Fucking Overclockers.

[Paul Calf]

About three weeks ago the PC that I bought from Overclockers in September 2020 stopped working. I won't go into the details.

I called Overclockers and they told me they'd have a look at it. "Cool," I thought, and packaged it up to send back to their repair shop.

A few days late, they mailed me back to tell me that it needed a new motherboard and a new case, which they would fix under warranty and that the 18-month-old RTX 3090 had been damaged in transit, which they wouldn't because I didn't buy it from them.

"Fucking bollocks," I thought. The graphics card was about 50% of the value of the computer. So I asked them to replace it and bought one from their store. I also added a USB-C hub.

A couple of days later, my PC (although at this point the only original parts were the memory and the power supply) arrived. I plugged it in. I ran some diagnostics. I booted Steam, which promptly told me that a lot of my games were missing.

A bit of digging showed that the M.2 drive I'd installed about three months earlier wasn't showing up and they hadn't noticed before shipping because even though they'd fitted it to the motherboard, it had ducked under their test procedures.

They asked me to bundle it and send it back, which I did.

Another week later, it arrived back at my house. I noted with approval that the drive was showing and was...completely empty. For some reason they'd wiped all 2 TB of data off that drive. Fortunately, it's not going to be difficult to replace.

I'm not going to use them again though.

[aunt mildred]

They are wankers and so are scan. I only trust CCL and ebuyer nowadays but that's only because I've never had an issue with parts I've ordered. Overclockers in particular were bragging about ETH rate of Vega cards before they went on sale so they could boost the price.

I wouldn't let them get away with saying the 3090 was fucked, that really does ring alarm bells with me (funny how the most expensive component in the pc that you didn't buy from them is the one component that didn't make it in transit - that fucker is in one of their employees machines is my guess). Ask for it back.

[Paul Calf]

They did send it back in the box of the new card. I've got a Razr external enclosure so I'll give it a test run in that.

[aunt mildred]

Fair enough, I hope there's nothing wrong with it and you can get some good money from ebay for it. If not i'll give you a ton for it in perfect working order lolz. Seriously though I hope you get some good money back, sounds like you've had a nightmare.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Is this related to the thing complaining about voltage levels? Why did it need a new case?

[Paul Calf]

I wasn't going to go into details, but...

...the USB 2.0 hub was faulty and as they didn't have any more of that case in stock, they had to replace the whole case. The motherboard had bent pins in the USB 3 header (I'm pretty sure I did that) so they had to replace that too.

If they hadn't done it on warranty I'd have done it myself.

[aunt mildred]

What PSU is in the computer if you don't mind me asking? With pre-built systems sometimes they cheap out on the PSU and that could have been the start of your problems especially with a 3090 to run.

[Paul Calf]

It's not pre-built. I specified the parts and they built it.

The PSU is a Kolink Continuum 1050W 80 Plus Platinum. I checked the power requirements before I installed the card.

[Sebastian Cobb]

They are wankers and so are scan. I only trust CCL and ebuyer nowadays but that's only because I've never had an issue with parts I've ordered. Overclockers in particular were bragging about ETH rate of Vega cards before they went on sale so they could boost the price.

I wouldn't let them get away with saying the 3090 was fucked, that really does ring alarm bells with me (funny how the most expensive component in the pc that you didn't buy from them is the one component that didn't make it in transit - that fucker is in one of their employees machines is my guess). Ask for it back.

It could be 'convenient' but modern high-spec graphics cards are heavy behemoths and mounted on a small edge-connector perpendicular to the motherboard, so are a weak point. I feel like they've outgrown the slots they're designed for, or that pci-express is a bit under-engineered.

[Paul Calf]

Yeah. I hadn't screwed it in properly either. There's no reason to think they were acting in bad faith here.

[aunt mildred]

It's not pre-built. I specified the parts and they built it.

The PSU is a Kolink Continuum 1050W 80 Plus Platinum. I checked the power requirements before I installed the card.

Apologies, I assumed it was pre-built. Looks like a decent PSU and more than enough for a 3090.

[aunt mildred]

It could be 'convenient' but modern high-spec graphics cards are heavy behemoths and mounted on a small edge-connector perpendicular to the motherboard, so are a weak point. I feel like they've outgrown the slots they're designed for, or that pci-express is a bit under-engineered.

It's a fair point but I've lost count on the many graphics cards that have supposedly been dead and just needed reseating. If that doesn't work it tends to be the pcie on the motherboard and the graphics card is fine on a different mobo. It's actually quite rare for a graphics card to just stop working ime.