I LIKE OVERCLOCKERS

[Piglet]

I would just like to make a point.......

Recently, most people around here have been slagging off OcUK. This is mainly because Sniper Jack has had ONE bad expierience with them. I know other people have had problems too but they were great with me...

I ordered a Duron + Abit KT7 combo and it came THE NEXT DAY when no-one else even had one. The H/S went on fine and it didn't just hit the guaranteed 900 mhz it hit 950 steady as a rock.

I asked them about the cracking cores of the Duron when I orderd it, and they told me that if I had any problems at all to send it back. BUT it's not generally the H/S that's the problem it's the fact that people don't put them on carefully, but even if I did do it then they'd send me a new one.

I know Sniper has had problems with them, and I sympathise with him. You've just got to remember that OcUK is a small company and they can't afford to refund people when they don't think it's their fault......

That's all.......

Piglet out.......

*PLEASE DON'T FLAME ME :) *

P.S My Duron 650 at 950 is catching up on a P3 1G in Sandra Cpu benchmarks and WHOOPS IT in the memory benchmark even though it has RDRam :)

[The Laughing Cow]

firstly m8 :angry: <-- here is your flame.

DO you call a company which employees 10 members of staff and makes £80k+ per week small? i surely dont. Yet they arent as big as a good company like Dabs but they sure suck.

Their customer service is frankly ****i ng shi t excuse the language but its relevent.

The MD even swears at customers- hmm well thats making good PR and customer relations.

Also they charge rip-off prices, I bet you payed over 50% more for your KT7 + CPU then i did and despite they all have the same core so are all expected to hit 900Mhz.

-Sniper Out.

[Micolahan]

I fink there service 0\/\/|\|§ J00........i accident;y bought the wrong mobo from them (DUH LOL :E) and that evening i sent an URGENT message to SPIE saying basically i had fooked the order up the ASS!!!!!!!!! he sent a message back l8r on and said he had just caught the delivery (which was just about to be posted SAME DAY) and was gonna refund my money....got money in me account next day.

Sweet

[The Laughing Cow]

B O L O C K S is all i have to say. OcUK are ****. If they sell a product which is faulty/is missing detailed instructions they are commiting an offense.

OcUK do not own anyone. as a fact

DABS O\/\/N OcUK!!!!!

[Calzor Suzay]

Can we quit the flaming please it's get hot in here and were usually a nice bunch. Sniper you have a grievance with OCuk and you've made your point and got burned yourself and I'm sorry for that but can we quit dragging the topic through the mud over and over. OCuk have there own message boards if you feel your not going to get any satisfaction refund wise and want to have a go at them, theres plenty of anonymisers (sp) if they ban you :E

You mentioned legal action before and if it does come to that then they may site these postings in the case as a possible slander of the companies good name (whether you think its crap or not), yes the MD shouldn't have swore at you etc and I've always found there prices high anyway but what if Dabs had sent you the very same fan cooler and the same scenario occured, would you be flaming the crap out of them? sure you would and don't say they'd refund or replace the goods because you just don't know that for sure.

If someone asks in a different thread advice where to shop, sure say there crap etc, PCWorld take a beating but can we drop it now please?

[werewolf_bite]

Hi

I've had very good service at OCUK, i've ordered from them 4 times in the past and been very pleased with them.
I ordered a new case when my k6-2's PSU blew (i hated the old case) at about 5am on a thursday morning, and had the new case at 8:50 am that friday.


Sniper have a look here
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000328.html

"I hear ya m8 I felt the same way but its not overclockers fault its all AMDs fault, there the ones that rushed out with such a fragile/poorly designed CPU in the first place, I wouldnt mind but they could have at least made one Socket A friendly heatsink at least, they expected the current Intel socket 370 heatsinks to work fine with theres, well it didnt AMD. I thought AMD had common sense, I mean look at the K6-2 its got a really cool protective copper plate covering the CPU/transisters !!!

whether its the tight clips on the heatsinks that are applying too much pressure or the fact the heatsinks wobble even with the feet, it is still AMDS fault. Whats the point of those feet cause they dont do much when a metalic flat surface is pushing against it !

