PC Store Rip-Off

I

iBeInspire

New member
Hi everyone :)

I'd just like to say, I've put this in the rants section because I haven't got much nice to say...
I recently specced up a £500 gaming PC For my friend. It consisted of :
- i3 3220
- 7870 Tahiti LE
- Asrock z77 pro3
- Cx500
- 8gb vengeance

Now, his dad wanted to get a second opinion on the PC, So he went to a little PC Store around the corner, where he was told I have no idea what I'm talking about, and he could build a much better PC For £400.
Me being me, I decided to go to the shop today after school and try and talk to the shopkeeper, and find out what his ideas for this build were, convinced he couldn't do better for £500, or anything around that
I come in, ask him what his ideas are, and he looks at a little 16 year old, who, in his mind, knows nothing about PCs and proceeds to argue with me for 10 minutes about how I should just buy a 7970 "if I'm so clever" and that a 8-core "bulldozer" is better in gaming than a i3 (Which is NOT True - Yeah, piledriver gets close, but NOT Bulldozer, AND It's costs more, AND It uses MUCH More power). Next he asks me "why a corsair PSU?" And when I tell him it's because they're basically the best, he laughs and then starts shouting, not giving me a chance to ask "so what's better then?"... He then ends the conversation by having the CHEEK to tell me to research "INTEL"(!) in google...

Now, I want to show my friend's dad this thread, so that he won't buy a crappy PC From this guy... So help me out here guys, am I really an idiot..?
 
sounds to me that the shopkeeper is a know-it-all that knows nothing, and is just trying to palm off old stock.

this happens alot, with the smaller resellers having to flog old stock before they can buy new. ;)

he is better off buying online from a repetable dealer like aria or ocuk
 
Well, I guess that that an 8-core AMD *could* be slightly faster than the dual core i3, even though that has hyperthreading. However, Intel offers much, much more performance per core and games don't use more than 4 cores anyway. Besides, buying the i3 will give you the oppertunity to upgrade to an i5 or even an i7 later down the road, while with the AMD there is no real upgrade available.

The AMD CPU would also need faster RAM to go with it, which is a tad more expensive, not to talk about the big difference in power consumption. Assuming the dad pays the electricity bill, I guess lower TDP is better ;)
I just checked it, and where the 8150 (Bulldozer 8-core) uses 125Watt TDP, the 3220 only has a TDP of 55Watt (!)

In my, and a lot of other people's, opinion(s), Corsair has been the #1 brand for power supplies over the last few years. Other good brands would be Seasonic, Silverstone, XFX, etc. My guess is that the pc shop are using a no name brand because it will be really, really cheap for them to buy. The downside to this is that no-one with actuall PSU knowledge will ever get to test or review these things.

One last thing; Being clever has absolutely nothing to do with extremely high-end gear. I don't even know what kind of point he was trying to make, but that literally made no sense at all.
 
All a guy in a PC shop is going to do would be buy the parts, charge you more for them than online stores would because he wouldn't be able to get the stock as cheap as larger online companies could, and then charge you a premium for building it himself.
There's no way shops like that can do anything cheaper than you getting the parts online and building it yourself / having a mate build it for you.

Firstly, you're completely right about the parts.
Secondly, even if you were wrong about the part choice, you could still build the rig the guy in the PC shop recommended for cheaper than he would.
 
Thanks to all, this is exactly what I've been saying, the guys just trying to get rid of what he has on the shelves...
He made no sense, and if anyone with even an ounce of computer knowledge had been there with me, we would have been laughing all the way home...
As it stands, my friends dad is veering towards buying from the shop, and this thread is all I have to stop it...
Could you guys please somehow confirm that you can't really do much better for £500, so I have someone's word apart from my own to back me up here..? I really don't wanna see £500 of my friends money go down the drain x.x
 
iBeInspire said:
Could you guys please somehow confirm that you can't really do much better for £500, so I have someone's word apart from my own to back me up here..? I really don't wanna see £500 of my friends money go down the drain x.x
Click to expand...

Well seeing as he is getting an i3, is Z77 really needed? Other than that you have made a great choice

Also what case and storage?
 
You can most certainly build a better PC for £500 by getting the parts yourself than buying from the guy in the shop who quite frankly seems like an asshole. Surely your friends dad will see this thread, see that we are a community of PC builders, overclockers, gamers etc. and understand that we for the most part know what we're talking about. The combined knowledge of all the guys in this community is a million times more than one guy in a shop trying to flog stock. We have no motive and the shop owner does
 
seumasbeathan said:
Well seeing as he is getting an i3, is Z77 really needed? Other than that you have made a great choice

Also what case and storage?
Click to expand...

