Reviews PC Specialist Vortex Ultima R Review

Concise review as always!

A few points I have picked up and see as a regular niggle mentioned be it here it elsrwhere..

Complaining about not having a 1tb nvme or a 2tb HDD is a bit much imho. These companies are here to make money (or at least try to). You can't get blood from a stone so why ask for it?

I run a 512gb with my main apps and a few games on the main nvme drive and have a 512gb SSD as storage / secondary apps drive and I'm no where near using it.

With the internet as fast as it is these days, having a few games installed and then removing them when you fancy something else is hardly a hardship and if you really do want to store things you shouldn't be doing so on your PC anyway.

This market drive to have a PC built for less than the cost of the components and having it as a marketed advantage is lazy in both the reviewer and of the manufacturer. It's an obvious advantage for the consumer and a tradegy for the industry.

The time and effort to build a computer and then warranty it should be chargeable and in addition to the cost, as let's be honest, your mostly buying the PC because you don't have a clue how to do it yourself should be exactly that, chargeable and in addition to!

These small companies that seem to crop up offering poorly built systems with crap component choices are driving this dumb trend and as such driving the established brands such as PCS to compete.

I'm not sure what's worse to be honest. The fact these back yard system builders exist and have driven the value out of this side to the market (because whennthings go wrong they very rarely fix the problem) or the fact the large companies have bent over and followed suit.

 

It's been a while since I used PC Specialist - and I always used them for laptops - but I have nothing but good things to say about them. I've pointed various members of family who aren't able to build their own systems but want something more than a Dell "one size fits all" system in their direction over the last few years and all of them have reported being happy too.

I find it slightly bizarre that you can get a system with warranty cheaper than you could build the same thing yourself, but I put it down to economy of scale. When I first built my own computer, it was more expensive than buying a pre-built, but I could control exactly what was used. So these things go in cycles...

 

Am I the only one who thinks it's about time we get pre-built pcs for as much or even less than what you'd pay for parts? I know it's tough for the outfits building the machines, but they usually pay quite a bit less for parts than your average customer. The cost of actually building and offering warranty should be added to their pure hardware cost, but I still think they can make it work.

I don't mind this CPU not being overclocked, as well. Performance is great already, so this keeps temperatures and noise levels in check. Plus, there's longevity to consider, too.

 

I've used PCSpecialist recently and they built a fairly good laptop, although I haven't found their post-sale customer service to be good (granted based on customer reviews, I'm in the minority there).

For their prices though, they are well worth a look - especially due to how customisable their systems are.