If any of you have lost money on this matter, write to AMD and tell them, my mate did after just one small itty bitty corner was taken off his 1ghz T-bird, and AMD prompty replaced it.....

Since intel are no longer on top and No1 I cant go back to them, it looks like ill have to give AMD another chance in my next upgrade!

I hope AMD sort this mess out if they dont then its back to hassle-free Intel"

It would appear that AMD are sort of admitting that their CPU's are really not strong enough at the moment.

[Piglet]

Yeah, I agree....

I think you'll want to go to Dabs and ask for your money back not OcUK......

Piglet out.....

[Nozzeh]

I do think that it's amusing how Sniper is the only one posting any complaints.

I've had nothing but good service from them when I've ordered things.

[[HLnC]Jay-Dee]

sniper did dabs collect your cpu yet and did u get another one off them yet ?

[BRUN]

ok Piglet, they said they'd send you a new cpu if the Orb damaged did they, well why did i recently get an email saying that if i want a new processor it is going to cost me £60, and yes i am the same BRUN who made the Hard OCP news with those pictures of a bollox'd Duron all done by a Silver Orb which was in a bundle sold to me by them

the best place by far is http://www.theoverclockingstore.co.uk

[The Laughing Cow]

hmmm- i think Piglet has moved this from my original post where it was much more Truthful. Yeah JD m8 Dabs came an collected it promptly- Yes for FREE unlike OcuK, until now Spie had closed the forums because the truth was coming out. Why else would he close them? I sifted through hundreds of complaints on that forum until he closed it down.

OcUK will not succeed. I was offered a Duron 600 @ 'cost' price he said they oay £52 + VAT. ---> me thinks cheaper @ Dabs anyway.

Oh well let the flaming commence cos im pi$$ed to the back teeth about ****. :angry: :mad:

[werewolf_bite]

I think the reason Spie closed the order queries and Tech support forums was becuase people were posting muiltiple complaints/ requsts for help in a very short space of timer.
I noticed one bloke who posted 3 threads over the space of one weekend because his first one (friday night) was not answered straight away.

Also using the forums for tech support/order queries was a good idea, but unworkable really, it takes too long for either party to reply.

[The Laughing Cow]

"tech support" and Overclockers UK dont actually go together. Let me ask you here who has phoned OcUK and got through Who hasnt been cut off? who has noticed the lack of professionalism in the way they treat their customers? I was called "mate" by the person i spoke to. That is so not professional!!!

[werewolf_bite]

I've had to phone up in the past, and yes it can take a while to get through (no worse than BT, NTL, or many companies), heck i've been cut off in the middle of placing an order to watford electronics in the past (and they are a lot bigger than OCUK).

As to them calling you "mate" i can't see whats so bad with that, they are fairly relaxed, and i've noticed a LOT of people put "mate" or "m8" in ICQ messages or posts on forums.

Oh a last point, most coolers for CPU's don't come with detailed instructions, I've had about 6 different CPU coolers in the past and none came with detailed instructions (heck 2 came with none, one of those was from Maplin's).
Usually the motherboards manual will say how the cooler is meant to fit, or the CPU manufacturer has specified how cooler is to be fitted, as part of the spec for the cpu's mounting.

[The Laughing Cow]

i for one dont object to being called m8, However i know that older people do. On the otherhand if a company wants to keep you as a customer they should respect you. A company should be grateful for your purchase. Where i work part-time if i was to call a customer 'mate' ok maybe it would be ok to a younger person but not an older person. How do OcUK know how old the person on the other end of the line is?

[Bapapapa]

Originally posted by Sniper Jack
How do OcUK know how old the person on the other end of the line is?

By the amount of whining & sobbing they can hear? :laugh:

[Piglet]

So Dabs replaced it did they?

Well it seems to me they are admitting responsibility,therefore OcUK are not to blame, surely?

I got the coolermaster H/S and they said they woulds replace the chip if it broke even if they thought it was my fault and I got an e-mail to the same effect (and, no I can't copy and paste it here because my e-mail is permanatly borked at the moment.........

I got through to OcUK on the phone first time 3 times, and I found them one of the most pleasent group of people I'ver ever dealt with.

