So you have bought yourself a gaming rig from a marketplace such as eBay or Amazon and have unfortunately fell foul of the seller no longer supporting your product, no longer being in business or simply not wanting to get involved - It's something we see all too often and have even wrote a lengthy post about it here.
As you know, like many high end goods, gaming computers need support and maintenance moving forward, this may well be a diagnostic and repair or it may be an upgrade to keep the system up to spec in order to run the latest and greatest titles. Ultimately, the seller of the system is usually the first point of contact as out of anyone that could help, they are the most familiar with the system and thus are likely to be the most efficient at carrying out your desired task which in theory should result in them being the cheapest and quickest solution. However, when it comes to gaming PCs from eBay and Amazon the chances are that the original seller simply does not do upgrades (after all they are just a "retailer") or, as we have covered in the linked article above, no longer exist. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons why the original point of purchase cannot help you, or why you would not go back to them, they may only do repairs that are in warranty, you may have even lost faith in their ability or they are simply quoting too much as they don't really want to do the job or don't really know how to go about it. We are very much so generalising here but its likely you are reading this because your original retail point of sale simply won't/don't do it, or no longer exist and your original marketplace such as eBay or Amazon themselves want nothing to do with your conundrum purely because all they do is provide a platform for a seller to sell their products and not have any knowledge of your product.
Without the original sellers help most of you will simply end up looking for a local computer repair shop with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately we all too often see where a local computer shop has had a "go" only to fall short leaving many customers at a loss to what to do. Whilst some local computer shops are generally brilliant for getting shot of a virus or selling you a new mouse, their gaming pc knowledge is very much so a bit of a luck of the draw and in probably every circumstance will not be as good as a dedicated gaming pc builder, and therefore it tends to be an inefficient way to do it in both a direct and indirect way; They know you have little other choice so can mark the job up as a premium or perhaps they are simply not familiar with the tech inside your system which ultimately will take them longer and resulting in a larger bill.
We want to get involved
We supply tens of thousands of gaming PCs each year, with the majority of them all being unique in some way or another, it may be a simple £500 gaming setup or it could be a £50K deep learning beast, the point is, we come across systems in all shapes and sizes. At the same time we try out a very large percentage of what the market offers to ensure what components we put in our systems can firstly carry our industry leading brand but also live up to the 6 year warranty that we offer on our systems, plus, playing with new kit is fun!
This means, we are probably the second most familiar with the spec and components of your particular system and importantly want to help with a repair or upgrade. Over the years, we are always asked if we can take a look at an eBay/Amazon PC, a big brand that you see on the TV or a system from another system builder and quite a lot more often than not, we have come up with a solution.
Fix or Upgrade my Gaming PC
The entire process works very similar to our own gaming PC upgrade service;
1 - First and foremost, we need to know this is something you are ready to do. This industry moves fast and we wouldn't want you or us investing time into something that has several weeks or even months timeline as by the time we get round to doing the work, things like tech and pricing would have changed so please only go through with this if this is something you want to do in the coming days or at most, a couple of weeks.
2 - We need to know about what you have. Unlike with our upgrade service on our systems where we have an order number and thus we know everything about your system, a system that you have purchased from the dark side (it's OK, we won't judge you!) is likely to be made up of components that we are not going to be able to accurately guess. We need a relatively accurate spec sheet which you can either dig out when you originally purchased the system (although it is very common for other system builders to use unbranded components so this may not help) or by simply downloading and installing a program called "speccy" which will output a very rough specification we can work with. We appreciate you may have a system that is not functioning nor has an original tech spec and if this is the case, let us know and try to let us know what you think you have. In an ideal world you will send us a spec that looks something like;
- Intel Core i9 14900K CPU
- Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Graphics card
- Asus Prime Z790-P D5 Motherboard
- 32GB Corsair Vengeance 4800Mhz (2x16GB) RAM
- Corsair RM750x PSU
- Cooler Master HAF 700 EVO Case
- 2TB Kingston NV2 NVME SSD
- 4TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD
We know the ideal world is not always possible so don't worry if you cannot produce a master piece of a spec like the above. Many of our customers simply state they have no idea about the spec and will take a leap of faith by just sending us the system for us to work out what they have as we can identify a full spec in a few minutes of having the system.
3 - What are your goals? Once you have a spec (or not) we need to know what your goal is. Do you need a repair, do you want to look at upgrade options for the repair or do you have a functioning system that you just simply want to bring up to date. Work out what you want to achieve and at the same time work out sort of rough budget you have to work with. We don't need to know your budget but it does speed up the entire process - If you only have a £200 budget and you are trying to bring a non functioning system up to modern specification and fix an issue then we can be open and honest to let you know off the bat that the project will likely be a no starter. If we have a budget then we can be realistic about what you can and can't achieve.
4 - Get in contact! If logistics permit, simply bring us the system during working hours however we know a 4 hour drive is not practical so this is usually best over the phone as an initial enquiry, however an email is also perfectly fine. Let us know a little about the system, it's age, where it was originally from, the spec, your goals (and budget) and we can discuss what we initially think maybe wrong with the system or the best route for an upgrade and offer a rough solution along with some rough pricing.
5 - From here this will generally result in a formal quote or estimate over email which you will be able to order directly on a our website. From there we will send you a plethora of information on how to get your system to us to carry out the work or spend some time diagnosing a fault/working out a spec but generally speaking its to box the system up and use an online courier who will pick up the system and deliver it to us for a cost of around £8-£12 depending on who you go with.
6 - When we have your system we will schedule for us to carry out the work - generally speaking we will have probably discussed timescales with you prior to this but with systems that have been purchased from the dark side we will always air on the side of caution and generally keep any 100% confirmations until we have actually seen the system and had chance to have a tinker. Other system builders cut corners and it is not uncommon for a surprise or two to rear it's head that no one expects, so we will always keep a chain of communication with you in order to be able to navigate the unknowns. For simple upgrades or repairs where the spec provided to us is accurate and there being no nasty surprises, then the system will be with us for around 3-6 working days depending on the nature of the upgrade or fix. Of course, if something unexpected happens or we are working on a particularly complex solution then this will take longer although if you are in a rush do ask about our priority service for such work.
7 - Give it back. Once the upgrade or repair has been completed we will get in contact with you to either arrange collection or most likely to be able to ship it back to you.