PC Specialist - Can I get refund?

AtticusFinch86

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas as to my consumer rights re: a laptop? I recently (early august) bought an ultra note laptop from PC Specialist and it appears to run fine for the day to day stuff (excel, browsing, media, etc.) but when I play DOTA 2 (which I play every day and it is the only game I really play) it constantly crashes (once every 90 mins or so) and I have to manually restart the laptop.

I've posted on the PC Specialist forum and range up their tech support. I've followed all recommendations but it's only slightly improved the situation. I spent 800e incl VAT and I'm sickened that this keeps happening. Would I be within my rights to demand a refund given the situation? I've had to restart the laptop so many times at this point I'd begin to worry about the damage it might cause it.

I've attached an image of the specs!

ItHurtsWhenIP

Sounds like it might be overheating.

Do you play on a flat smooth surface with nothing obstructing the vents?

Are the vents clear of dust?

If you want to know your consumer rights, contact the European Consumer Centre.

I'd suspect though that if it works perfectly for normal day-to-day workload, then there may not be much that you can expect.

AtticusFinch86

ItHurtsWhenIP wrote: »

Sounds like it might be overheating.

Do you play on a flat smooth surface with nothing obstructing the vents?

Are the vents clear of dust?

If you want to know your consumer rights, contact the European Consumer Centre.

I'd suspect though that if it works perfectly for normal day-to-day workload, then there may not be much that you can expect.

I bought an external cooling base for it after someone else suggested it may be overheating. It helped slightly, but not much.

I hear you, but I bought it primarily for media, study and gaming (DOTA is several years old and should not be too taxing on the system). I highlighted the problem a couple of weeks ago and I've tried various fixes (one of their tech support took remote control of my machine and installed/updated/repaired various items but to no avail.

I spent over €800 on it, nearly two weeks wages. I would expect a mid-high end rig with no problems at that price.

ItHurtsWhenIP

AtticusFinch86 wrote: »

I bought an external cooling base for it after someone else suggested it may be overheating. It helped slightly, but not much.

I hear you, but I bought it primarily for media, study and gaming (DOTA is several years old and should not be too taxing on the system). I highlighted the problem a couple of weeks ago and I've tried various fixes (one of their tech support took remote control of my machine and installed/updated/repaired various items but to no avail.

I spent over €800 on it, nearly two weeks wages. I would expect a mid-high end rig with no problems at that price.

My next suggestion was going to be a cooling base. I had a neighbours laptop that was almost frying itself and shutting down poorly, so I put a large desk fan underneath it blowing upwards and was able to keep it cool enough for the few hours it took to back up all their data and then fire the yoke into a recycling centre.

That machine has a fine spec OK - I'm not a gamer, so can't comment fully on it's capability with DOTA.

Have you tried Core Temp to see if it is indeed overheating?

adocholiday

I would think the integrated graphics would be a major issue here no? Don't know if it would cause over heating but if I was going to use a machine for gaming of any sort I'd be looking for a dedicated graphics card.

Of course there could be air circulation issues on top of a taxed CPU all of which would contribute to the problem. Proving the machine is unfit for purpose is a whole other thing though

AtticusFinch86

The PC Spec guy that remotely accessed my laptop had a look at the temps and reckoned all was normal, so that;s not it.

He did say that when he checked the "event logger" that there was something spamming all my programs. There was a message coming up saying "sid does not match conductor sid" but he said he wasn't sure what it meant!

At this point he had me run some sort of program to repair the computer and had me updated all my drivers/OS. This seemed to help but ultimately it's still crashes eventually.

I'll probably have to ring them again I guess. I'm hoping it's a hardware problem at this point so i can get my money back. Looking for a solution has taken up too much of my time at this point. I'm also worried about the long term effect of all the hard resets I've had to do as a result of the freezing/crashing

AtticusFinch86

adocholiday wrote: »

I would think the integrated graphics would be a major issue here no? Don't know if it would cause over heating but if I was going to use a machine for gaming of any sort I'd be looking for a dedicated graphics card.

Of course there could be air circulation issues on top of a taxed CPU all of which would contribute to the problem. Proving the machine is unfit for purpose is a whole other thing though

I'm a bit clueless when it comes to graphics cards of any description. I've an off the shelf dell I bought 3 years ago for less than the price I paid for this laptop and it never gave me any issues with DOTA. DOTA is about 5 years old at least so I'd have thought any modern computer could handle it on reasonable settings.

mordeith

AtticusFinch86 wrote: »

I'm a bit clueless when it comes to graphics cards of any description. I've an off the shelf dell I bought 3 years ago for less than the price I paid for this laptop and it never gave me any issues with DOTA. DOTA is about 5 years old at least so I'd have thought any modern computer could handle it on reasonable settings.

What's the CPU load when playing the game?Also how much RAM being used?

ItHurtsWhenIP

AtticusFinch86 wrote: »

The PC Spec guy that remotely accessed my laptop had a look at the temps and reckoned all was normal, so that;s not it.
...

Where did he see the temps? You need to install something like Core Temp (linked earlier) to see the temp in realtime. It puts a temperature value icon in the system tray (beside the clock) and if it gets up towards critical levels it should warn you.

Stick it on there and play DOTA and see what happens. If it shows overheating then you may indeed be able to plead your case - particularly if some 3 year old Dell can play it fine.

AtticusFinch86

Core temp appears to be stable around the low to mid 50s.

CPU ranges from 30-50% when the game is on. The game itself seems to drain about half of that

ItHurtsWhenIP

AtticusFinch86 wrote: »

Core temp appears to be stable around the low to mid 50s.

CPU ranges from 30-50% when the game is on. The game itself seems to drain about half of that

teatreeshamble

"European Consumer Centre"

The most useless, toothless waste of government funds ever.

TerrorFirmer

To be fair, if it's crashing every 90 minutes but CPU temps are OK, the issue is likely a software one - could be the game, could be intel drivers, could be something you have installed, etc - but not inherently a fault with the hardware.

Unless of course it's a RAM fault but again, it would appear to be software at first glance.

The machine itself though is not designed for games and is a poor performer in that regard, but you are correct in saying that DOTA2 should run fine on the integrated graphics.

adocholiday

Does it crash at any other times or only when playing DOTA? Are the crashes consistent or is there a pattern to them? i.e. at specific time intervals, specific locations/events in game etc.

I wonder is there a memory leak issue? You could have a small leak that is consuming your RAM over time, eventually it hits a critical point and the computer crashes. There is probably some utility you can download to test for that. Otherwise I'm at a loss, drivers possibly but I'd think it would crash long before 90 minutes in that case. Unless of course the memory leak is coming from there.

Skerries

have you tried another game for long periods?
you could try a stress test program like Prime95