Oh and everybody has problems with different companys, I had to threaten Tandys with taking them to law once before they'd refund my money on a Hi-Fi from them with was clearly knackard and not my fauly, yet most people think Tandys are great. You see it was one bad expeirience, they are probably a decent company, just my bad luck.....

Also I think you'll find there are a lot of people who are more than happy with OcUK's service...


Piglet out......

[Piglet]

And yes, my typing, spelling and grammer is, indeed, crap... :)

[Biggus]

OcUK may have a good selection of OC'ing kit, but their customer service (like quite a few other companies), leaves a lot to be desired.

I was among the first to order the Soltek KX Athlon boards (2 in fact) from them. Almost everyone had problems with those boards concerning memory issues, and they were replaced or refunded without question.

I later bought a K7-700 "guaranteed" to 850 which did not work correctly on my Abit KA7, the BIOS was reporting the voltage as 1.4v, and wouldn't let me take it higher than 1.6v, despite the CPU being modified to run at 1.7v.

I called them to tell of the problem, and they sent me another CPU (charging me for it of course). That CPU worked occasionally, so again I called them to return the CPU's.

I sent them via Royal Mail Special Delivery, which delivered them to OcUK next day. I was expecting to get my money refunded (about £380) within the week, but it didn't.
I called them asking why my money had not yet been refunded, and while they were "checking", I could hear them unwrapping a parcel, which I presume was the one I had sent a week earlier, although I can't prove that.

I was promised my money within a few days, but again it never appeared, so calling them again, I was told that it would definitely be done that day (Friday).

As it only takes 2 working days to debit/credit via debit cards, my money should have been back in my account by Wednesday, but it wasn't. Another phone call later had them saying their system was down on Saturday, and they couldn't access my details to refund me.

I did eventually get my money back 3.5 weeks after returning the CPU's, but the above incurred me some bank charges because I didn't quite have enough in my account to pay some of my bills. OcUK claimed that wasn't their fault, but I beg to differ, because had they dealt with my returns on the first or (at worst) second time, then there wouldn't have been any charges.

I will not buy from them again because of the above.

Just for the record, I will also not buy from Dabs after they took 5.5 weeks to refund £485 for a hard drive that I never even received :(

If I ran my own business like that, I doubt I would have many customers for long, lucky for Dabs they are a big company, and have a much bigger customer base.

I'm not necessarily saying don't buy from either company, but be aware of how they can operate.

[Piglet]

Yeah, waiting 3 weeks for ya money back is annoying but it's hardly a major problem is it. I've also had this problem about companys not giving ya money back for a while, it's just the way it goes. It wouldn't make me not want to buy from them again.

For instance, I ordered a microphone for the P.C from The Jungle and it never arrived. After 3 weeks I e-mailed them with the problem and then it took another week for them to get back to me, in the end I cancled my order. So I had one bad expeirience with them, but I would order from them again because I know people who have had good expieriences with them... you see? :)

Piglet out.....

[[HLnC]Jay-Dee]

nooooooooooo :cry:
don't even go down the whole jungle.com road
i have had to send 2 orders back to them and will never be using them again

[The Laughing Cow]

I had problems with Jungle AKA SWWH telling me it would work but it didnt they charged 15% too! :mad:

[PADDYBOY]

OK - everyone seems to feel very strongly about this matter, those on both sides of the fence so don't take anything posted here the wrong way...

Personally it seems to me that nobody who has had a major problem with OCUK is flaming them (why would they after all?), but it appears to me that when things go wrong, OCUK just don't give a sh*te.

They are not a vey big organisation, that much is obvious, but just cause they aren't big, doesn't mean that you shouldn't expect the same level of professionalism from them as from a larger company. If that means they have to fork out when something they supply f*cks up, then so be it. If that in turn means they go under, well this happens everyday and nothing is going to stop that, thats life unfortunately.

The main point I think everyone needs to consider is that OCUK do seem to deliver most of their orders on time and in good order. However, of all the posts on this thread (and others I remember reading a while back), not one f*ck up which is directly or indirectly the fault of OCUK has been rectified to the satisfaction of the customer (and yes, even though this situation seems to have been sorted by Dabs, I think it was OCUK's responsibility to resolve the problem - imagine if the Heat Sink was for a CPU in a six month old system. The system supplier certainly wouldn't have replaced the CPU if the damage was caused by a heat sink with a design flaw).

