My PWNPCs Experience

I was looking for a Clevo W110ER barebones to replace my W550EU as my light, portable machine (15.6" is just too big for me in day to day life), I happened to come along just as Scan ran out of stock at £320 (not surprised tbh) so I was forced to look elsewhere, my options were PC Specialist who don't really do barebones but can fit some very cheap parts, and PWN PCs. In short I could get it from PC Specialist for £400 with some parts I'd throw out and a 3 month warranty (£470 if I wanted a 2 year warranty) or PWN PCs for £410 as a barebones with a 2 year warranty. I've used PC Specialist before, but this time PWN provided the better deal in my mind.

So far I'm glad I went with PWN, I ordered late Sunday night and asked about their custom BIOS, by 12 midday Monday I had a very courteous and in depth response to my question, also my system had entered the pre-production stage I'm not sure how long the system will take to be delivered but if the speed and care that've been displayed so far continue it certainly won't be long.

*edit* Well that was quick, late on the 6th I got a text from Interlink telling me I was going to receive a package on the 7th, and now 7:30am on the 7th my pwnpcs order page changed to awaiting dispatch. I'm hoping it still went through the usual tests, but otherwise this is fantastic! Ordered on Sunday night, received Wednesday, this is the quickest order for a laptop I've ever had

*edit2* Interlink were a bit slow in picking the package up, so though it was scheduled for delivery on the 7th they only picked it up at midday on the 7th. It's looking like it'll be delivered on the 8th though so it's no big deal, these things happen. Can't wait to trade in my W550EU, its cooling system isn't designed for high loads so it's going mad atm just playing EVE Online.

Order log so far:
Date Status Message
08/04/2013 - Order created.
08/04/2013 Pending
08/04/2013 Payment Received
08/05/2013 Pre Production
08/07/2013 Awaiting Dispatch

*final edit* Well, it's now the 10th, the day after I was able to pick up my laptop. All the packaging was good, the laptop works perfectly (though I did have a scare when I forgot to lock the CPU in place so the machine wouldn't turn on). The drivers provided are a bit out of date, and the battery was apparently produced in February but that will happen when you buy a discontinued machine. The only problems I've had have actually been in installing updated drivers, mostly ones for the Intel HD 4000, custom bios and whatnot was extremely easy. I haven't tested overclocking, and I'm not sure I will because even witcher 2 runs nicely at fairly high settings (high but then antialiasing turned off, shadows turned down). Now I've just got to tweak the power consumption to get it as low as possible.

Thanks PWN for an excellent experience

 

Woah I got a little confused with the dates there - momentarily forgot that Americans display dates backwards!

If it goes anything like mine, it'll be with you within a week. Mine arrived this Monday 05/08 (08/05 US), after I ordered it the week before on the 29/07 (07/27 US). They said mine would have been with me by the Friday if I hadn't chosen the option to overclock, as they wanted more time to test the system - better safe than sorry!

I had no issues at all with them, very good experience with my order, would recommend them to anyone else. You won't be disappointed

 

Yeah I was confused too, thought I'd ordered in April or something Wonder why their site displays US time by default.

Regarding extremely quick turn arounds, that's the impression I'm getting atm looking over the forums, and heck I've ordered a barebones so they don't have a huge memtest to run and an SSD to test for reliability I may say I didn't complain at the time because of the prices I was paying but with PC Specialist it took something like 2-4 weeks to get my P370EM and W550EU (each), so by comparison PWN are just awesome Well worth whatever extra I would have paid because it's a smaller business.

I'm agreed with the good experience so far, even said (and don't quote me on this, don't want anyone thinking it's official policy and getting in trouble) that if I flash Prema's modded bioses so long as I follow instructions, don't mess it up and whatnot my warranty is still valid I think I've known Lenovo void warranties if you update your bios with their own official ones in the past so I was amazed

 

Haha I just realised that I put 07/27 instead of 07/29 in my previous post. That's how hardwired DD/MM is into my brain, I put the seven in there for July without realising it!

Yeah I'm not quite sure how the whole custom BIOS thing works. I don't know whether they preload systems with Prema's BIOS mod or if they supply it to you upon request, but yeah seeing as it's listed as a feature it shouldn't void warranty if you have to flash it. P170SM hasn't got a BIOS mod yet from Prema so I can't comment on how that works yet, but I notice that when the system boots up the PWN PCs logo is displayed instead of some generic Clevo logo, which I find a nice touch. Can't wait for that mod though! I want to be able to control these fans!

 

Could it be?! Could it be?! I just got a text from... uh Interlink (never heard of them thought my package was going with DHL but oh well) saying I'm gonna get a package on the 7th. I haven't ordered anything else apart from t-shirts that go through Royal Mail. Shame I'm away on holiday until the 9th so I'll have to send it to a neighbour, but that is one heckuvan impressive turn around! Barebones system ordered on Sunday night arrives on Wednesday? Now *that* is customer service!