Parts from OcUK or pre-built system?

D3lirious

D3lirious

D3lirious

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The dilemma involves a choice between purchasing parts from ocuk or buying pre-built from a rival. For this reason I’m not sure whether this post is breaking any rules but of course I won’t mention rival’s name.

The spec as bought in parts from ocuk is listed below and comes in at about £1,360 delivered. The pre-built spec from the rival is pretty much identical but comes in at about £120 more.

I’m more than happy to build my own set-up, as I have done so for my current and previous systems.

What’s drawing me to the pre-built system however is:

1) The pre-built system is overclocked/tested for me (expecting anything from around 2.8 to maybe even 3.5Ghz or higher, not sure) and of course warranted. This is the biggest factor as although I’m happy building my PC, I’m uncomfortable with overclocking in case I do end up buggering it up as I can’t afford to simply throw £200 at a new CPU (or worse if end up killing my RAM or something).

2) The O/S. I would get the upgrade to Vista home premium voucher with the purchase of XP MCE edition which looking at prices of Vista could save me some cash.

Now looking it over it seems that this might be more of a no-brainer as I originally imagined due to the saving on Vista alone probably offsetting the premium I’m paying for pre-built. I guess though I just like building my own machine because I know exactly how it’s set-up and I know I will have all the cable/manuals/boxes, etc.

Any thoughts? I think the question I also want to ask is what kind of realistic overclock could I expect from this system if I was to go it alone and do it myself?


 
1) The pre-built system will come overclocked but chances are, you could push it to more quite safely yourself. The good thing about the latest AMD and Intel CPU's is basically that if they start getting too hot, they will throttle and not burn out like the old days. *remembers Thunderbird going up in smoke*

2) The whole Vista upgrade thing should be taken with a pinch of salt. I recently got a copy of MCE 2005 which had the included voucher. All seems good until you read the terms and conditions. Basically, you must have a system which comes with a pre-installed copy of Windows XP by an APPROVED Microsoft system builder. After giving Microsoft the reference code on the form, they give you a code back and then you must send the form off along with a receipt from said APPROVED system builder or builder such as Sony etc from another store.
 
Hi

Nice spec, personally ive always loved the building my own route as its a much greater sense of achievement and pride, makes the machine like a child, part of the family so to speak. But again thats just my person preference.

Mike
 
They apparently overclock and test to as high as possible stable speed specific to a system, but yeah, I'm thinking I might end up with say 2.9Ghz and not be able to resist taking it further which pretty much voids the whole warranty thing. It's a tricky one.

I didn't know that was how the Vista voucher worked, though I can't imagine they could offer the voucher (specifically advertised) and not follow through with providing the approval docs... I'll have to check on this if I take this route.
 
D3lirious said:
I can't imagine they could offer the voucher (specifically advertised) and not follow through with providing the approval docs... I'll have to check on this if I take this route.
Click to expand...

Microsoft themselves aren't doing anything wrong. Providing you get an approval number for the form and buy a PC from one of the suppliers or system companies like Sony which is approved by Microsoft then fine.

The problem is with the other e-tailers who are advertising Windows XP with free Vista upgrade. It simply isn't just that.
 
Slackworth said:
Microsoft themselves aren't doing anything wrong. Providing you get an approval number for the form and buy a PC from one of the suppliers or system companies like Sony which is approved by Microsoft then fine.

The problem is with the other e-tailers who are advertising Windows XP with free Vista upgrade. It simply isn't just that.
Click to expand...

Sorry to hi-jack the thread for a moment, but I am asking this question on behalf of a friend. He owns Windows XP Home (he purchased it OEM) and wanted to do the £40 upgrade to Vista offer, I guess he won't be ab;e to do that then?

// I didn't really wanna start a thread just for this, when the topic was already lightly touched on :)
 
It looks like someone has asked a similar question on another forum (the etailer that I'm thinking of for mine) and this was the reply "the Vista upgrade would only be valid with the purchase of a fully built system with the XP licence installed onto it. Proof of purchase would need to be forwarded to MS along with an ID number provided by the Retailer upon purchase of a fully built system before the upgrade Vista disk would be despatched by MS."
So I don't think your mate can do anything I'm afraid.

At this point, despite the attractiveness of the offer, I'm leaning more towards just getting my parts from here. It's just a shame that ocuk don't have the upgrade offer.
 
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Dark_Angel said:
Sorry to hi-jack the thread for a moment, but I am asking this question on behalf of a friend. He owns Windows XP Home (he purchased it OEM) and wanted to do the £40 upgrade to Vista offer, I guess he won't be ab;e to do that then?

// I didn't really wanna start a thread just for this, when the topic was already lightly touched on :)
Click to expand...

Nope. He might as well chuck the voucher away as it is worthless unless he brought it pre-installed on a PC.

D3lirious said:
It looks like someone has asked a similar question on another forum (the etailer that I'm thinking of for mine) and this was the reply "the Vista upgrade would only be valid with the purchase of a fully built system with the XP licence installed onto it. Proof of purchase would need to be forwarded to MS along with an ID number provided by the Retailer upon purchase of a fully built system before the upgrade Vista disk would be despatched by MS."
So I don't think your mate can do anything I'm afraid.

At this point, despite the attractiveness of the offer, I'm leaning more towards just getting my parts from here. It's just a shame that ocuk don't have the upgrade offer.
Click to expand...

We do stock the copies of XP with the voucher but are not willing to advertise the fact the upgrade is included due to the fact it really isn't a free upgrade. ;)
 
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