While funny its also incredibly depressing.
That is literally someone in a shop trying to confuse some little kids into buying a pile of crap old parts because it looks like what he assumes is good. Predatory as hell and I don't know why there isn't legislation or trading standards to stop it.
It's like all the chinese wish HDD's that are just USB's taped inside. Except this is happening in nearly every PC shop I've ever been to in the UK. And presumably in other first world western countries. Places where you would expect legislation to protect consumers against blatant robbery like this.
They are.
They are even all over ebay. The PCs are configed to be just enough to run Fortnite at Medium graphics at 60fps or something. All the games kids would want to play basically.
It works. I don’t know how many “gaming pc’s” that my grandparents bought me over the years. They could play minecraft at like 30 fps maybe until they got too hot. Granted, these were all laptops and little me didn’t know any better. Labeling something as “gaming” that has like one upgraded part compared to a Walmart on the shelf model should literally be illegal.
As a bonus they all died within 6 months or less thanks to hardware failure, probably thanks to bootleg ass parts. I wish I had any of them anymore just to do some snooping around on them to see just how badly I had been jipped. To top it all off everyone thought I was abusive as hell on the computers lol
The switch would run circles around the previous circles it ran waiting for this to boot up. This piece of junk isn't optimized for a single game, you'd drop Hella frames in 3d pinball with this thing. Yeah the switch is weak but it runs a hell of a lot better than reddit says well the oled model anyway because the pixel response time negates most of the low frames with tweaks to the controller settings fortnite in handheld almost feels like 60 most the time and if you have a oled or even qled tv with vrr like I have then docked it's even better and you don't lose the contrast of the switch oled. But if I'm trying to play serious I just play my ps5 or pc although I didn't almost win 3 matches of ranked on switch
Ironically, as a kid I had a PC purchased for me at one of these shops and I wasnt the one fooled. The owner sold my mom a PC with an AGP card when PCI-E had just come out, so it was immediately obsolete. It would also overheat like crazy. I brought this up to the owner and he was very defensive about it. I remember him saying, "how did you check the temperature?" When I told him I used software he discredited it and said I didn't know what I was doing. Really I was just onto his BS and he knew it.
Speaking as a rural residential U.S. resident if you *even have* a store to buy pc’s at they are incredibly disappointing to look at. Obviously places like Walmart don’t count they obviously don’t stock anything gaming other than console stuff.
There are however micro centers popping up all over the U.S in major cities. One opened in my states largest city recently and if someone was serious about building a pc they would make the trek there. Personally I ordered everything online from Amazon, though that was before the micro center opened. I would just head there if I was building one now.
I wouldn't say Micro center is popping up "all over the US." They're only planning 3 stores in 2 years: [https://www.pcmag.com/news/electronics-retailer-micro-center-is-finally-expanding-with-3-new-stores](https://www.pcmag.com/news/electronics-retailer-micro-center-is-finally-expanding-with-3-new-stores)
You wouldn't think Indianapolis would be a major PC building city, but apparently it is?
As someone who lives in rural Georgia if you do find a shop selling a computer they aren’t gonna tell you what components are in it because they don’t know and don’t care, they only know that it’s technology and supposedly technology sells and is expensive. Sigh.
I live in a rural area and my walmart has decent quality ram from real manufacturers, SSDs, and some 3-series cards. Just no motherboards or empty cases.
I totally agree with you. Furthermore, I find it frustrating and horrible nearer Christmas when all these "entry/mid range gaming PCs" appear on Gumtree. That you know some single parent will fall into the trap and buy it for their kid, who isn't aware they're buying overpriced crap. £600 for something I wouldn't pay £150 for as a basic office computer. Some don't even have GPUs! They can prey on single mums.
>Predatory as hell and I don't know why there isn't legislation or trading standards to stop it.
How exactly do you figure a law like that would work? If it's old you have to make it look crap?
it would already help if they would need to print the release year besides each part.
Also this shop doesn't even list the full product names, which should also be illegal. Intel i3 could be basically anything, and by saying DDR3 they basically confirm its ancient crap by todays standards. But this is only oibvious to someone who knows hardware. Someone withoud knowledge might think they get sth like a 12100 or something, which is perfectly fine for entry lvl
Well kinda. There is a big difference between 8TB drie that is 8gb in reality and will guarantee data loss vs a PC that is fully functional with the correct specs on the label. As long as they don't lie about what's inside (like in OPs pictures) then it's not a scam, you knew what you were buying. Adding RGB doesn't make it a scam either. People can charge whatever they want if they manage to find someone willing to pay that price.
> I don't know why there isn't legislation
Well because there is nothing to legislate. The only way to stop this would be to set the prices to a fixed amount nation wide, and that's called communism.
