Dawn Computers

tinofapples

Hi ,
My brother is thinking about buying a system from Dawn Computers. Has anyone ever had an experience with them ?

AMD ATHLON XP 2400+SYSTEM

ATX 266mHz Motherboard, Socket A
ATX Midi Tower case 300watt PSU front USB
60 Gb Hard Drive UDMA 133 7200rpm
256Mb Memory
64Mb DDR Geforce 4 Mx 440 Agp 4x TV-OUT
48 x 10 x 40 CD Rewriter
16 X DVD rom Drive
3D PCI Sound On board
56K int voice/fax/data modem
1.44 floppy drive
17" CTX SVGA FST Monitor
Ps/2 Euro Keyboard
A4 Tech Ps/2 Scroll mouse
Speakers
Open Office Software

For €935 , not sure how much they charge for delivery or if tehre is any tax on that price .


What do the experts make of the system/price ?

hussey

Is there an OS with that??
alot of places dont sell one with it

seems ok(if inc vat) if it does .. but if ya dont have teh confidence to build it yourself (no shame in that) than look fine to me

RicardoSmith

My experiences with Dawn to date have been very good.

The system looks very good. Though if he intends playing games I'd recomend upgrading to a GF4ti4200 card and upgrading the ram to 512mb. I doesn't mention what OS is supplied or if one is supplied. I'd assume XP Home is supplied but you'd want to confirm that with them. Also whats the warranty etc.

Other than that its a ok price, it has to be incl vat though.

tinofapples

It does state that all prices include VAT on the web site and yes playing games would be his main use of the system along with surfing the net

BabyEater

If he is playing games i would definitly upgrade as Ricardo said.

dazberry

ATX 266mHz Motherboard, Socket A

256Mb Memory

What type of motherboard and RAM, it doesn't say ??? I'd check that out first.

Looking at the boards they have is stock, I wouldn't got for any.
The have one Elite board type but its MATX with only 2 PCI slots.

Of course they could put in the Jetway V266A ATX and give you 256MB of PC133 RAM which would be a bit grim. You should really check this out.

D.

phaxx

Moved to tech. READ THE HW TWEAKING CHARTER!

*sheesh!*

Saruman

I bought a sys from dawn back in 98, it was fine back then.. but i know people who have had a bad experience... If it all works fine then great.. but like scan.co.uk if it goes wrong you may have problems.

RicardoSmith

Originally posted by dazberry
ATX 266mHz Motherboard, Socket A

256Mb Memory

What type of motherboard and RAM, it doesn't say ??? I'd check that out first.

Looking at the boards they have is stock, I wouldn't got for any.
The have one Elite board type but its MATX with only 2 PCI slots.

Of course they could put in the Jetway V266A ATX and give you 256MB of PC133 RAM which would be a bit grim. You should really check this out.

D.

Yeah good points there. Though with cheaper computers, you have to expect they will use the cheaper motherboards and ram etc. But worth checking out.

tman

a friend bought a cheap ass pc off them, it was supposed to have a 32mb graphics card, but only shipped with an 8mb onboard one.
apparently they were totally useless at getting this sorted out, it took him around 4 months to get a 32mb card posted to him.
it's still a pretty good pc for the price he paid

Cake Fiend

I've bought stuff from them through work a few times. They sometimes do stupid things like not setting the FSB properly or plugging the floppy cable in the wrong way, but I've never had any major problems.

andrewk08

Absolute cowboys. I know this thread is old, but I read it before using them, what a mistake. People deserve to know what they are dealing with.

My computer slipped and fell on its side. Wouldn't boot. As I am really busy, took it to dawn to attempt repair. They said that the Intel chip was gone and the mother board. Although I found this hard to believe, I took back the PC and said right, I'll find time and fix it myself (I'm Electronic engineer and deal with much tougher microprocessor problems everyday).

After paying my €42.35 I brought it home, only to find they had got thermal solution (grease) all over the pins (under the PnP cap)! This makes the board unfixable to all intensive purposes. It would take a month to remove the grease from the dense pin array and this would assume that I didn't misallign any of them.

Now I have to buy a new motherboard, which probably means new Ram (my old Ram is out of date).

Can you imagine you asked a mechanic to change your spark plugs and he spilt oil and sand into all the cylinders? Total incompetence.
Maybe they just wanted me to buy a new motherboard/PC from them?

MunsterCycling

Yes this is a zombie thread but you should bring the machine back to them and explain to them the problem and your qualifications and see what they say, revert back here and let us know.

MC

kippy

andrewk08 wrote: »

Absolute cowboys. I know this thread is old, but I read it before using them, what a mistake. People deserve to know what they are dealing with.

My computer slipped and fell on its side. Wouldn't boot. As I am really busy, took it to dawn to attempt repair. They said that the Intel chip was gone and the mother board. Although I found this hard to believe, I took back the PC and said right, I'll find time and fix it myself (I'm Electronic engineer and deal with much tougher microprocessor problems everyday).

After paying my €42.35 I brought it home, only to find they had got thermal solution (grease) all over the pins (under the PnP cap)! This makes the board unfixable to all intensive purposes. It would take a month to remove the grease from the dense pin array and this would assume that I didn't misallign any of them.

Now I have to buy a new motherboard, which probably means new Ram (my old Ram is out of date).

Can you imagine you asked a mechanic to change your spark plugs and he spilt oil and sand into all the cylinders? Total incompetence.
Maybe they just wanted me to buy a new motherboard/PC from them?

I have no affiliation with anyone so and never heard of this crowd.

So,
You took the comments on a six year old thread and didnt think that things could have changed with the company in that time? (Just look at what else has changed on the thread in that time)
That said it may just have been one poor techie you dealt with and not a reflection on the company as a whole.

I wish you the best in getting sorted.

andrewk08

I have been thinking that if it is raining all weekend (like this week), I will see if I can clean up chip housing and have a go at fixing the motherboard. If i do that and get it working, I will post.
I don't see the point in demanding my money back. I assume they have some "PC Technician" who just plugged in another ATX PSU with all the peripherials unpugged , re-sat the chip and dumped it when no bias appeared.
I would suspect the problem was with the CPU but now I cannot even replace that.

PapaQuebec

If it's the crowd that used to be based in Dundrum I'd advise to steer well clear! Had some professional (at least on my part) dealings with them 7 or 8 years ago. Cowboys doesn't go way near enough!!