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Reviews PC Specialist Enigma S1 Review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 18 Apr 2019.

  1. bit-tech

    bit-tech Supreme Overlord Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Read more
     
  2. IamSoulRider

    IamSoulRider Minimodder

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    Can anyone advise what CoolerMaster CPU setup they are using? I priced this build up to compare value, by using Scan, which is expensive in the UK.

    Scan.co.uk
    £250 - i5 9600K
    £68 - 250GB Samsung 970 EVO
    £260 - Zotac GTX 1660Ti stock model
    £96 - ASUS TUF Z370-PLUS GAMING II
    £90 - 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black, PC4-24000 (3000)
    £78 - Corsair TX550M
    £54 - 2TB Seagate Barracuda
    £80 - Fractal Case
    £60 - CoolerMaster Master Liquid 240mm AIO (assumed cooler)

    £1036.


    Shopping around I can often save £150-£200 off of Scan's price. So let's say I can self build this exact rig for £850-£950.

    How does the company justify the price for what is ultimately a poor performing i5-9600K and 1660ti combination? It's not good value, and it doesn't perform as well as it should, meaning they haven't throughly cross tested all the hardware before designing this build.

    Yes, I get that there is a premium for someone else building your PC, but should the premium be around a quarter of the full price for a system? I guess they also can get the components a lot cheaper than I can.

    This rig is too expensive and under-performs on the sum of it's components. Why did they bother?
     
  3. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Prove it.
    No short term special offers, no ebay / amazon marketplace / other grey market stuff, shops must show parts as in stock and don't forget the Windows license.
     
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  4. IamSoulRider

    IamSoulRider Minimodder

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    I won't bother going through the whole list. Let's just start with the CPU. If I go to overclockers.co.uk, I can buy the i5-9600K OEM (as buying watercooling), without offers, for £218.99 inc VAT. So I am already £31 cheaper than scan. Would you like me to continue?

    https://www.overclockers.co.uk/inte...e-socket-lga1151-processor-oem-cp-65p-in.html

    Also at OCUK, I can save £3 on the samsung EVO drive, getting it for £65 - https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...-3.0-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-23m-sa.html

    Thats £34 cheaper on just two products.

    If I buy the RAM from Aria.co.uk, it is on special offer at 77.39, but as you said no special offers, the aria FULL price for the RAM is £84 another £6 saving. £40 saved and still all those high priced items like motherboard, gfx card, water cooling and case to go.

    https://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/16GB+(2x8GB)+Corsair+Vengeance+LPX+3000MHz+DDR4+Memory+?productId=69525

    I use Scan often, but it is the most expensive of the UK specialist online retailers. I am not going to go through the other high value items, I will leave you to do some looking to see for yourself how easy it is to save £150 compared to using scan for a whole build valued at around a £1000 on scan. Also, that scan price includes a £5 discount on the motherboard, and no OS. I only need OEM licenses, and I have plenty of those, so windows doesn't cost me a penny.

    That was visiting just two UK sites, if I expanded my reach further, I could probably get some things slightly cheaper than that elsewhere.
     
    Last edited: 22 Apr 2019
  5. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Irrelevant since you complained about the price of the PC Specialist PC which includes a legit Windows 10 key, so unless you include that the comparison is false.

    As for the rest of the components:

    GPU = 259.71 at Kikatek, oh no, a whopping £0.28 saving.
    Mobo = Scan is the cheapest, by a mile.
    PSU = 60.44 at CCL, saved £18.
    HDD = 53.50 at CCL, saved £0.37.
    Cooler = No need to assume which one it is, it is £49.99 at Scan, cheapest one is (and you won't believe this, Currys / PcWorld) for 44.99, so another £5 saved.
    Case = Scan is the cheapest by a little.

    So lets add that to those £40 and you get a total saving of drumroll please: £63.65, so it doesn't even reach 10% on that £1K.

    Don't get me wrong, I won't make any excuses for Scan doing stuff like charging 30% extra on that particular PSU... but you simply can't extrapolate that across an entire system, so lets just put the silly notion of saving 15 - 25% on a £1K build compared to Scan prices to rest.
     