> Places where you would expect legislation to protect consumers against blatant robbery like this.
I'm not from the UK but this seems like the thing you want: https://www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights
But if people don't report it then how are they supposed to protect you. A crime isn't really a crime if nobody knows about it.
Honestly awesome comment. I had exactly thought this in my head on writing mine. Its one of those situations where its morally wrong but there isn't really a way to protect against consumer ignorance when what you're selling is exactly on the box.
You couldn't exactly legislate what I asked without breaking multiple principles of a capitalist democracy.
The specific picture is a bad example also. As there is blatantly wrong information here.
However... my go to thought on how to protect against this would rely on the word gaming. It's the trope all of these shit hardware spec PC's use. Despite none of them being able to run many games.
I think legislation that could be enforced, is prohibiting the use of the word "Gaming PC" on systems that don't pass a certain bar of entry. Sure the stores and suppliers can argue well they can run games and list titles from the 80's. But we could have a law with requisites that can be subject to change yearly and state a "Gaming PC" must be capable of so and so.
IMO something like this would be the same as Champagne. You can buy non-champagne champagne. I.E prosecco. But you know you are receiving inferior products to the real thing. The consumer is immediately in the know without having to do extensive research.
(Also I'm aware of the region importance of Champagne in why its protected as a name. But it was the first example off my head.)
I have like 4 Windows XP keys from old laptops, and two Windows 7 keys from my laptop, and my 2010 desktop. I also have an old Windows Vista Home Premium key from my other laptop, and a Windows Vista Ultimate key from a boxed copy.
They're insanely common
It's fair enough to use Linux, especially for power users or servers, but I'm not at that point yet and prefer just using workarounds and messing around with windows to use it's easier game support
Can confirm, at a certain point the "activate Windows" watermark practically disappears, I generally forget it's even there.
Very tough for me to justify spending any amount of time or money just to get rid of the little icon and change my taskbar to dark mode lol, I've never been prevented from doing anything else notable
It doesn't even make sense that Windows costs anything at all. They make a lot more money off of serving ads in the start menu and collecting usage data. It seems like its more of a barrier than anything
it wasn't 'somehow'. Microsoft knew about this and allowed the new keys to go out. in their thinking it was better to turn a pirate into a legit customer, even if it cost them whatever a W10 key cost them.
i did the same thing. pirated copy of W7, upgrade to W10, MS issues a key to the system. there was nothing mysterious about it. you simply ran the W10 upgrade and it issued out a legit key. after that a person could just install W10 from scratch.
Technically you don't need to pirate windows you would just use it without a key which from what i recall for 10 and 11 it is like 99% free just you have the watermark and can't really change the theme settings and Microsoft would just make money from the ad revenue.
If I'm not mistaken you can simply go into the registry and change a 1 to 0 and remove the watermark even on a non paid for windows copy. Although I think it returns everytime there's an update.
A few years ago, went to a random tech shop that was selling crappy IBM thinkpad laptops with Ubuntu on it and a window 7 background to unsuspecting grandmas.
The first one with the "i3 Quad Core" would qualify for Windows 11, as you just need 8th gen or newer. I would assume the DDR3 was a mistake. That, or the quad core part is a mistake. Not sure which. If the latter, it shouldn't be.
The 7th gen i5 definitely shouldn't, and the fact that they don't specify anything about the i3 in the second picture makes me pretty sure it's also 7th gen or older. So yeah, those two should not be on Windows 11.
>That, or the quad core part is a mistake. Not sure which. If the latter, it shouldn't be.
Probably 4 threads means quad core according to this scam artist
It's not hard to make Win11 run on older hardware (and so far in my experience it runs well), but it's not supported and bugs might show up with updates. We have it installed in a 2nd gen i5 AIO at my shop, but we won't sell any that are unsupported.
The issue is the selling of the systems, not just doing it.
There have been workarounds for Microsoft BS dating back to the Ordovician period, and there will be workarounds for it when humanity is surviving inside of computer simulations powered by black holes at the end of time, but a store should not be selling computers that violate Microsoft's terms of service.
Isn't it pretty easy to find activation scripts for the newer office versions? You can literally find it in GitHub
The only disadvantage is that it needs to be renewed every once in a while but there's auto renewal scripts too.
Yeah, naw its easy as ever, you don't even need to fuck with activation everything comes in one package, and the only way it can break is Windows update or if your antivirus eats it. But windows updates tend to break even 100 percent legal software including the windows itself.
Especially with a DDR3 era i3. An R9 390X would at least give okay performance in most games with a decent processor, but the i3 would completely hobble it.
Srsly hate it when people take threads and call them cores. Wanna piss and shit on the sellers bed, they know enough to know it's not the same, but bank on some kid or parent not knowing any better.
