant fault them both - ordered on a friday and recieved the following tuesday, nice prices and cheap delivery

www.marx-computers.com - 4
little slow on delivery - prices not brilliant but ok.


prolly think of a few more later

PPC

Farnell - 5
Much better and cheaper than Maplin. Next day free delivery.
Ordered 10am Thursday, had it friday 9am.
They also do VFDs and LCDs

Stephen

Komplett - 5/5

Great range of stock, fastest and cheapest delivery of the lot, and good prices.

Dabs - 3/5

Great range of stock, reliable service, but the sterling conversion is crippling, and their delivery charges are a bit stupid.

Doodee

www.microdirect.co.uk - After my account was set up I ordered 2 Radeon 8500LE 128's off em, arrived the next day. Delivery was £25Str but as they delivered the next day deffo 5

www.komplett.ie - 4 I just got a 120GB Seagate HD off em, good price, but it took 2 weeks to arrive, only took them 12 hrs to take the money out of my account though , otherwisethey'd be better

www.scan.co.uk - 0 - Worst Place Evarh!

www.marx-computers.com well, since i've only gotten a DVD-RW off em, and I called into the Office, and the guy was sound I'll give em a 4, loose mark for range but with better prices than peats.

www.dabs.com - 3 - Brilliant range, Nicely priced, horrid delivery, took 3 weeks for a Radeon to arrive, very good otherwise.

CuLT

Update - 5 / 5 for komplett

I bring it back up to 5 as all the stock came in wednesday, and this is what i got in tracking...

July 17, 2002 16:06
Oslo - Norway Shipment picked up
July 17, 2002 20:18
Oslo - Norway Departing origin
July 17, 2002 21:20
Oslo - Norway Departed from DHL facility in Oslo - Norway

deckie27

---

Originally posted by Gerry
Yeah peats are such a joke for hard drives. IBM 120 gig is roughly 450 euro.

---

http://www.peats.ie/cgi-bin/shop/db.cgi?view=1&id=1514&type=6&path=14x116x305

Have a look up there
I have been dealing with peats for years now. OK some times there prices are a bit high, but they generally sell top gear, and of recent times they seem to beat Maplins on the special monthly offers. Also there service is excelent. I bought a 20gig Hdd of them 10 months later it started given my trouble, When I returned it they had no 20 gigs in stock so he gave me a 40 gig instead How happy do you think I was.

I give them a top 5

dec

Gerry

About time that price dropped too..

steve-hosting36

ANother local supplier - we use for all our gear, they build very nice servers

www.encom.ie

PPC

Komplett 10/5

Got my case nice and cheap and arrived in 3 days (held up in england by DHL)
Case was damaged on arrival so i emailed them and they told me how to fix it.
It didnt work so i emailed them again and they said i'd hafta send it back so they rang me this morning and yer man said that he had searched in the returns department and found a front facia and would send it to me and if it didnt work they would send me the new case upfront and i send mine back when i receive it.

Excellent service, highly recommended.

pclancy

Lads what about Jaguar? I dont hear them mentionned at all. Excellent prices, great service. Not a great range but they're very good and their pre-built systems are also pretty nice.

http://www.jaguarcompsys.ie

Genesis

www.motherboard.ie
www.komplett.ie
www.overclockers.co.uk

spooky donkey

Well id have to give marx 5/5. They deliver on time as well!

A little dearer than komplete but its nice to walk in and talk to the person you are buying from. Some of the little tricks i`ve learned from the people in there like firm ware flashing and bios upgrading. My Mobo can now take an athlon xp if i wan now, you just dont get that personal touch with english mail order companies. I have fried a few parts and marx chanced them no probs. A mate of mine is having a hard time replacing his gf3 from komplete!


One tip though ring ahead to make sure they have what you want and their new location is hard to find!