For the last few years I've only had laptops (Thinkpads). I've not bothered with a desktop at all. 10 years ago I used to be into PC gaming and PC building / overclocking, but I just got bored with it. Recently, my wife has been asking if we could get a desktop PC for her to do her uni work on. I figured it wasn't a bad idea and it could be useful for my work too (just to have an always-on, Solaris VM running in the background at home).

As we wanted a slim form factor machine, I thought I'd have a look around at ready built ones as an alternative to building one myself. A Dell caught my eye and came in for the same price as it would cost to build myself. With free delivery and some Quidco discount, I just went for that out of laziness.

Big mistake.

The turd arrived today. It's SO loud it's not fit for purpose. My wife says she can't stand the noise of it and I'm reminded of sitting with a rack mount server on the desk. I took the side off and it's the PSU fan. The other fans aren't that bad. A bit of googling shows up a lot of people with the same complaint. Some have bought new, quieter PSUs. As it's a TFX, small form factor PSU, there isn't much choice, but there is a Be-Quiet one that looks ok for 50 quid, delivered.

I don't really want to have to spend another £50 just to make a brand new £650 pc bearable to use, so I called Dell to see what they had to say, very tempted to reject it altogether. An hour later, I'm still listening to distorted hold music and , from time to time, increasingly poor quality VOIP muffled people from Bangalore. As far as I could decipher from one of them, they want to charge me twenty odd quid to return it to them.

What do you reckon I should do? Persist, trying to get a refund for the machine or buy the quiet PSU?

Edited 17 October, 200916 yr by wega3k

I'm coming up to an hour and a half now. I want to fire bomb.

Distance selling regulations as well as 'not fit for purpose' spring to mind.

Good luck with it. I seem to remember timing your calls helps, as you can get the Irish Dell operations centre. At least then you have the chance of a better quality line, and arguably a better quality person! Don't know if this is still the case though - it's been some time since I've needed to call on them.

Steve

They're offering me £64. I think I'm going to take it and get the quiet PSU.

Just reject it under the DSR if you don't like the noise.

:eek: Gone for the £64 (10%) refund. Will get this ordered right away, with Saturday delivery and see what it's like. If I'm not happy I've still got time to reject the machine outright. At least I have a case reference number now.

Edited 17 October, 200916 yr by wega3k

You spent £640 on this Dell?! :eek: - yowza! That changes things slightly, for me anyway. If it wasn't ideal for that price, I would have rejected.

Well I just hope your mod sorts the issue and you're happy, and doesn't begin a slippery slope of pain and suffering :(

Steve

Would fitting a new PSU not screw up the warranty?

In my experience, Dell have always had great customer service as well. Got a new keyboard FOC cos I wore the finish off, and a new HDD cos it was a little bit loud. Granted, I had an extra warranty, but the phone service was always fast and helpful.

Would fitting a new PSU not screw up the warranty?

In theory , yes.

If there are problems , drop the old one back in and phone dell

10% discount is pretty good.

Yeah. Paid somewhere between £640 and £650. Then 5% quidco off that. And now the extra £64 off.

It's a Core Quad 2.5GHz, 6GB RAM, semi-decent discrete graphics, DVD-RW, 802.11N wireless, 640GB HDD, 23" 1920x1080 monitor upgrade. I think it's reasonably priced, especially for a slim-line?

With that spec listed, yes - seems reasonable. It's just the case that you're not talking about a particularly cheap system here, so I would want it to be right 1st time. Just my view

Hope the new cooler sorts everything

Steve

New PSU arrived 8:45 this morning (nice one Ebuyer). Had to nip into town to drop another quid on a molex - SATA adapter. All put back together.

Total success. New PSU is silent. All you can hear now is the 80mm fan on CPU cooler and the occasional hard disk tick.

How Dell can possibly think that stock PSU is acceptable I really don't know. And why don't reviewer's pick up on it when dozens of customers complain about it on forums?

I wouldn't entirely rule out that review samples aren't exactly the same as production machines

Agreed.

Glad you're sorted

Steve

get a mac-mini, mine is ultra quiet and the desk space it takes up is roughly the same area as a cd case

They're built to a price now. I am guessing your costed build included a half-decent PSU, which the dell doesn't.

See also this thread EXPIRED - Hot! Dell Mini 10 netbook. Z530 1.6Ghz cpu, 1gig, 160GB, BT, TV tuner, WWAN £208.99 Delivered - HotUKDeals Forum Dell cocked up and made a price error. Hundreds ordered one before Dell sorted the mistake. Expected delivery dates are currently nearly 2 months since ordering. Thought I missed out on a good deal, but with the delivery delay I'm glad I didn't bother.

I bought a Dell years ago an it had a hideously loud fan even then. Back in days of yore you got 3yr onsite warranty with a Dell though it was a bugger to get them to come out.

Dell don't have a complaints department don't-cha-know, therefore they don't get any complaints, therefore Dell is great :(

Dell have always been first class with me, and the support for my XPS laptop has been top drawer.

I also think a 10% refund for a noisy PSU is a good result!

Dell always used to use a low speed, large diameter fan in their desktops, to keep the noise down. Funny. Must have changed recently.

Phil

Dell customer service has always been entirely faultless for me which is why I buy time and time again from them even if the price is a little higher than if I were to build myself.

Dell always used to use a low speed, large diameter fan in their desktops, to keep the noise down. Funny. Must have changed recently.

Phil

They still do. It's just in this instance, the system in question is a small-form factor box, so they must have specced a different fan setup. Sounds like they wanted to keep the cost on that down, as it's not as if low-noise setups aren't available for this sort of application...

Steve

I think I'm going to whack a Zalman cooler on the CPU at some point, to get it totally silent. Apparently there's one which will fit.

Nice. Hopefully you'll find someone somewhere who's already fitted one to your model. As I've done that before and picked the Zalman I wanted, only to get it and have it not fit

Steve

I had my laptop from Dell. Within a week I was on to customer services because Vista had refused to start so I decided to format the machine. I thought "how hard can it be!" I've done this loads of times for myself and for mates when using other OS's like 98, XP, etc.

However there was a problem. It would get to a certain stage of setup, freeze for a few hours and then nothing. So I rung Dell, got the generic person from India or wherever to start going through it all again. I got them to ring me back so I didn't pay for the call. 4 hours later and after hardware tests and other things I was told there were drivers on another disk I needed. Drivers to install? I'd never done this before and thought i maybe something that Vista is missing and maybe Dell had their own drivers.

I installed all the drivers needed and Vista installed. Then it came to the next problem. I reinstalled all the other drivers like the GC etc ,got to the bluetooth module and the laptop couldn't see it. Rung them up again, run hardware tests, even had then take control remotely at one point and still nothing. Then I was asked if I had a screwdriver handy. I had to strip the laptop down to take out the chip and plug it back in to see if it worked and nope, no dice.

I got sent a new chip which worked. I'm now running Windows 7 no problems.

Another problem Dells have and I think it's on all their towers is that they are all built backwards which means if say in a few years you wanted to stick in a new motherboard you can't.