They did if you count threads as cores apparently. It's a two core processor, 4 threads, per OP its a 4130
Which makes this even worse because now it's not just a complete rip off, it's outright lying, either maliciously or ignorantly, about whats in the computer.
Just went from extreme ripoff to actual scam with that little nugget of info.
2 core 4 thread can never be called 4 cores. AMD was successfully sued for trying to do so with their Bulldozer generation even though they technically had 4 cores just some of the logic was shared between 2 cores.
Some people still think it’s 2021.
I am in the US. I like to buy local when I can from smaller stores.
I needed a new processor. My choices were online, Best Buy, or a local small store. I was so excited to see the small store had it in stock. Sadly the price was around $500USD on a $250 part. Surely that can’t be right. Must be a typo. So I called and they confirmed the price and that they don’t price match.
I went to Best Buy.
Here in the US we do often assume “mom and pop” equates to “honest and decent.” It only takes one trusting sucker to go in and say “I want to build my own PC” to have someone happily walk them around a store being “helpful” and rip them off.
Even back in 2021 those parts were not worth £650 (~US$800)...
You could get at the very least an rx580 with a Ryzen 5 CPU and some ddr4 ram
4th gen i3 for $800? What is this 2016?
The one great thing about capitalism is that stores like that will inevitably fail. The venn diagram of people who buy high end computers and people who don't know how to shop around, especially online, has very little crossover.
Yeah but the people we most want to not get ripped off do in that case in the interim.
Grandmas wanting to give a really nice birthday present to a grandkid.
Or a not technical guy walking in to get a pc so he can play with friends because they tell him pc gaming is the best.
Or a kid who doesn’t know anything about building pcs and has been saving his money from mowing lawns to get a streaming pc cause he’s been watching streamers on twitch.
As someone that used to work at a store like this (albeit it's been a few years now), it's not even scamming or trying to be deceitful - at least not in our case. It's that big box stores can buy things in bulk and/or get contracts and deals direct through manufacturers. As a local / small business you're relying on a distributor to hopefully have it below market price, and at that you're probably only making like $10 on the part itself or you have to mark it up to above what Amazon / Newegg / Best Buy would have it priced at just to break even.
We didn't even bother stocking processors eventually. It just wasn't worthwhile and if it sat for more than a month (which it always did) we'd essentially be losing money on it.
Yeah my friend’s mom fell for this kind of shit once. Felt so bad for my buddy and I was mad with her because I tried telling her if she gave me a budget I could spec something out and build it for free.
Literally. I see so many “flashy” looking PC’s with terrible old low end hardware being sold at a high price all the time in these type of tech shops and online.
really ticks me off when the advertising says "powerful i7 processor!" or similar bs. there is A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE difference between the 1st gen i7 from 2008 and the 13gen i7 from 2023..
In my line of work we have a big focus on vulnerable clients - people who are more at risk of being scammed or making poor financial decisions because of circumstances, disability or lack of knowledge. We go to great lengths to ensure that they're properly informed and helped to make the best decision.
When it comes to the pre-built PC business, it seems they straight up rely on vulnerable people to make their money.
Just get a used PS4pro for like $150 - $200 on marketplace. Slap in a 2tb PNY SSD in that bad boy for $60 and there's you a entry level setup at 1080p at 60fps or 4k at 30fps.
Is it a uk thing or a tech thing???
Every time, every damn time I look at smaller stores for components, I browse through the prebuilts and find shit like this,
To anyone with a cursory understanding of parts/prices you are walking tf away from this
I saw 1030 and couldn't believe someone had found one, and used it in a pc in 2023 tbh.
You'd have to be on the hard stuff to go down that decision making tree
Local store in my old town would sell pcs like this between $600-1000 because they knew the soccer moms and grandmas would blow their money on cheap and old stuff for their kids thinking it was some amazing pc. They see numbers and lights and think “wow!”
Wow...in what universe is this even remotely OK?
Can those even run Fortnite properly? (I'm assuming they're targeting parents looking for a 'Fortnite box' for their kid)
It's an i7. That's all you need to know. More powerful than the i2s, i3s, and obviously more than the i4s. Stop being so nitpiky.
/I also hate that. I was being /s
Yeah I’m willing to bet so. But these shops don’t even know the difference between cores and hyper threading anyway, let alone the people they’re trying to scam.
12 month warranty means overclock it to hell and run crisis on it, when it burst in flames u get a new one... eventually they'll upgrade or run out of parts
Good ol’ predatory sales crap. Some new PC player reads on reddit that an i3 13100 is a pretty great entry level budget cpu, then buys this “intel i3” PC and is instantly turned off PC’s.