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  6. The_Crapman

    The_Crapman World's worst stuntman. Lover of bit-tech

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    Today on scan this pc would cost £1220 excluding delivery, on overclockers it's £1220 even though they have the i5 available as oem, you save £30 there but pay elsewhere. If you go hunting round for the cheapest prices on every component, you'll probably end up paying once the multiple delivery fees are taken into account.

    To get this spec built, hassle free and for those who don't know how to build, it's basically a bargain!
     
  7. IamSoulRider

    IamSoulRider Minimodder

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    Fair enough, this is a new CPU and GPU combination, so saving that money may not be possible but it is not impossible to do that on a scan build, i've done it more than a few times over the years.

    Also, my OEM keys are 100% genuine. I can supply them with any PC I build and sell completely legally. Please do not imply I do anything illegal, or illegitimate. You buy a PC off me, the Key is a 100% legal OEM key. I buy in bulk in advance, so I have a lot still here.
     
  8. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    That certainly wasn't the intention, just trying to keep it apple to apple.
     
  9. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Okay: I'll buy the PC in the review, the exact specification with a matching warranty and a valid Windows 10 licence, from you for £850.

    Let me know where to send the money, and I'll pop my address across for delivery.
     
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  10. Dogbert666

    Dogbert666 *Fewer Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Once you have the PC, I'd be happy to commission a review of it. @IamSoulRider Let me know what your warranty options are, and what website to direct your customers to.
     
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  11. IamSoulRider

    IamSoulRider Minimodder

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    I never said I would sell it for £850, I said it could be built for around £850, and I questioned whether the premuim being charged for building by someone else was worth it. If this company doesn't get better deals on pricing than me, I'd be shocked as well.

    To quote my own post:

     
  12. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Okay, how much will you sell it to me for?
     
  13. IamSoulRider

    IamSoulRider Minimodder

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    I charge parts + 5% build fee.

    This isn't my full time business anymore, so I no longer offer anything other than the standard parts warranties from manufacturers, but even when I did, build fee was only 10%. Delivery is charged at whatever delivery costs.

    I assume you will not have any issues with me including special offer prices in the parts pricing? Especially as it would reduce your build fee.
     
  14. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    So, where do I send the £892.50? Oh, sorry, plus delivery - call it, what, £910?
    Ah, well, that's a problem, isn't it? I need it to match what PC Specialist is offering exactly. That means you'll have to be on the hook for a three year split-tier warranty: one month collect-and-return no-quibble, one year parts & labour RTB, and a further two years labour RTB. That won't be a problem, right?
    Parts pricing's your end of the deal. But I might want another five of 'em six months down the line, at the same pricing and using absolutely identical components. Again, shouldn't be a problem?

    Oh, and I'll be needing a VAT invoice. You know what the taxman's like.

    EDIT:
    Nearly forgot: it'll also have to be with me in five to seven days.
     
    Last edited: 25 Apr 2019
  15. IamSoulRider

    IamSoulRider Minimodder

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    Sounds like you are a business rather than a private user looking to build a new PC for themselves. As a business, you may well want to pay a 30% premium to meet your demands, you will have obligations that your company must meet and conditions like the warranty and speed of repair are much more important, you can't have your employees sat there doing nothing all day can you, the cost to your business would be terrible. You also realise this is a gaming machine right? Are you actually sure your business needs this exact model, I am pretty sure there are much better machines suited to your specific business needs than this device.

    You see, I can go completely off the tanget of the point as well, it doesn't improve the discussion, it is useless wandering, so how about we all get back to the point I was making and stop with all these stupid diversions.

    I don't want to quote myself again, but it seems everyone keeps ignoring the point of my argument.

    The value proposition of this device for gamers is what I was discussing. This being a gaming machine and all that. Should the premium be a quarter of the full price of a system?

    I am asking directly, as an end user, why you would pay out for this system, over building it yourself for a MASSIVE saving. Warranties don't influence normal gamer purchasing decisions to that level. Yes you can say the increased cost is because of the warranty, but where is any value in that to the gamer who purchases the system? Most people do not value the warranty of the system over and above the quality of the system itself.

    Oh, and can you 100% guarantee that the price of this system and every part used in it will be absolutely identical in 6 months time? I don't see anywhere the company promising they will never substitue a like for like component in the lifetime of the build?

