Hi All,
Thought I’d share my somewhat comprehensive end-to-end experience. Now having received my PCS build and having passed the agonising wait where I endlessly lurked the forum and hoped to see more reviews and peoples own experiences to reassure myself that everything would be fine! Hopefully this will serve that purpose for others to come!
Firstly, for context, my last PC was a low/mid-range build, built in 2012 – only with a GPU upgrade once along the way. I built this myself and enjoyed the experience massively, but time moves on and whilst then could spent the time on this; the luxury and ease of having this arrive to my door and good to go out of the box spoke deeply to me. Crunching the numbers, the price difference between sourcing and building myself with comparable specs was honestly not much cheaper (if at all frankly – difficult to gauge as some of the items PCS offered seemed out of stock/very inflated elsewhere – i.e. the case in my instance). Although this may speak more of the dire time to be building a PC at the moment, with all things COVID and BREXIT.
I am a light gamer, with essentially one evening a week dedicating to playing some games with a close group of friends. Type of games vary week on week but I wanted the option to be able to play anything the group suggested on a whim with a decent experience.
Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE H500M GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.6GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® STRIX B550-F GAMING (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3060 Ti - HDMI, DP
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 520 GEN 4 PCIe NVMe (up to 5000MB/R, 2500MB/W)
2nd M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 665p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 2000MB/sR | 1925MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
Corsair H115i RGB PRO XT Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
My Production dates are as followed. Throughout which, I had good communication from PCS, with three Status Update emails during the course of my order, giving me an estimated time of build. In the end, this estimation was only 2 days off, and this was due to a stock issue with the case, surprisingly the CPU & GPU were not blockers in this at all.
The only downfall in all this was towards the end, in being told my PC has been dispatched and left the PCS site on the 30th; and then hearing nothing for 2 days from PCS, nor DPD. Leading me to think it has fallen off the back of a lorry somewhere… for me to have to hang on hold for a few hours to customer service to then be updated that it has only just left. A minor gripe, annoying - yes, but forgivable!
Processed Date 28-12-2020
Pre-Production Date 05-01-2021
Build Date 30-01-2021
Test Date 30-01-2021
Awaiting Dispatch Date 30-01-2021
Dispatch Date 03-02-2021
Whilst I wanted to properly document how the PC was packaged… the missus (at this point having had to sit through my constant status checks and forum lurking for the past month was now just as excited as me) and instead wanted me to tear it open straight away! I did however keep everything in the box for safekeeping (as PCS recommend if you ever need to return it), which in itself, gives you a decent idea of the how well it is shipped.
The PC itself was immaculate, no damage from shipping, very neat inside – cable management was great as expected. The GPU I received was a Gainward 3060 Ti Phoenix, I don’t know what I was expecting, but this felt a nice surprise nonetheless. Excuse the watch in the photo as I tried to add something to scale when showing my friends to appreciate the size of the thing!
The top fan placement somewhat irks me (the Corsair logos not the same direction), which I did try to change but they were cabled tied down in such a way it would mean undoing their good work to fix.
The only thing I’m not sure about, and would appreciate some feedback on – is there any issue with the PSU cabling into the GPU?
All set up, I have a very low-key gaming set up, and despite such a beautiful machine, it is hidden away (I’m a minimalist at heart). Although rest assured for those horrified, there is PLENTY of air flow, as the door is always left open when using, and the back panel has been removed. There is also somecreative messy side vents in the cabinet.
Thought I’d share my somewhat comprehensive end-to-end experience. Now having received my PCS build and having passed the agonising wait where I endlessly lurked the forum and hoped to see more reviews and peoples own experiences to reassure myself that everything would be fine! Hopefully this will serve that purpose for others to come!
Firstly, for context, my last PC was a low/mid-range build, built in 2012 – only with a GPU upgrade once along the way. I built this myself and enjoyed the experience massively, but time moves on and whilst then could spent the time on this; the luxury and ease of having this arrive to my door and good to go out of the box spoke deeply to me. Crunching the numbers, the price difference between sourcing and building myself with comparable specs was honestly not much cheaper (if at all frankly – difficult to gauge as some of the items PCS offered seemed out of stock/very inflated elsewhere – i.e. the case in my instance). Although this may speak more of the dire time to be building a PC at the moment, with all things COVID and BREXIT.
I am a light gamer, with essentially one evening a week dedicating to playing some games with a close group of friends. Type of games vary week on week but I wanted the option to be able to play anything the group suggested on a whim with a decent experience.
Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE H500M GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.6GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® STRIX B550-F GAMING (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3060 Ti - HDMI, DP
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 520 GEN 4 PCIe NVMe (up to 5000MB/R, 2500MB/W)
2nd M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 665p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 2000MB/sR | 1925MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
Corsair H115i RGB PRO XT Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
My Production dates are as followed. Throughout which, I had good communication from PCS, with three Status Update emails during the course of my order, giving me an estimated time of build. In the end, this estimation was only 2 days off, and this was due to a stock issue with the case, surprisingly the CPU & GPU were not blockers in this at all.
The only downfall in all this was towards the end, in being told my PC has been dispatched and left the PCS site on the 30th; and then hearing nothing for 2 days from PCS, nor DPD. Leading me to think it has fallen off the back of a lorry somewhere… for me to have to hang on hold for a few hours to customer service to then be updated that it has only just left. A minor gripe, annoying - yes, but forgivable!
Processed Date 28-12-2020
Pre-Production Date 05-01-2021
Build Date 30-01-2021
Test Date 30-01-2021
Awaiting Dispatch Date 30-01-2021
Dispatch Date 03-02-2021
Whilst I wanted to properly document how the PC was packaged… the missus (at this point having had to sit through my constant status checks and forum lurking for the past month was now just as excited as me) and instead wanted me to tear it open straight away! I did however keep everything in the box for safekeeping (as PCS recommend if you ever need to return it), which in itself, gives you a decent idea of the how well it is shipped.
The PC itself was immaculate, no damage from shipping, very neat inside – cable management was great as expected. The GPU I received was a Gainward 3060 Ti Phoenix, I don’t know what I was expecting, but this felt a nice surprise nonetheless. Excuse the watch in the photo as I tried to add something to scale when showing my friends to appreciate the size of the thing!
The top fan placement somewhat irks me (the Corsair logos not the same direction), which I did try to change but they were cabled tied down in such a way it would mean undoing their good work to fix.
The only thing I’m not sure about, and would appreciate some feedback on – is there any issue with the PSU cabling into the GPU?
All set up, I have a very low-key gaming set up, and despite such a beautiful machine, it is hidden away (I’m a minimalist at heart). Although rest assured for those horrified, there is PLENTY of air flow, as the door is always left open when using, and the back panel has been removed. There is also some