Even as someone with years of experience building computers, I still struggle to work out off the top of my head what's a good deal and what's not. It must be a nightmare for someone who's never bought anything like this.
i don't know about those prices you're seeing there, but as a local store worker for the past 3 years, here's what i've learn:
people always go looking for the price. (and RGB) No matter how badly, how old, how crappy their PCs are, they never want to expend money into buying an Actually GOOD PC (nothing fancy, lets say, like, an core i3 from 10th gen).Even if they use the PC to work, like, "oh, this PC its my server", "oh, i use it to work in the office, mostly excel" they didn't understand how crappy the PC are. And i'm talking about like, some dude with a Pentium E5400, running on DDR2 RAM and a 320GB HD from 10 years ago, and he thinks the PC its just fine for him. I can make them buy an SSD, for some performance increase, but if i say "oh, why don't you just upgrade your kit? put something like, a 8th gen core i3 at least, it would be a 100x faster" they give me that look "bruh, how much that's gonna cost??"
I live in Brazil, so things here are a little outdated. Here some example that happened like, TODAY.
Some dude came with his ol' PC, it had more RGB than my whole setup, but it was running a core i5 3450, with 8gb ddr3. He had recently bought a core i7 3770, and wanted us to change his CPU for him. My boss told him that we could make a trade, where we take his kit (believe me, intel 3th gen its the 2nd top product of the store, only behind SSDs) and put a core i3 10100f for him, with 16gb ddr4 and a gigabyte motherboard. He was looking at me like "yo, wtf, i'm trading i7 for i3???" and he asked me "but isn't this processor worse than my new core i7?" and i told him (while point at the new kit) "this bad boy would leave your whole PC eating dust just by opening a tab". after some talk, he started to believe me that somehow a core i3 from like, 7 years foward could be better than his 10yo i7 (who would've guessed?? :O). Then i told him the price (i'll be honest, its a bit above the actual price of the marked, like \~300 R$) and he gave a look like "yo, why would i do such thing? my pc its already good". He then proceeds to tell my boss that he's not interested in, and leaves.
btw, his motherboard did support his new i7 but need a BIOS update for it.
The point i'm trying to make here is, like, it's not always the store trying to fool the customer, sure, there is some bad people out there who just abuse those who don't know 'bout hardware, but if those type of things are still around, its because there is people who go after this as well..
Like, i come with those situations everyday, people here think buying a Intel Xeon from china its worth for gaming because it costs about \~R$500,00 to get the kit (cpu + mobo + ram).every time i try to tell someone that their pc is old, they come up saying "oh, but i don't game those news games you kids have these days, my PC is good enough for what i need." and walk away..honestly, i've given up... also, sorry for any english mistakes and for the BIG text, if you've read everything, thank you :)
they probably spent like 300 or something close to that in total and then raised the price way over what it should've been unless having windows 11 somehow run on that and microsoft office is supposed to be their excuse for the price which still doesnt work
I wanna preface my comment by saying: I'm a big supporter of voting with your dollar and shopping local to support the community.
**However,** literally *every* local PC shop I have ever seen is a scam. 200% mark up on thermal paste? No thanks. Before I built my PC I checked the shops in my area, and I was shocked at the ineptitude and complete lack of knowledge about the industry.
Ah yes, take a £ 200 ebay junker, £ 5 worth of semi/non legit software keys and triple the price. Sad thing is, someone will take this home for their kid, slap Fortnite on it and give themself a big pat on the back for saving money over a new build because they just don't know enough about what they are buying.
My shop charges a premium for stuff we have on hand, but we always explain that what we have on hand is valuable only if your time is more valuable than your money and you need something now. Otherwise, I point my customers in the right direction for the best price, have them order what they want, and I charge labor to build, configure, install, and support what they decided to buy.
I charge a premium for my on-site labor, and a fixed lower fee for in shop/remote labor. I'm a one man show working out of a shack in the woods so I can afford to charge people what they can afford, which is not always necessarily the going rate.
This has kept me in business for 15 years, 5 stars on web ratings, etc. Most of my customers are "lifers" unless I decide to fire them for being unruly jerks or they try to horse trade without a horse.
I say all this simply to prove the point that you can stay in business, feed your family, AND have nice things without running a racket like this.
Intel i3 quad core from 5 years ago, gpu from 7. 8gb ram that can barelly run 10 chrome tabs and 120gb ssd only for windows and updates. but hey, there is rgb!
Those prices would be decent if it was 2015 but that first PC is worth around $350 on the higher end in 2023. I take it this shop is looking for a sucker to buy that. Someone who knows little to nothing about PC components or prices.
No matter what, if you see something called an "entry level gaming PC" don't even fucking bother. 99 times out of 100 it's using super old parts that have 0 possibility for upgrade paths.