    Not a problem. I'll even do a full colour invoice with each line marked in a different color, specifying the individual VAT per line if you'd like at No Extra Charge. You are the 2nd person to imply illegal practices in this thread. I have not cast any aspersions on anyone else and their comments, so please stop implying I am doing anything illegal. I may not have a warehouse and 50 underpaid employees, but I still operate legitimately.

    I thought you were above logical fallacies and ad-hominem attacks, guess not.
     
  16. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I'm not looking to build a new PC for myself. If I was looking to build a new PC for myself, I'd buy the bits myself and save five percent. I'm looking to buy a PC. Like the one in the review.

    I'm also very much not a business. Well, technically I'm a business, in that I'm a sole trader, but...
    ...I don't have any employees.
    I'm literally buying it to review on 'ere, as a comparative to the PC Specialist system, so yes: I'm very sure I need this exact model.
    What diversions? You said you could build the machine for £850-950. You said you could sell machines with genuine Windows licences. I want to buy said machine for £850 plus your five percent build fee (I'd be charging more, but that's me) and delivery.

    If you can't sell me it, then what was the point of your post? If I'm buying a pre-built machine, I either don't want to or can't build one (or I have another reason, like wanting the warranty) - so the fact that you could build yourself one for £850 (which Press (X) To Doubt) is neither here nor there unless you're willing to sell it to me.
    I wouldn't; I'd buy it from you for ~£900.
    [CITATION NEEDED] (I've just finished a massive group test of mini-PCs for PC Pro Magazine, and warranty is one of the key metrics measured.)
    I believe, though I'm happy to accept evidence to the contrary, that PC Specialist - like most OEMs - keeps a design available for twelve months from launch. Certainly that was the case with my XPS13 laptop from Dell: I bought last year's model instead of this year's, because it had an iGPU better suited to my needs.
    I implied nothing of the sort. I need a VAT invoice so I can claim the purchase as an expense on my taxes. There's absolutely nothing illegal with you not being VAT registered, so long as your revenue is below the threshold required for VAT registration - but I still need a VAT invoice.
    Nothing I have said is a logical fallacy, and nothing I have said is an ad hominem.

    For clarity:

    I wish for you to supply me, as you have intimated you can, a PC of the exact specification in this review, with warranty and valid Windows 10 licence, delivered in five to seven days, for £850 to £950 plus five percent build fee and insured next-day delivery. If you cannot, then perhaps it may point to where the premium - which, if you're on the £950 end of the spectrum, charging £30 for insured delivery, and sticking to the five percent build fee, is now down to just £171.50 - is actually being spent.
     
  17. Dogbert666

    Dogbert666 *Fewer Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    X
     
  18. IamSoulRider

    IamSoulRider Minimodder

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    @Gareth Halfacree - I see what has happened here. Everyone has got hooked up on me being able to purchase a system cheaper than the scan price I put together.

    All the while conveniently ignoring the fact the scan price was already £150 cheaper than the purchase price of this system. Yes, I can build a machine cheaper than buying all the parts from scan, if you can't you shouldn't be buying PC parts, but ignoring my cheaper PC, take the component price at scan.

    Why would you spend £1200 on this gaming PC, as a gamer, rather than £1038 on the parts individually on scan? Is the premium worth it?
     
    Last edited: 25 Apr 2019
  19. Dogbert666

    Dogbert666 *Fewer Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Did you include a legit Windows license in that costing?
     
  20. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I thought this was pretty clear:
    If you're happy building your own PC, you're not in the market for a pre-build. If you're in the market for a pre-build, you're not happy building your own PC (or, as I've already said, you have other reasons for preferring pre-builds, like the premium being less than your time is worth or wanting hassle-free warranty coverage.)

    So, to answer this:
    1. Because you can't build your own.
    2. Because you don't want to build your own.
    3. Because you don't have time to build your own.
    4. Because you value your time higher than the premium paid for a pre-build.
    5. Because you want the warranty coverage.
    6. Because you want a simple life.
    7. Because you want it in five to seven days, guaranteed.
    8. Because a Nigerian Prince gave you 30 percent of Eight Million US Dollars in exchange for your assistance.
    9. A. N. Other reason.
    Nup, so that's £100 on top there, making the Scan DIY version a whopping £61 cheaper than the PC Specialist pre-build. Assuming Scan's doing the free delivery for forum members still. And you've still got to put the thing together yourself. And it doesn't have a three-year warranty.
     
    Last edited: 25 Apr 2019
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