My friends fine with upgrading to a 3570k down the line, so I thought z77 would probably be necessary...

The case will be a Rosewill Ranger, since I've got one lieing around that I'd donate, and for storage were going 1tb Seagate, since I've personally had luck with them, and we can't afford an SSD...
 
iBeInspire said:
My friends fine with upgrading to a 3570k down the line, so I thought z77 would probably be necessary...

The case will be a Rosewill Ranger, since I've got one lieing around that I'd donate, and for storage were going 1tb Seagate, since I've personally had luck with them, and we can't afford an SSD...
Click to expand...

By my adding, the total of the parts you listed + £50 for the HDD would only come to about £450, which would leave enough for a 64gb ssd
 
iBeInspire said:
Didn't even get a chance to ask, the guy was at the very peak of his menstrual cycle x.x
Click to expand...

No worries. As has been said, the shop keeper is only in it for the money. He'll put the extra cost down to labour when it will in fact be money going into his own pocket (He has to make money at the end of the day, but he'll likely charge a lot more than he should). The build you have proposed is great for £500 and I very much doubt the shop keeper can put up anything better for £400.
 
seumasbeathan said:
Well seeing as he is getting an i3, is Z77 really needed? Other than that you have made a great choice

Also what case and storage?
Click to expand...

At least it gives him the option to upgrade his CPU to basically anything he wants without having to buy a new mainboard. All he needs then is a nice cooler and he could also do some overclocking :)

Also; The set-up you've picked is really solid. Only things you could do to make it cheaper would be grabbing 4GBs of RAM instead of 8, but that would really only save him 10 quid and 8GB is nice to have.

Truth is that in those PC stores you're most likely getting a cheap case with terrible airflow and build quality, a no name PSU that allows no upgrade whatsoever and 1333, or even 1066MHz RAM which is not a great combination with that Bulldozer CPU. Oh, and with that buildozer CPU, for that price, I wouldn't even be surprised if there was no dedicated GPU. That is not a good thing either with the before described PSU :L
 
seumasbeathan said:
By my adding, the total of the parts you listed + £50 for the HDD would only come to about £450, which would leave enough for a 64gb ssd
Click to expand...

CPU (90) + mobo (80) + gpu (170) + PSU (55) + ram (40) + HDD (60) = £495
Those are Amazon prices, I guess I could get cheaper on Aria/OC..?
A SSD Would be a great addition if we could get it into budget...
 
The regular consumer has it in their heads that these small shops get bulk discounts on parts or buy at wholesale.

Protip: There is no wholesale market and small shops don't build enough PCs to qualify for bulk discounts. Usually what happens is the small shop buys from online shops, (newegg, amazon, Aria, etc) and adds their markup. They pay the same price you and I do.

What you spec'd out is a great machine and reasonable for the cost. Until we see some specs from this shop, there is no way he is selling your friend a better machine for less.

At PC shops I've worked at in the past, I pointed the customers to online shops to buy the parts themselves, then charged them an assembly/setup fee. They got way more for their money this way and my employers still made money on the labor. Plus we didn't have to warranty the parts ourselves.
 
Thanks to everyone that helped, I can already see this going in the right direction, ad opposed to into a shopkeepers back pocket xPP
I'll give his dad a pointer this way, and once we get the rig underway, you can bet you'll see a build log from my friend :)
 
 
I'm not trying to be a d**k but i can see it from your friends dad's point of view.

PC shop, mans invested a lot of money and time and does this for a living (even if he is ripping people off, most of them do).

You - kid. (sorry)

I was doing just the same as you when i was your age and had the same problems with parents who thought the tower of a computer was the hard drive.

His dad would rather have the security of paying over the odds and letting mr pc man build it rather than you. Building PCs isnt hard, getting some one trust to you with there hard earnt cash is. Good luck, but i susspect you need to convince him of your abbilities to build it rather than the specs.
 
jamed2017 said:
I'm not trying to be a d**k but i can see it from your friends dad's point of view.

PC shop, mans invested a lot of money and time and does this for a living (even if he is ripping people off, most of them do).

You - kid. (sorry)

I was doing just the same as you when i was your age and had the same problems with parents who thought the tower of a computer was the hard drive.

His dad would rather have the security of paying over the odds and letting mr pc man build it rather than you. Building PCs isnt hard, getting some one trust to you with there hard earnt cash is. Good luck, but i susspect you need to convince him of your abbilities to build it rather than the specs.
Click to expand...

You're definitely right, this is exactly why I started the thread - to show him I know what I'm talking about.
At the end of the day, of course a shop keeper's word is going to stand over mine, I accept that... But 10/20 people on a credited PC forum vs one shopkeeper..? Should tip the odds a little ;)
 
 
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