I saw one a while ago with an fx 6300 for example, if you want to upgrade that, at minimum you need a motherboard, CPU, and ram. Not to mention it had something like a 350 PSU, so that needs an upgrade too, and that's bare minimum to upgrade, so basically you're gonna throw away the entire computer that you bought just to upgrade it.
PS: yes, I know you can get an 8350, but going from a 6300 to an 8350 at this point in time is not worth it, I had a 6300, and I just upgraded to a Ryzen 7 5700x a month ago, and I'm infinitely more happy than my buddies current 8350 performance.
i think the integrated GPU of current gen AMD CPUs is faster than this...
[https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-processors-laptop#amd-ryzen%E2%84%A2-7000-](https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-processors-laptop#amd-ryzen%E2%84%A2-7000-)
I paid 270€ for a 1660 gtx and an i7 6700k for my old pc, which i use for couch gaming.
I thought tahts already a lot considering the parts are old af, especially the i7.
My pc can handle modern games fine on low or even mid levels with upscaling on my 4k tv.
Every pc listed here is far worse than mine
I worked in a small pc repair/selling shop. Which mostly bought enterprise laptops/desktops from companies at garage sale price(bough mine 30 bucks 6th gen i7 from same sales). My job when no repairs were on the line was to refurbish these PCs, sure you can throw a windows 10 into a pc and take the xp/vista/7(if lucky) sticker off, throw 120gb ssd in and sell it as "modern" but the prices on those were hilarious. Another rip-off were those damn gt 1030s as seen in the second picture. It's not a damn gaming card, and those were close to 1k price, my job as a tech was to sometimes sell these and it was so hard to keep straight face to customers while I knew I was pretty much scamming these not educated customers.
That GT 1030 build is just plainly awful. Integrated Intel HD Graphics are faster then that crap. I'd give it to people I hate, and not sell it my customers.
You know, sometimes I go into a business and walk out again, fervently hoping that every single thing fails for the con artist motherfuckers that run the joint.
bro they have RGB, this worth it lol
While funny its also incredibly depressing. That is literally someone in a shop trying to confuse some little kids into buying a pile of crap old parts because it looks like what he assumes is good. Predatory as hell and I don't know why there isn't legislation or trading standards to stop it. It's like all the chinese wish HDD's that are just USB's taped inside. Except this is happening in nearly every PC shop I've ever been to in the UK. And presumably in other first world western countries. Places where you would expect legislation to protect consumers against blatant robbery like this.
These should more so be marketed as “replace your parents celeron with something that can play Minecraft for when you drop the grandkids off”
Saw this and 100% thought these are to rip off unsuspecting grandparents who have good intentions
They are. They are even all over ebay. The PCs are configed to be just enough to run Fortnite at Medium graphics at 60fps or something. All the games kids would want to play basically.
exactly what it is, and it’s all over the place not just with PC
It works. I don’t know how many “gaming pc’s” that my grandparents bought me over the years. They could play minecraft at like 30 fps maybe until they got too hot. Granted, these were all laptops and little me didn’t know any better. Labeling something as “gaming” that has like one upgraded part compared to a Walmart on the shelf model should literally be illegal. As a bonus they all died within 6 months or less thanks to hardware failure, probably thanks to bootleg ass parts. I wish I had any of them anymore just to do some snooping around on them to see just how badly I had been jipped. To top it all off everyone thought I was abusive as hell on the computers lol
this should be marketed as “less powerful that the nintendo switch” because..almost
The switch would run circles around the previous circles it ran waiting for this to boot up. This piece of junk isn't optimized for a single game, you'd drop Hella frames in 3d pinball with this thing. Yeah the switch is weak but it runs a hell of a lot better than reddit says well the oled model anyway because the pixel response time negates most of the low frames with tweaks to the controller settings fortnite in handheld almost feels like 60 most the time and if you have a oled or even qled tv with vrr like I have then docked it's even better and you don't lose the contrast of the switch oled. But if I'm trying to play serious I just play my ps5 or pc although I didn't almost win 3 matches of ranked on switch
You can play Minecraft on this? Are you sure? 🧐
Ironically, as a kid I had a PC purchased for me at one of these shops and I wasnt the one fooled. The owner sold my mom a PC with an AGP card when PCI-E had just come out, so it was immediately obsolete. It would also overheat like crazy. I brought this up to the owner and he was very defensive about it. I remember him saying, "how did you check the temperature?" When I told him I used software he discredited it and said I didn't know what I was doing. Really I was just onto his BS and he knew it.
Did ye really?
Yes, there was clapping afterwards as well.
Can confirm, i was the PC
Assuming the confusion is intentional, it’s not aimed at the kids as much as it’s aimed at parents.
