Travails of a desktop PC buyer

Our 5-year old desktop PC finally bowed out of service after Christmas. It was powered by a Core 2 Duo processor and a 512MB Inno 3D video card. The rig was not the fastest when I bought it because it was what my budget could afford. But it's 150GB hard disk was considered big then. When the hard disk conked out in 2011, its replacement with 1 terabyte capacity was just considered a medium one.

I think the processor simply gave up when it was subjected by my son to his Starcraft game, so I begun looking for a new unit. The monitor, keyboard, and mouse are still working well, so we decided to get only a new CPU.

It was a choice of going to Nutech or PC Quickbuys. I bought a few items before from Nutech and I was pleased with their service and prices. I was also a customer of Thinking Tools, the owner of PC Quickbuys, for years and had no problem with them.

In all this, I forgot about PCExpress where I got my original rig. They were pleasant to deal with when I bought my old desktop and when its video card was replaced later. And I now think that is when my trouble started.

As much as possible, I prefer getting equipment that needs heavy lifting from a roadside outlet. It's much of a hassle lugging a desktop out of a mall after buying and back into the mall to get it repaired.  But it was already Sunday, January 6, when I finished  picking from the price list of PC Quickbuys the components that should go into our new desktop. The PC Quickbuys store across the street from UC is closed on Sundays, so SM was the place to go.

Our first configuration consisted of:

1. Processor - i5-3570
2. Motherboard - Asus P8B75-M LE
3. Video card - Asus EAH6570
4. Memory - Kingston 4G, 2 pcs 
5. casing and power supply with enough 

We would still be using the same hard disk as it still working.

Plan B, just in case we'd be tempted by a higher processor, was

1. Processor - i7-3770, other items unchanged or

But it was not to be that day. We found out that PC Quickbuys did not have the items we have configured on paper. We settled on the following:

1. i5-3470 , cheaper but lower in power
2. motherboard - Asus P8Z77 (more expensive)
3. video card - Sapphire Radeon HD6570
4. memory - Kingston 8GB. I preferred to use 2 pcs of 4Gb to utilize the dual channel feature of the motherboard.

It was around 1 PM when we paid for the items and were told to come back by 3:30PM to get the assembled rig. But when we went back we were simply told that the chipset of the motherboard would not recognize our hard disk. We were advised to reformat the disk before we can use the PC. I suggested that they test the rig with a working hard disk of their own but it seems they did not have one. Believing their statement that all that I need to do was to reformat the disk and reinstall the OS, we went home feeling a little disappointed. I would have left a tip as usual but decided not to.

We immediately reformatted the hard disk as suggested but the OS wouldn't install. We decided to do a clean format of the disk by attaching it to a notebook. When it was replaced in the CPU, still the OS would not install but instead the monitor went blue with lines of error text on it.

On Friday evening, January 11, Dodon (my son) was full of suggestions he got from googling. He was adamant on getting online. We tried the suggestions and finally got the OS installed and the desktop was up and running by midnight. It appeared that the technician hooked up the SATA cable to the SATA 3.0 Gb/s connector on the motherboard. When it was hooked up that way, the SATA configuration on the BIOS should be set to IDE Mode instead of the AHCI Mode in order for the motherboard to recognize the hard disk. The AHCI mode was the proper mode if the hard disk was connected to the 6 Gb/s connector which it was not.

Finally I can update my lawblog. I still prefer the big keyboard over those of the notebooks at home. Thanks but no thanks to PC Quickbuys.