Tuesday, July 19, 2011

New PC build

The parts for my new PC should be incoming within the next few days, so I thought I'd share what I ordered:

CaseFractal Design Define R3 (Black Pearl) (link). I wanted to like the Titanium Grey variant, but for some reason I just couldn't.
MotherboardMSI P67A-GD53 (B3) (link).
CPUIntel Core i5 2500K (link). Who would buy something different? Except for Benny of course.
CoolerBe Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced (link).
RAMCorsair Vengeance DDR3 4GB (2x2GB) (link). It also comes in blue, which may have blended in with my motherboard better, but it just seemed a little tacky.
GPUMSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II/OC (link).
PSUAntec TruePower New TP-650 (link). A nice solid 650W supply. I could have gone for an 850W, but I don't think I'll be straining this one at all.
Hard drive2TB Samsung HD204UI/Z4 Spinpoint F4EG (link). I've found Samsung Spinpoint drives to be very reliable (and quiet).
Optical driveSamsung SH-B123L/RSBP (Blu-Ray) (link).

The total cost was £809.42 after VAT. I set myself a limit of £1000, so I think I did well on part selection. I may end up ordering more RAM (4GB is getting a little tight these days), but other than that I'm quite happy with the selection.


Update:
I have now switched the RAM for the following:

RAMCorsair Vengeance DDR3 8GB (2x4GB) (link).

Scan responded admirably quickly to my request (the order was updated within an hour, I'm not sure exactly how long as I forgot to note the time I sent the request).

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Delivery Scoring: The System

Description Points
Each day prior to the estimated date +10 *
Friendly staff +10 *
Providing a delivery estimate to a higher resolution than a day +10 *

Description Points
Each day after the estimated date -10 *
Loading onto the van but not attempting delivery -5 *
Lying about attempting delivery (verbally or by leaving a card without attempting) -10
False information on a card -5
Leaving a parcel in an inappropriate place -50
Apathetic staff -10
Rude staff -20
Losing a parcel -100
Providing a delivery estimate to a higher resolution than a day and not hitting that time -20 *

* Halved (for negative scores) or doubled (for positive scores) between 1st December and 15th January.

Note that the expected score for a company that delivers parcels on time with staff that are neither overly friendly or bad mannered will be zero. This is not a bad thing. Negative scores are bad, positive scores are for companies that do the extra something.

I reserve the right to update this at random. All posted scores for individual deliveries and the companies overall will be updated in this case.

Delivery Scoring (HDN 040711)

I currently have a delivery coming from Amazon. Credit to them, they got it posted out much quicker than I expected. Unfortunately they chose to send it with HDN, and a quick Google search will show you why this is a bad idea (this thread, for example, has posts from 2006 to 2011 all telling a similar story). I have thus decided to start scoring the performance of the companies that deliver to me. The scoring system is described in this other post.

Expected date: 4th July 2011.
DateEventsPoints
4th July 2011Loaded onto van, no delivery attempt made.-5
5th July 2011(One day late.) Loaded onto van, no delivery attempt made.-15
6th July 2011(Two days late.) Loaded onto van. Delivered.-10
Total-30