Branded or custom build PC's

[markman]

Whats the word around town on the choice of branded or custom build PC's? We have a bit of both but up to now have found more problems with the custom builds (perhaps it is where we had them buit though).

[markman]

Sorry, this is probably a well travelled subject!!

[Quackers]

We always go for custom built and have a close relationship with the people we buy off.

[localzuk]

Go for branded, factory built. The configurations are (generally) tested more than custom built machines. Also, I would say that a good supplier would be able to provide branded pc's at a lower price than your local shop.

 

So, I personally choose HP, with us going with Fujitsu-Seimens before (but stopped due to reliability and service contract problems). I have been told to steer clear of Dell by my boss due to perceived support problems.

[NBC_Sys_C-ord]

DELL....

 

out of different manufactures dell are the only cases that stand up to most vandalism.

We tried Fujitsu, WOC and Refresh.. DELL have a good case.

[Halfmad]

We go for Dell too, mostly on price and being able to deliver large quantities at fairly short notice and to customised specification. We've also had a very very low rate of DOA equipment from Dell in the past year, something I sadly can't say for Apple

[markman]

Vandalism, there is another problem with custom cases. They don't stand upto the destructive force known as hurricane pupils!! We are a boys school nad they love nothing better than to tear them apart,.

[tosca925]

We used to use custom, until the company went bust 12 months into our 3 yr onsite warranty. Leaving us with over 300 PC's with no warranty at all.

 

 

We go Dell now.

[Ch3rub]

Dell again...

really reliable, no problems and as pointed by NBC_Sys_C-ord pretty vandalism resistant.

[webman]

Custom-built by The IT Support Centre in Birmingham with 4 year warranty - we have about 130 of their machines that work prefectly. One or two Gigabyte motherboards have had to be replaced but thats no biggie - phone them up and the replacement is here next-day CityLink. No DOAs and none damaged by users.

 

As mentioned in other threads, we can get 30 of these for around £9k.

[broc]

Dell, for all the reasons given earlier. It can be tedious logging a problem with Dell at times, but it happens pretty infrequently so I live with it. We can get spares pretty easily even for machines out of warranty, not cheap but there again we have not needed to buy many. (A few PSUs).

 

My advice with chosing any supplier is to look not only at things like telephone support, but check for parts availability, online support (websites, forum), driver support etc.

 

Custom PCs are great for getting exactly the spec you want, but can become a nightmare later when you cannot get exactly the replacement part when they break & so you can end up with software imaging issues, particularly with 'all-in-one' fully integrated system boards.

[StewartKnight]

I hat Dells, and I'd never have one at home, their bl@@dy NIC drivers are a pain in the neck.

 

However you can't beat them on Cost / Warranty for schools... damn them!

[mac_shinobi]

You could always get a PCI Intel NIC and disable there onboard NIC's

[cooper]

I get ours from NEC i find you get good customer service, and they also pickup your old equipment for free.

[plexer]

NEC with 3 yr warranty cheaper than any dells I've priced.

 

Ben

[badboyvtec]

We have Dells. Best cases. Support has been very good so far. Had a few ram issues with some of them though (as he walks across the room to phone Dell for another broken RAM...)

 

Last year I had to change cases on about 25 of our custom built machines as they had been abbused so much.

[Pearno]

I'd just like to add my tuppenceworth about Dell...

 

We've been buying exclusively Dell desktops and laptops here for the last two years. There seems to be this common misconception that their support is awful, but on the number of occasions we've had to call them, they've been excellent (although you need to prepare yourself for the twenty questions they'll play with you before you get an engineer sent out).

 

Their home support, on the other hand, is (allegedly) atrocious and is probably the reason they have such a bad reputation.

[Ric_]

Not keen on Dell myself.... I've never been impressed by their build quality (particularly laptops). I stick to HP - you cannot beat anice metal chasis

 

I tend to buy my desktop machines second user from ICT Direct though so that I can get higher spec machines for less money. If you know what you're doing you cannot go wrong.

 

Custom build machines cannot be guaranteed to be identical enough for my liking.

[Mr_T]

I Love Dell Kit great cases as stated earlier. The support 20 questions thing isnt really an issue. You very quickly learn what they will ask you and and you very quickly learn how to lie to them to get the part you want. Also they seem to have scraped the indian call centers for Education and and Corp customers YAY! If you buy lots of kit from them your account manager will bend over backwards to sort any little issues you have out. Beats Fred in a Shed PC's any day.

[alonebfg]

I have had nothing but trouble from dell Try not buy if possable also they are not the cheapest and because we dont buy on the net they put the price up. I got a quote on the phone and the the same quote over the net and the net was about £50 - £100 cheaper but we can buy off the net ?????

[flyinghaggis]

Not keen on Dell myself.... I've never been impressed by their build quality (particularly laptops). I stick to HP - you cannot beat anice metal chasis

 

The latest Dell Optiplex gx620/745's we've bought all have largely metal chassis's apart from the plastic front panel. Makes then so much ligher than the previous all-plastic models! The real problem for us was that the spec/price meant that HP worked out 20-30% more expensive than Dell which is why we stuck with Dell.

We used to order PC's from a local supplier but we found they let standards slip when we started putting through larger orders. One year roughly 10% of the PC's we ordered were DOA because of broken/loose components or things not being plugged in correctly. Obviously they'd never even POST'd the machines to check them once they were built so that meant we stopped ordering from them straight away!

We've found the support to be pretty good and in general most of the Dells we've bought have been pretty reliable. The only major issue we had was PSU's failing in one of our models. We mangaged to get 100 of these swapped out in a mass replacement after stamping our feet and threatening to not buy from them again!

I reckon that if we'd gone with a smaller company or custom built PC's and tried to organise the same thing we'd have ended up having to buy 100 PSU's replacing them ourselves!

 

Despite all of their faults I don't think there's another company I'd consider buying from (for work at least).