PC Club Enpower Sabre Extreme: E6600 Made Easy

Reliability, Warranty and Support

One of the items that was requested in our initial system review of the ABS was more discussion of the support and warranties offered. Providing specific details on support can be a bit tricky, as there are many factors involved. For one, you never know if you just happened to get one of the really good or really bad call center people, so we will be placing multiple anonymous calls to system vendors in order to judge the overall support quality. Some system vendors will require an order number or customer number in order to provide support, however, which essentially negates the process. If they pull up an account and find that you are calling in regards to a system review, that would likely result in better treatment. Still, we will do our best to cover this area. We will also take time to discuss some of the issues that we may have encountered during testing in this section of our system reviews.

We will start with a discussion of the issues we encountered during testing. The most significant issue came from the early nature of the hardware that was sent for review. All of the components are final retail samples (other than the engineering sample CPU), but many of the P965 chipset motherboards have been getting frequent BIOS updates. The Gigabyte motherboard was initially flashed with the F2 BIOS, and we did encounter some random errors during testing. Updating to the latest F4 BIOS release fixed many of the problems we had, but complete system stability was still not present. Note that we did record the initial BIOS settings that were used and restored these after loading the defaults for the F4 release.

After extended testing, it was eventually determined that the DDR2 voltage was set too high by PC Club. This was apparently done for the earlier F2 BIOS to improve stability, and our system came with the memory set to 2.1V instead of the stock 1.8V. Here's where things get a bit trickier: dropping the voltage of the memory to the "Normal" (1.8V) setting in the BIOS did not clean up our stability problems, even with the latest BIOS. Various compression/decompression tasks and video encoding still had problems. Our own testing of the Transcend JetRam indicates that it works best at a voltage of around 1.9-2.0V, and once we used this setting everything work properly. 1.9V and 2.0V offered complete stability throughout our testing. We should also note that the instabilities we experienced occurred with or without overclocking, but since the memory was at DDR2-667 in either configuration, that did not really have an impact.

So how did PC Club handle the support calls? First, their call center is only open from 9 AM to 5 PM PST, Monday through Friday. If you would like to have round-the-clock support, you will probably want to go with another system vendor instead. Support is also available online through e-mail, although monitoring of the e-mail accounts is also limited to the same hours. The good news is that when we called the support line during operational hours, the phone was answered promptly and within a minute or so we were speaking to a real person; they understood our descriptions of the issues we had and provided reasonable solutions and advice for several of our "problems". One of them related to a spyware infestation of the system, and they recommended several useful applications as well as preventative measures to take for the future.

As for our memory voltage problems, the people we spoke with were unable to help immediately and said that they would get back in touch with us after conferring with higher-level support. The expected turnaround time for higher-level support is 48-72 hours. We also happened to call on a Friday, which means that we had to wait for the following week before we heard from them. In the mean time, they suggested that we might take the system back to their local store for support. At this point, we ran into the "anonymity" problem, but overall support was helpful and friendly. As mentioned, the 2.1V RAM setting was used to try and improve system stability with the F2 BIOS; as many people with early P965-based Core 2 Duo systems have discovered, the chipset was initially launched before it was really ready for public use. The latest F4 BIOS does remedy the stability issues, though our testing still indicates that 1.9-2.0V for the Transcend memory is required. Due to the fact that the Sabre Extreme is a brand new product, it's safe to say that the support teams have not received many support calls about it yet.

One of their responses is particularly noteworthy: take the system in to a local shop for evaluation. PC Club has 40 retail outlets located primarily in the western United States. If you happen to live near one of those, the hours of support at the local store are more than likely longer than what you would get on the phone, and they can also diagnose and troubleshoot the system in person. Prices at local stores may be different than what you pay online, as the online store reacts to market price changes faster - for better and for worse - but regardless of where you purchase a system, the local stores do provide warranty coverage and support for all PC Club computers. They can also provide support for computers from other manufacturers, though of course you will pay for that service.

The warranty on all PC Club systems is a standard one year limited warranty on parts and labor, with the option to purchase two year extended warranty (three years total). The cost of the extended warranty ranged from $190-$210 on the EN-SE6 depending on options. This price is once again in line with the cost of the rest of the system: about as low as you can reasonably expect without making some compromises.

Other than the initial configuration problems we had, the overall reliability of the PC Club Sabre Extreme was very good. Given our comments in this article, as well as our communication with people at PC Club, we fully expect to see all customer configurations shipping with the latest F4 BIOS and proper RAM settings. Future configurations will also be switching to an MSI motherboard, which should also improve memory compatibility. The switch to the MSI board is being made due to better availability according to PC Club.

Giving a final evaluation on customer support is something of a nebulous process. Anyone who has worked in a computer support department knows how difficult it is to provide troubleshooting support over the phone, and the ability to take a PC to a local brick and mortar shop is often far more convenient. Many companies now provide utilities to take control of your PC directly over the Internet if you have a broadband connection, which allows improved troubleshooting and diagnostic capabilities. PC Club did not mention such an option to us during our conversations, so if that's something you would like to have you may need to look elsewhere.

Call center support during weekends and evenings would also be nice to have for some people. On the other hand, providing additional support costs money, which results in higher prices on the computer systems. The price you pay for the various components is good, providing a cost-effective solution for most people. If high-quality customer service and support is your number one priority, other vendors might be better or perhaps you can even get third-party support. How much you're willing to pay for such support is the real question, and short of paying someone to come by your house and troubleshoot your computer(s) directly you still may not achieve "support nirvana".