Hardware Bit-tech, Bit-gamer & Custom PC Award Winners Announced

^ Agreed

All e-tailers are mostly excellent but the upper level of excellence shines or flops when you get iffy hardware, DOA goods are nice & easy to get sorted from anywhere I know of but difficult to diagnose problems which don't display the problem so easily are where I & am sure many others get stung on now & again & when we do it really sucks especially if you could just about afford the parts & had to save up.

Places of good note who really help the customer I know of with such difficult diagnosis of iffy hardware are ebuyer, dabs & aria, places that have let me down on this type are OCUK & scan, I like both though but still they have let me down when it comes to iffy goods.

All great stores when you get healthy parts but doubtful when you catch bad gear that isn't DOA but definitely iffy, a system tester could run simple quick diagnosis & miss the problem leaving you out of pocket & stuck with faulty hardware requiring you to buy another motherboard if you don't feel ready to quit computers so that budget mobo you just bought cost the price of a premium motherboard making it a very annoying experience.

I'd say motherboards are the most difficult & problematic to diagnose thoroughly & would be nice if shops would take your word for it when it comes to motherboards at least, ssd's since sata 3 have been iffy too although I got mine working ok since using it in IDE mode which reduced the speed by 100MB/s so why corsair say to use them in ACHI mode I do not know, I'll take reliability over speed any day, I was plagued with bsod's when in ACHI mode after the first week of use.

I sure wouldn't be asking for an RMA if I haven't exhausted every single testing method imaginable & it still not working, only then would I ask for a change of motherboard so when a shop doesn't play ball it really sucks & dents your faith in them.


Didn't know thermaltake manufacture modding parts, thought they just make cases & some peripherals MNPCtech of flipping course is the unnamed winner in this one I mean they even sponsor MOTM & MOTY here with their parts.


Manufacturers
Not had much experience on this one but I have always somehow been unlucky with asus motherboards 4 times & know people who had similar bad luck with other brands, so for me it's whichever works correctly I'll be happy with just bought an asus 120hz 23" monitor & it has zero defects & is pretty darn good for gaming on without v-sync & upgraded the cooling on my gpu for the extra strain on the gpu I just get unlucky with mobos I only upgrade my full system when it starts to feel old or something comes out which is superior to my old parts so not had enough experience with them to pin point which is my favourite the best people who would know this are regular system builders, they could give out some nice & real stats I expect.

Coolermaster makes sense for case manufacturer with them throwing a decent modding competition which will help them on votes I'm sure I picked other = case modders or scratch builders rather .


But what readers mostly want to know is who won a prize for participating in voting .

What I personally mostly want is better rma service from shops that strangely have good rep when us consumers get an iffy part, anyone can diagnose a DOA part but not just anyone can diagnose an iffy part, if a part isn't working for a customer they should at least allow for them to pick a different mobo or whatever they have a problem with without a mountain of BS & being stuck with something that doesn't work for them we only want a working rig, not trying to scam anyone & a bad experience with a shop makes some of us very hesitant with ordering from them again.

Sorry for this not being a simple 1 liner .

 

Quick update on my in progress RMA, Scan received the parcel (which they collected) and tested it straight away. They found no fault but accepted it doesn't work with my xbox and have approved the refund.

I couldnt have asked for better service and will certainly use Scan again. Based on my experience they deserve their awards!

 

I've had RMA's with Scan, ebuyer and OcUK.

Scan and ebuyer were outstanding. OcUK, well, let's put it this way it was my first and last order with them.

 

why have the winners from the survey entrants not been announced??

 

I had an rma with scan a couple of months ago and they were awful...

 

Congrats to the winners!