I personally have never (and never expect to) shop at OCUK because of the extortionate prices they charge - why the hell should I give them (or anybody else for that matter) my hard earned cash when I can keep it in my pocket (or my local publican's :) ) and still get the same product somewhere else. If I did shop at OCUK, I would be very wary of their after sales care if something did go wrong - they certainly don't seem too keen to sort out any problems ...

[The Laughing Cow]

Originally posted by PADDYBOY
I personally have never (and never expect to) shop at OCUK because of the extortionate prices they charge - why the hell should I give them (or anybody else for that matter) my hard earned cash when I can keep it in my pocket (or my local publican's :) ) and still get the same product somewhere else. If I did shop at OCUK, I would be very wary of their after sales care if something [i]did go wrong - they certainly don't seem too keen to sort out any problems ... [/B]

me 2 m8y- Im 16 and even i give my hard earned pocket money to the local barsteward in my Public House. I long await the day when i pluck up the courage to sneak into the local clubs :wink:

Btw- those who know me i have some info for ya so ICQ me.

Ta :dork:

[Piglet]

It was the weak Duron's that were the trouble though so it was Dabs fault although they are a good company when it comes to replacing stuff......

But The Jungle sucks :).........

Piglet out......

[The Laughing Cow]

i spose we agree on somthing.

OcUK are still way overpriced!

[Piglet]

1. My mum payed for it :)
2. The way I see it my Duron at 900 outperforms an Athlon at 850 and a P3 at 850 which both cost more so I'm happy.

Piglet out.....

[Piglet]

Oh and meh is not gonna get in an argument with any P3/Athlon owners about my Duron outperforming a p3 850 and an Athlon 850 so please just leave it.......

Piggy out.....

[The Laughing Cow]

Bah PIII Owns Duron m8y :P :P:P
:dork:

[telescopi]

Hello Biggus, I speak to you more than some members of my family it seems :)

It was too long to wait, although you could very well find longer waits elsewhere - I personally disagree with making someone wait. The addition of an extra pair of hands in technical means now I can spend more time tieing up loose ends, which is very much needed. Also the previously tight control over refunds has been loosened up somewhat (how on earth is anyone expected to work efficiently when every refund has to be authorised by top management?!).

Still, that is past, and the present is better (if not perfect).

Crunching AMDs: This is caused by mounting a heatsink improperly, I have yet to damage a CPU (having taken them on / off hundreds of times), but from the ones I have seen, I can deduce it is caused by people tilting the heatsink from one side to the other when trying to put it on - this causes pressure on the corners, and the CPU core isn't strong enough to take it (unlike an intel core). Is this a CPU design defect, or user error? Thats a matter of opinion - is it a Heatsink defect? Not really, a heatsink cannot kill a CPU, if you leave it in the room alone with your computer, you won't come home to see the heatsink has lept upon your poor defenceless PC :) It is a tool for a job, and like any tool it must be used correctly and with care.

I have personally seen people who have brought their systems in, trying (note trying, certainly not suceeding) to mount a heatsink. His hands were shaking he was pushing so hard - I was so scared I had to pull him away! Needless to say I attached it with one smooth movement, I don't know what he was doing, but it wasn't the right thing.

This is something he had just spent hundreds of pounds on, and he was treating it like a lump of scrap metal, truly, I was shocked - and I saw first hand how people manage to break CPU's.


AMD actually has a guide in PDF format on their website, instructing you how to mount a heatsink - it's fairly basic, but if followed to the letter, would have helped some people who found themselves in trouble.

We try to offer advice on the website for people, if we find a lot of people have had a certain problem - we make note, so future customers can hopefully avoid it. I do not see any products on DABS website giving such help.

Thermaltake redesigning silver orb: A good move by them IMHO - if you rocked the heatsink while fitting it, it was very easy to chip a Duron / Tbird. The fact that they have gone someway to making the heatsink foolproof, does not say the previous design was bad, just that it didn't take into account the way some users may try to mount it. Take note, thermaltake has issued NO recall of the old design, nor do they intend to, to my knowledge. If thermaltake think it's safe, and if AMD think their CPU's are tough enough (Hmm, wake up and smell the coffee), then thats all we can do.