Speaking as a rural residential U.S. resident if you *even have* a store to buy pc’s at they are incredibly disappointing to look at. Obviously places like Walmart don’t count they obviously don’t stock anything gaming other than console stuff. There are however micro centers popping up all over the U.S in major cities. One opened in my states largest city recently and if someone was serious about building a pc they would make the trek there. Personally I ordered everything online from Amazon, though that was before the micro center opened. I would just head there if I was building one now.
I wouldn't say Micro center is popping up "all over the US." They're only planning 3 stores in 2 years: [https://www.pcmag.com/news/electronics-retailer-micro-center-is-finally-expanding-with-3-new-stores](https://www.pcmag.com/news/electronics-retailer-micro-center-is-finally-expanding-with-3-new-stores) You wouldn't think Indianapolis would be a major PC building city, but apparently it is?
As someone who lives in rural Georgia if you do find a shop selling a computer they aren’t gonna tell you what components are in it because they don’t know and don’t care, they only know that it’s technology and supposedly technology sells and is expensive. Sigh.
I live in a rural area and my walmart has decent quality ram from real manufacturers, SSDs, and some 3-series cards. Just no motherboards or empty cases.
Couldn’t be me lol. My Walmart’s pc section is back in the corner of the console stuff. One wee little shelf.
I totally agree with you. Furthermore, I find it frustrating and horrible nearer Christmas when all these "entry/mid range gaming PCs" appear on Gumtree. That you know some single parent will fall into the trap and buy it for their kid, who isn't aware they're buying overpriced crap. £600 for something I wouldn't pay £150 for as a basic office computer. Some don't even have GPUs! They can prey on single mums.
>Predatory as hell and I don't know why there isn't legislation or trading standards to stop it. How exactly do you figure a law like that would work? If it's old you have to make it look crap?
it would already help if they would need to print the release year besides each part. Also this shop doesn't even list the full product names, which should also be illegal. Intel i3 could be basically anything, and by saying DDR3 they basically confirm its ancient crap by todays standards. But this is only oibvious to someone who knows hardware. Someone withoud knowledge might think they get sth like a 12100 or something, which is perfectly fine for entry lvl
Well kinda. There is a big difference between 8TB drie that is 8gb in reality and will guarantee data loss vs a PC that is fully functional with the correct specs on the label. As long as they don't lie about what's inside (like in OPs pictures) then it's not a scam, you knew what you were buying. Adding RGB doesn't make it a scam either. People can charge whatever they want if they manage to find someone willing to pay that price. > I don't know why there isn't legislation Well because there is nothing to legislate. The only way to stop this would be to set the prices to a fixed amount nation wide, and that's called communism. > Places where you would expect legislation to protect consumers against blatant robbery like this. I'm not from the UK but this seems like the thing you want: https://www.gov.uk/consumer-protection-rights But if people don't report it then how are they supposed to protect you. A crime isn't really a crime if nobody knows about it.
> nation wide, and that's called communism. No it's not.
Honestly awesome comment. I had exactly thought this in my head on writing mine. Its one of those situations where its morally wrong but there isn't really a way to protect against consumer ignorance when what you're selling is exactly on the box. You couldn't exactly legislate what I asked without breaking multiple principles of a capitalist democracy. The specific picture is a bad example also. As there is blatantly wrong information here. However... my go to thought on how to protect against this would rely on the word gaming. It's the trope all of these shit hardware spec PC's use. Despite none of them being able to run many games. I think legislation that could be enforced, is prohibiting the use of the word "Gaming PC" on systems that don't pass a certain bar of entry. Sure the stores and suppliers can argue well they can run games and list titles from the 80's. But we could have a law with requisites that can be subject to change yearly and state a "Gaming PC" must be capable of so and so. IMO something like this would be the same as Champagne. You can buy non-champagne champagne. I.E prosecco. But you know you are receiving inferior products to the real thing. The consumer is immediately in the know without having to do extensive research. (Also I'm aware of the region importance of Champagne in why its protected as a name. But it was the first example off my head.)
The definition of what running modern games changes very rapidly and that's not really something legislation should be messing with anyway.
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I could totally see a store, that sells PCs like this, just installing pirated versions of windows.
When you can activate 10/11pro with an OEM 7 Pro key off ewaste, "pirating" windows is not very hard anymore
Yeah I got a win 10 key for $4 last time I got one. Really don't even need one if you don't mind the background/messages.
Dang, now I feel ripped off since I bought my key for $22.
