My 970GTX is getting a bit long in the tooth and I want a new rig. Having seen the prices of the Nvidia 30x0 series I think buying a pre-built is the way to go. I see a few post on Hot Deals UK mentioning prebuilds by Palicomp and AWD, is this a good way to go? Are there any things to go for or things to avoid at the moment? I have a 1440p monitor and want something of a beast to feed that for the next few years. I have up-to £2k to spend. Sorry for the generic post but I feel out of the loop.
Be prepared to wait many months. My work has been waiting I think 5 months for a 3080 equiped machine from Scan.
If you're not especially picky about exact specs, you can often get one right away. Been trying to get hold of a GPU to build my mate a rig for months, but he ended up getting a maingear or pc specialist one from Currys, next day delivery. Overclockers also keep some cards back for systems and you can see in the options if they have one in stock 5600x and 6700xt
keep in mind pre-builts are spec-ed to the bare absolute minimum, which is why you get bottom tier components at high spec'ed prices, that's great if you are desperate for a 1660 TI with a 1050 heatsink and a butt ton of bloatware this has been true since the dawn of the PC clone era yea compaq will sell you a geforce based K6/2 system but its a gimped chip running at 75MHz FSB instead of 100 + the too piss poor to make a MX version video card back in 1999
I think wiggles was on about a prebuilt system from a proper system builder, not the generic stuff HP et al churn out so he shouldn't overly need to worry about low end components going in his rig.
Buying a prebuilt or gaming laptop seems the only way forward for many now, I've considered getting a prebuilt to strip it for parts, fortunately I'm not that desperate for hardware I have a decent system, just had the upgrade itch. So long as you understand what you are buying its fine. I saw some of the AWD-IT stuff at costco when I was in there, looked at the lower end stuff for a friend, seemed perfectly fine to me.
Stay away from big name brands like Dell / HP / Acer to avoid parts that are deliberately made proprietary to prevent repairs / upgrades. Easiest to stick to the house brands of shops like Scan, Ebuyer, Overclockers etc so you get real off the shelf parts. Tech Jesus recently looked inside a Dell... And I have to agree with him, the whole thing will be ewaste the moment something goes wrong.
The HP Omens are great pre built. https://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/List.aspx?fc_sb_omen_by_hp=1&sel=DTP Linus did a big OEM review last year (secret shopper) and HP came out on top. Personally I would avoid places like OCUK and etc because they will be more expensive that HP and HP probably have better warranty.