Phill is our head of sales, and answers most phone calls - he's an informal kind of a guy, if you see what I mean. He really does care though, and goes through great pains trying to satisfy every customer. Unfortunately sometimes, what the customer demands, and what we are able to give, are just too far apart.

Phone DABS and get a well trained telesales assistant (you allways know them, sound like McDonalds assistants :) But that is basically what they are - Monkeys reading from a script, a rather corny americanised script.

If you need technical support - I'd advise sending an email to techsupport, phones are nice - but by the time you've listened to their story, the long drawn out explanation, and tried to explain whats wrong - you could have answered a dozens peoples emails. Remember - unlike some places, there is no charge for technical support.

Our prices are not so very high on most lines - heatsinks are expensive ONLY when compared to the generic makes - which are pretty much allways not in the same league.

Motherboards are not that far apart from the cheap places (the ones who don't know anything about their products and deal purely on a stock basis - sell everything, sell cheap, sell lots).

CPU's cost more - but thats because we guarantee them, and this costs us money - any normal company buys a hundred CPU's, they sell a hundred CPU's - job done. We on the other hand spend an afternoon testing them, then sell them (and lose a few that don't clock). It is true that most CPU's clock - intel's are very reliable (especially as we cherry pick good weeks), but if you buy from elsewhere - you take a chance, you don't know what week number it is, you don't know the stepping, and they certainly won't give you a replacement because it won't hit X speed. Take the 1.1GHz TBirds as an example - we know what serial numbers to look for (the Blue ones), and we buy them in, then weed out the (few) non-performers - we cannot buy them from the biggest, cheapest importers - because they simply could not tell us what numbers they were (or in the start - telling us what colour they were!). Yes we buy CPU's from smaller suppliers who are willing to go to these lengths to indulge our overclocking urges. Then we test them (it's not the most technically challenging job in the world - but it is still technical, and still needs paying as such), then take a small hit from the few % that cannot do it (ie. we pay over the odds for them, then sell them on at a loss to get rid).

You can buy for less - but personally, when I've saved up for my new big system (I think most people do not upgrade nearly as often as most of you here), I'd be willing to pay a little bit more to make sure I'm not the unlucky few who get stuck with a dud CPU that only does what it's rated as (I remember by utter dismay at a Rightous 3D that had crap RAM, but did 50MHz so I was stuck - the max was 52MHz!!) My friend with the 300A which only did 375MHz was gutted, but he couldn't do anything with it, he just lived with it.

Fair enough you may say, he paid no extra, so shouldn't expect it - ahh, but we do, and when it comes to it, your spending a MASSIVE amount of money on all your new toys, hell, I'll pay a few quid more to make sure my toys are better than all my friends toys - sad but true :)

My last system upgrade was just after christmas (before I'd even been to Overclockers - never mind worked there). I'd finally gotten the money to upgrade everything I needed for a top end system. I wanted the new fangled Athlon thingy, and a motherboard, and a tnt2. I worked out I could save so much (long time ago, but must have been 50-100 quid) by buying various bits from the cheapest places. But OcUK had this new board in, called Biostar, never heard of it - but they told me it was the best and I trusted them. I wanted a cheap and quiet heatsink, they told me straight, don't do it - so I spent the extra and got a Globalwin. I had a 235W PSU, they told me to dump it and get a 300W.

By the end, it was a LOT more than I was thinking of spending. My initial thoughts of a TNT2 (not ultra) had moved upto a Geforce DDR, my RAM to PC133, the non-clocked 500 to a guaranteed 700MHz beast.

The end result is that I now know everything they advised me was totally necessary - and probably saved me weeks of arsing about trying to make everything work. I also have a system 8 months later, while not the best anymore - that still doesn't slow down whatever game I play, a system I don't see any need to upgrade for several more months at least (probably spring next year infact). If I'd gone down my original plan, I'd have a motherboard which was actually a knightmare to live with (IRQ conflict hell I now know), a graphics card I would have had to upgrade months ago, and a CPU that would be holding me back as soon as I upgraded the graphics. In the end, it's not a case of how much extra it cost, it's how much it saved me!