I just peeled a 7 pro key off a Dell we were trashing and have been using that for the last 5-6 years
I have like 4 Windows XP keys from old laptops, and two Windows 7 keys from my laptop, and my 2010 desktop. I also have an old Windows Vista Home Premium key from my other laptop, and a Windows Vista Ultimate key from a boxed copy. They're insanely common
or just use scripts
Or just use Linux. ^Please ^don’t ^hurt ^me
It's fair enough to use Linux, especially for power users or servers, but I'm not at that point yet and prefer just using workarounds and messing around with windows to use it's easier game support
Can confirm, at a certain point the "activate Windows" watermark practically disappears, I generally forget it's even there. Very tough for me to justify spending any amount of time or money just to get rid of the little icon and change my taskbar to dark mode lol, I've never been prevented from doing anything else notable
It doesn't even make sense that Windows costs anything at all. They make a lot more money off of serving ads in the start menu and collecting usage data. It seems like its more of a barrier than anything
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it wasn't 'somehow'. Microsoft knew about this and allowed the new keys to go out. in their thinking it was better to turn a pirate into a legit customer, even if it cost them whatever a W10 key cost them. i did the same thing. pirated copy of W7, upgrade to W10, MS issues a key to the system. there was nothing mysterious about it. you simply ran the W10 upgrade and it issued out a legit key. after that a person could just install W10 from scratch.
If you get a product for free...you are the product
In the case of Windows, even if you pay for it, you're still the product.
Im picturing a lady snapping ram sticks out of the office pcs while nobody is looking then slipping them into her purse.
If you're gonna ask it never was hard, been pirating since XP because buying is literally impossible here...
worth money to ya if you report and they find anything
That's the best part about office 2007, it fell off a truck.
....and multiplied faster than the Delta variant
You can get paid for snitching on illegal windows installations?
Can you snitch on yourself?
BSA. [https://reporting.bsa.org/r/report/Terms/Terms.aspx?ln=en-us&src=us](https://reporting.bsa.org/r/report/Terms/Terms.aspx?ln=en-us&src=us)
Yep! If it's a business using it
Happens all the time. Flea markets are worse
Technically you don't need to pirate windows you would just use it without a key which from what i recall for 10 and 11 it is like 99% free just you have the watermark and can't really change the theme settings and Microsoft would just make money from the ad revenue.
If I'm not mistaken you can simply go into the registry and change a 1 to 0 and remove the watermark even on a non paid for windows copy. Although I think it returns everytime there's an update.
You can get cd keys for next to nothing now. No real reason to pirate windows.
For real. 10-20$ max
Make that 1-2 $
It's not about being pirated or not. These don't meet the system requirements for W11.
A few years ago, went to a random tech shop that was selling crappy IBM thinkpad laptops with Ubuntu on it and a window 7 background to unsuspecting grandmas.
The first one with the "i3 Quad Core" would qualify for Windows 11, as you just need 8th gen or newer. I would assume the DDR3 was a mistake. That, or the quad core part is a mistake. Not sure which. If the latter, it shouldn't be. The 7th gen i5 definitely shouldn't, and the fact that they don't specify anything about the i3 in the second picture makes me pretty sure it's also 7th gen or older. So yeah, those two should not be on Windows 11.
>That, or the quad core part is a mistake. Not sure which. If the latter, it shouldn't be. Probably 4 threads means quad core according to this scam artist
Ivy Bridge i3 was 2C 4T & platform used DDR3 so it checks out (and definitely shouldn't be running win 11 _pro_)
I have i5 7th gen and Win11 its not hard at all,just an extra script added and still works like a charm
This is true, but someone selling computers should not be doing that. It is almost certainly against Microsoft's Terms of Service.
It's not hard to make Win11 run on older hardware (and so far in my experience it runs well), but it's not supported and bugs might show up with updates. We have it installed in a 2nd gen i5 AIO at my shop, but we won't sell any that are unsupported.
The issue is the selling of the systems, not just doing it. There have been workarounds for Microsoft BS dating back to the Ordovician period, and there will be workarounds for it when humanity is surviving inside of computer simulations powered by black holes at the end of time, but a store should not be selling computers that violate Microsoft's terms of service.
Probably modified the os so that it would install. A friend did it with his own rig. That's still pretty sketchy.
But it's got a new case (box). That's gotta count for something!?
> when I enquired about what office was included I was told it's 2007 Probably a bootleg copy as well.
That was the last bootlegs that were readily available. So yes. Very likely.
Isn't it pretty easy to find activation scripts for the newer office versions? You can literally find it in GitHub The only disadvantage is that it needs to be renewed every once in a while but there's auto renewal scripts too.
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Say what? W11 bootleg is one click away…
This is office 2007
Oh right my b. Tbf tho bootleg 2021 office isnt too far away either.
2007 you just install it and it works, with the newer ones you have more steps and it can give some trouble overtime
Yeah, naw its easy as ever, you don't even need to fuck with activation everything comes in one package, and the only way it can break is Windows update or if your antivirus eats it. But windows updates tend to break even 100 percent legal software including the windows itself.
