Can you guys/gals give me some upgrade advice please?

But so many people on mybb warn against Evetech.

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It makes it difficult because the after sales support isnā€™t that good. But they are so much cheaper. Iā€™ve bought from them a couple of times and luckily Iā€™ve never had to return anything.

Yeah I bought my Strix 580 Top there for dirt cheap last year. Canā€™t comment on their after sales service. But like Soli says, they are SO much cheaper than anybody else (on selected items)

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Can second @Solitudeā€™s take. As much as I appreciate what Evetech is doing in the space, Iā€™ve had two instances where friends got borked RAM from them (after I recommended Evetech) and their after sales support is rubbish.

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I will pay that extra bit more with a smile and be assured that I get proper customer service and personal assistance if something does go wrong.

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In my case when looking at my upgrade options between Evetech and Wootware the ā€œextra bit moreā€ came to about R1000 without shipping

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Sjoh that is quite a difference. And Rebeltech? I have to be REALLY desperate before I use Evetech

Iā€™ve now unfortunately had that experience personally. I bought two keyboards that were on sale, and they were covered by a two year warranty. One became faulty after a time and thus I returned it for the usual supplier testing and replacement rigmarole. Didnā€™t hear anything after three weeks, and when I queried, they informed me that the supplier was no longer replacing these keyboards and I would get a refund. Given that the item was on sale at the time of purchase, the refund value was about half of the actual retail price, so it would not cover a replacement of similar capability. To make matters worse, they are still happily selling this board via the site, but could not come up with any way to replace my faulty one. The responses from their side made it clear that they will do the bare minimum required by the CPA but have no interest in going the extra mile for a customer. Let the buyer beware.

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Their prices arenā€™t too bad either. But Iā€™ve only used them long time ago to buy a PSU, and they are still not as cheap as Evetech.

But via the grapevine I havenā€™t heard a lot of great things of them eitherā€¦

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Sadly I cannot comment on the quality of SA retailers anymore. The handful on times I used Rebeltech and Evetech Iā€™ve had good service, however it was only sales and no after sales anything.

Some general upgrade advice is to do things in cycles.

I tend to always do my Motherboard, CPU and RAM at the same time on a 2-3 year cycle. GPU is also on a 2-3 year cycle but I mainly operate on a Buy-one-skip-one principle with nvidia generations.

PSU gets upgraded after iā€™ve replaced the Motherboard, CPU, RAM and GPU. Case gets switched out when things break or stop being useful. Optical drive has survived way too long, might not even replace it when it dies. Hard drives get replaced as they die (advantage of my RAID setup)

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Great advice, unfortunately money is the issue here. I upgrade when I really, really have to, like now when my sound io dies, followed by 3 RAM slots, after having had the mobo for 5 years :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

AND I am unable to source replacement parts, like the mobo, which no one makes anymore.

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You can also try Carbonite.

I bought my whole pc at Carbonite a couple of years ago. Have just replaced the PSU (thanks Eskom) and upgraded the GPU.

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Wouldnā€™t touch Evetech.

Can Recommend any of wootware,rebeltech or titan ice. Personally use Titan Ice as they are pta based but the other two are also very good.

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Different strokes I suppose? We buy everything from Evetech for our company and their support has been great thus farā€¦ Even after sales.

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I suspect they give priority to their business customers.

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The one thing most here seemed to agree on was that I should reinstall Windows after the upgrade. I will contemplate that, trying to find all the applications I use will be pretty daunting. I guess the most important things are just one NPM install away :wink:

Thank you for all your advice. I have asked around in my small area and it turns out someone I know quite well is running a business similar to what mine was back in the day. He is willing to source and assemble the rig for me. So will see how his prices compare.

After sales service with him will not be a problem since he is my neighbour :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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If you can survive the schlep, yes, itā€™s advisable. A nice fresh install is always better, plus it gives you the opportunity to do some housekeeping. We all accumulate junk over time that we actually donā€™t need but donā€™t bother to remove.

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On that, something Iā€™ve started using for my windows VMs is https://chocolatey.org/ which is a package manager akin to brew on Mac. Combine that with a configuration management system like Chef (Which works on Linux and Windows) and you can have your basic ā€œmust have this installedā€ things installed in a jiffy.

Itā€™s a little bit of work to do the list, but ultimately I can get a VM in a consistent state that I can work with in a couple of minutes

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To further highjackā€¦

choco install adobereader
choco install googlechrome
choco install jre8
choco install firefox
choco install steam
choco install origin
choco install epicgameslauncher
choco install goggalaxy

Would basically have a barebones gaming PC ready to roll with Chrome, Firefox, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Steam, Orgin, Epic Launcher and GOG Galaxy :slight_smile:

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Noice. Support your local merchants!

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