You will probably ignore me, as I work there - but note: I spent 800 squid there before I knew anything about them - just on the recommendation of a friend (about 3 weeks before starting part-time, thus missing out on any discount - good timing huh?), and I am leaving in a little over 2 weeks to go back to university. I thus have no real vested interest, and perhaps know a little more about the company than any of you here.

Will I buy my next lot of bits from OcUK? Maybe, I'll look around as I allways do - but I certainly won't be adverse to spending a little extra, as I have experienced in the past - it pays dividends in the long run.

NOTE: The hard of humour should not any read further :)


Oh, unless of course I intend to smash my components with the nearest blunt instrument, I'd be better off going elsewhere then (the insane asylum perhaps? :)

[The Laughing Cow]

I cant be arsed to quote you but you have made some crap comments there:

DABS- they handle your call in a professional manner.

OcUK- if they do decide to handle your call its unprofessional and ****ty service

DABS- Cheap, quality, good service
OcUK- Overpriced, maybe quality, ****tty service.

I dont think more needs to be said

BTW u shouldnt have mentioned that you work for F u C K cos you will get flamed off this nb :angry:

[Gadget]

Laughing Cow: you've made your point about your opinion of OcUK. Lets allow the subject to drop please.

[werewolf_bite]

The Laughing Cow

I hate to say it* but Telescopi has made a lot of valid points, I know that I for one spent about a month researching the parts for my first overclocked system (that included checking about a dozen message boards), and downloading the PDF's from AMD, ASUS and ABIT so that I could see what the specs were and what was needed (in detail).

*actually I don't, he's a good bloke.

[Edited by werewolf_bite on 12-09-2000 at 04:45 PM]

[The Laughing Cow]

i have made my point- so have A smallamount of the HUGEmass of dissatisfied customers whom vow to NEVER shop (if thats what u call it) at OcUK!

[Piglet]

Um, soz to say but that siggy is sooooo immature.......

Oh and I e-mailed Dabs and asked them what would happen if I cracked the core on a Duron bought from them, and they said: "There is no problem with AMD Duron chips cracking" oh I suppose that's a proffesional answer is it?

No, it isn't, and the answer I got from OcUK was much better:
"We know about the problem with Duron cores cracking but this problem is with the people putting the heatsinks on the chips the wrong way. However if you Do have a problem with the chgip cracking send it back to us and we will despatch a new chip as soon as we recieve the old one."

I think this thread should be closed now, everybody has had their say and I have made my point.

Piglet out.....

[The Laughing Cow]

so u managed to get through to 'tech support' ? WOW im amazed. Fine if this post is to fade away into the distance that is fine but at least we have established some things:

I WONT shop/ advise people to shop at OcUK

IMO Dabs have excellent service and OcUK dont.

I agree this post should be left even though i truly am disgusted by the lack of service provided at OcUK!

-Cow Out :cow:

[PADDYBOY]

I hate to drag this thing out further (believe me, I really do), but most of the points boyo "tele-whats-his-name" up there made I would have to disagree with, mainly the points about the price of OCUK's gear. Sure oversized heatsinks are expensive, they are everywhere, and to be honest, thats the only thing OCers can compete on - absolutley everything else you will be able to find elsewhere no problems at all ... they just are not competetive. As for their "guarantees", marketting con is all I'll say (and have said plenty of times before :) ). And as for the damage being the fault of the AMD chip, pleeeeaaaassse, what sort of monkeys do you take us for? Sure a T-bird die may not be as tough as a PIII's, but they are microchips ffs - not goddamn frying pans!! Sure you should be careful with them, as most people are, but it is only one particular type of heatsink out of God only knows how many which is causing this problem. Anyone who blames the die needs their head examined - if it was a problem with the die why is this the only type of heatsink which causes it to crack? Answer : it is not the die - it is the heatsink. Full stop - you can argue till you are blue in the face that it is the die but it won't wash - it is a heat sink design defect, this is why it has been redesigned.

[The Laughing Cow]

I think Paddy has said what i was trying to say but i just am unable to put the hatred into words.

:E

[Gadget]

I think everyone has covered every aspect of this argument from either side (never having ordered from OCuk I'm going to stay resolutely neutral). Let's allow the topic to die please gents. Ta.