PC Specialist laptop, opinions and advice please

[INgenia]

Hi folks,
A few weeks ago I heard about this online shop, and now I need to buy a laptop.
Does anyone know the quality of the assembly of this company? How are the products assembled by them?

I have configured an Intel, because Amd do not have .......... what do you think?
Thanks

INTEL:
Chassis & Display
Recoil Series: 17" Matte QHD 240Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1600)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 24 Core Processor 13900HX (5.4GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair 4800MHz SODIMM DDR5 (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 4070 - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 530 GEN 4 PCIe NVMe (up to 7300MB/R, 6000MB/W)
2nd M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R, 6900MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
1 x 280W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre European Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Battery
Recoil Series Integrated 99WH Lithium Ion Battery
Thermal Paste
LIQUID METAL PERFORMANCE COOLING
Sound Card
Nahimic by SteelSeries 2 Channel HD Audio
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.3
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x THUNDERBOLT 4 PORT + 3 x USB 3.2 PORTS

[TomG]

Just to check, the store is PCSpecialist? For a bit I read the title as just meaning you needed a specialist PC for rendering, and couldn't see the store in the main body of the post, so wasn't sure :)

[INgenia]

Hi,
Yes, it´s the name of the shop online. they have several online shops in Europe.
:)

I´m not sure if I can to put the link to a shop here........

[TomG]

Should be fine to share a link, it's not breaking any privacy or terms and conditions of the forum - though should also be easy for anyone to google them with the name but most important is if they have heard of them already and can comment on their build quality....

[INgenia]

Perfect :)

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

Thanks for the help TomG

[TomG]

YW! I haven't heard of them myself, good or bad, but hopefully someone has some knowledge and can comment!

[Juraj]

I do not know this particular reseller/integrator company, but I can tell you about these configurable laptops in general. They use OEM Chassis from Clevo, Eluktronics, etc.. and just add SSD & Memory basically. The build quality is worse than "premium" OEMs like Dell/Lenovo/etc.. but performance is the same and value is much better.

[INgenia]

So, Would you buy one Juraj?
What do you think of the high temperatures of this microprocessor in this type of construction?

Thanks for the help :)

[CambridgeCreative]

I have bought laptops and Workstations from them for about 10 years and their quality is very good. Reliability has been excellent. Work have 2, including an AMD Threadripper 3990X and a Ryzen 9 5900X. Both have been faultless. My most recent Personal PC is an Intel 13900k system with 64Gb RAM and NVidia RTX 3070. The Cinebench R23 single core score for this is around 2380 and Multi Core score 38000. The PSU was faulty but replaced very quickly.

I found their website the easiest to configure a custom PC and delivery was actually faster than estimated.

[INgenia]

Thanks for you reply CambridgeCreative :)

How does 13900k handle high temperatures?

[CambridgeCreative]

The thermal throttling seems to be very good and consistant. It kicks in up to 100 degrees, but this can be tweaked to lower temperatures in the BIOs or Intel Performance Maximizer software. I haven't tried overclocking, but the performance is good enough for me to not try it.

I specced with the PCS Frostflow 240 high performance liquid cooler and artic MX-4 thermal compound paste with 2 extra fan cases and all runs very well.

[Juraj]

So, Would you buy one Juraj?
What do you think of the high temperatures of this microprocessor in this type of construction?

Thanks for the help :)

Well, temperatures are exactly what you would expect from chip capable of going to 150W :- )). Nuclear level.|
I have HX 13950HX which is exactly the same chip almost, very happy with it, but mine is in engineering sample of MSI Titan GT77 and it's quite interesting machine heh in both good and bad way.
I would not hesitate to buy Clevo/OEM-type laptops. The current laptops are very expensive, and I don't think it's correct. I would absolutely go for budget solution. The reviews for this type of laptops are almost always quite positive and the integrator will put liquid metal application for you which is nice bonus. The negatives are only somewhat cheap plastic chassis but..it's windows work machine, it's never going to look like Macbook anyway :- )

[INgenia]

Thanks to both of you!
hahaha Nuclear level.....hahaha. That much?
Sadly these guys don't have the 13950HX and I asked them for it but they have no plans to get it now.....

It's true the difference between one of these and an Msi is only 300 these days. Mental mess

[Juraj]

The difference between 13900/13950/13980 is just bit of binning, it makes almost no practical difference in actual use.
These chips are power and temperature limited in laptop, so it really doesn't matter how high they can boost because they will not boost there for long :- ).
The amount of cores matters and those are the same.

[INgenia]

Wise words that are appreciated from ignorance :)

So from these guys an i9 13900HX to a Msi i9 13950HX (same other components) the difference is about 500 tax included. Kind of interesting, isn't it?

Thanks¡

P.S.: I would like to compare other OEM manufacturers, to compare chasis most of all, Do you know of similar ones at the European level?