My Clevo W170ER purchasing experience from PWNPCS.CO.UK

Hello everyone. I haven't posted on this forum much in the past (except to complain about the shambles that was kobaltcomputers.co.uk after I got shafted when they ceased trading last year) but I feel I should give PWNPCS.CO.UK a big thumbs up for the service they provided me recently. My old Dell laptop is 7 years old now and I needed a replacement badly. I was originally going to purchase one from pcspecialist.co.uk but got turned off when I learned they don't offer PayPal as a payment method, which is a must for me nowadays after my dreadful experience with Kobalt Computers. Since pcspecialist were a non option for me I searched google for other Clevo resellers and came across a thread on here that had a list of UK resellers and pwnpcs was one of them. I liked what I saw on their website, more than any of the others, the models of laptops, their configuration options and the service they promised to provide that others don't, which is below...

"...What do you offer that the others don't?

Free lifetime technical support with any purchase.
Professional SPYDER 4 colour calibration on every laptop.
IC Diamond or Arctic Silver on all cpus and gpus.
Free lifetime labour on laptops bought from us.
Two year return to base on all hardware (with the exceptions of screens and batteries.)
Friendly service 24/7.
Custom PWN PCS bios.
Bloatware free, high performance installs..."


I decided to go for the new Clevo W170ER as it best suited my needs and budget. Configuring what I wanted in it was easy on their website, as was payment. Any questions I had were promptly responded to and clearly answered through email by either Jarrod or Scott. Continual updates on the progress on the building status of my laptop where emailed to me so that I was reassured everything was going well. I made my order on Friday the 22nd of June and somehow it was built, tested and sent out by them on Tuesday the 26th. I live in Ireland and I received it in my hands on Friday the 29th, only a week after I ordered it. It arrived in good, tidy and sturdy packaging with a carry handle. The laptop actually looked better in front of me than on the website's pictures. A disk was provided with all the drivers I needed to install and they were all up to date because I checked online for the most recent releases to make sure. In my email communication with them I specified that I wanted my 8GB of RAM to be 1 X 8GB so that I had room to stick another 8GB in to upgrade to 16GB in the future if I ever wanted to and they did exactly that.

As for the system itself, well this is my first Clevo laptop and I'm impressed with it. The build quality is sleek and sturdy. It runs super silent compared to my old Dell laptop, so silent that I'm not used to it and I keep noticing how quite it is. The weakest part of this particular laptop is probably the speakers because I find the sound to only be alright but it's not an issue for me because I'm getting the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 USB Pro sound card to use with my Roccat Kave headset. The screen is really great (I opted for the Matte finish), vivid and full of colour. The keyboard is responsive, I think the keys are about the perfect size and have a nice click to them. The only game I've got a chance to test out so far on the Nvidia 650m (because I've had a busy weekend) is Team Fortress 2. I only seem to be getting an average 25-30 FPS but that's regardless of me turning graphics options to low or high. I figure it's because thus far there have only been one beta driver released for this card as it's pretty new. Hopefully Nvidia will hurry up and release proper drivers soon. I also played Dawn of War but the system automatically switched to the integrated Intel graphics card to run it and apparently it's all it needed because it played flawless. I hope to find the time to test more games in the coming week, time permitting.

All in all I have to say I'm delighted with both the service and pricing I got from PWNPCS and I'll be purchasing my next laptop there for sure. This is my first ever review so I'm not very good at them but I hope it helps anybody who's thinking about where they should purchase their new laptop... Cheers.

 

Thanks for your review!

Hope you enjoy your laptop!

 

Sounds like you had a very awesome experience congratulations, PWNPC's sure do have a excellent customer support!

 

Well after the Kobalt Computers debacle anything would have been better but PWN PCS went that bit extra with service and to be pleasantly surprised is always nice...

Also I have an update on the 650m. Nvidia released newer drivers for the card Tuesday the 3rd last. They are beta drivers again but now I get an average of 40-45 frames per second in Team Fotress 2 with all options set to max. Good stuff.

 

Are you having any heating problems? This machine only has a single fan

 

Just wanted to say. PWNPCs have been brilliant with my order so far. I have had to change a few things and they have been very understanding and helpful.

 

Nah I'm not having any heat issues but then again I haven't been seriously gaming with it yet. I've really only been playing the Dawn of War games and Team Fortress 2 but I've mostly been using it for watching movies and browsing. Because I've started a new shift at work it's been harder to find much free time lately. The fan kicks in when I'm playing the games but it's pretty quite. When I'm browsing, about 80% of the time I don't hear the fan at all. It came with IC Diamond thermal compound so maybe that's a big help. I should really test a demanding game like Crysis on it to see what kind of heat it would produce but I havn't had the time or the patience. It does what I need it for and I'm happy with that.