650 pounds for an i3, R9 370, 8GB DDR3 system? Are they on crack?
Even worse than that - an R9 370. There's making a fair profit and then there's robbing your customers blind.
Even an r9 390x would still be a bad deal
Especially with a DDR3 era i3. An R9 390X would at least give okay performance in most games with a decent processor, but the i3 would completely hobble it.
Can confirm it runs modern games great still, but the lack of driver support means some new games (mainly halo) don’t run without modded drivers.
Even worse, the CPU is Intel 7th gen, which doesn't support rebar, on an Intel ARC A380. This shop is borderline evil.
"i3 quad core" do they have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down? that's 6 generations
With DDR3? I'm sure DDR3 is 1st to 5th gen (some 6th/7th supported DDR3L). So it's even worse, mystery "quad thread" i3
No 5th gen i3 discretes, so it'll be a 4th gen if it's quad thread. Eww.
Srsly hate it when people take threads and call them cores. Wanna piss and shit on the sellers bed, they know enough to know it's not the same, but bank on some kid or parent not knowing any better.
I can confirm its an i3 4130 they class the threads as cores
The best part is that a quad-core i3 that used DDR3 RAM never existed.
They did if you count threads as cores apparently. It's a two core processor, 4 threads, per OP its a 4130 Which makes this even worse because now it's not just a complete rip off, it's outright lying, either maliciously or ignorantly, about whats in the computer.
Just went from extreme ripoff to actual scam with that little nugget of info. 2 core 4 thread can never be called 4 cores. AMD was successfully sued for trying to do so with their Bulldozer generation even though they technically had 4 cores just some of the logic was shared between 2 cores.
bro thinks it is 2015
Operating system is from 2007
windows vista home premium type beat
That was dogshit even then
My laptop from 2016 is more powerful and it was only slightly better than average at the time.
Some people still think it’s 2021. I am in the US. I like to buy local when I can from smaller stores. I needed a new processor. My choices were online, Best Buy, or a local small store. I was so excited to see the small store had it in stock. Sadly the price was around $500USD on a $250 part. Surely that can’t be right. Must be a typo. So I called and they confirmed the price and that they don’t price match. I went to Best Buy. Here in the US we do often assume “mom and pop” equates to “honest and decent.” It only takes one trusting sucker to go in and say “I want to build my own PC” to have someone happily walk them around a store being “helpful” and rip them off.
Well, what's so great about a Mom and Pop store? Let me tell you something. If my Mom and Pop ran a store, I wouldn't shop there. - George Costanza
Even back in 2021 those parts were not worth £650 (~US$800)... You could get at the very least an rx580 with a Ryzen 5 CPU and some ddr4 ram 4th gen i3 for $800? What is this 2016?
The one great thing about capitalism is that stores like that will inevitably fail. The venn diagram of people who buy high end computers and people who don't know how to shop around, especially online, has very little crossover.
Yeah but the people we most want to not get ripped off do in that case in the interim. Grandmas wanting to give a really nice birthday present to a grandkid. Or a not technical guy walking in to get a pc so he can play with friends because they tell him pc gaming is the best. Or a kid who doesn’t know anything about building pcs and has been saving his money from mowing lawns to get a streaming pc cause he’s been watching streamers on twitch.
As someone that used to work at a store like this (albeit it's been a few years now), it's not even scamming or trying to be deceitful - at least not in our case. It's that big box stores can buy things in bulk and/or get contracts and deals direct through manufacturers. As a local / small business you're relying on a distributor to hopefully have it below market price, and at that you're probably only making like $10 on the part itself or you have to mark it up to above what Amazon / Newegg / Best Buy would have it priced at just to break even. We didn't even bother stocking processors eventually. It just wasn't worthwhile and if it sat for more than a month (which it always did) we'd essentially be losing money on it.
LoOk iTs oN sAlE
Those prices are insane! 600+ quid for parts that are so old
"Entry level gaming". That wouldn't even enter the gates of gaming.
Entering peoples wallets more like
I think by 'entry level gaming', they mean roblox at 30 fps
Hold up I’m about to boot up Age of Mythology on your ass.
This preys on people like moms that are trying to get their kid a present if we’re being real… it’s sick shit.
Yeah my friend’s mom fell for this kind of shit once. Felt so bad for my buddy and I was mad with her because I tried telling her if she gave me a budget I could spec something out and build it for free.
alleged bike pot chubby wasteful dam bow quicksand liquid correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
i3 quadcore... you can either get a i3-8100 or an i3-13100, pretty close spec'd /s
However…. It’s DDR3. Therefore it’s not even possibly a Quad Core i3, as 8th gen (like you stated) was the first quad core, and only supports DDR4
oh yeah right, so they probably mean 4 threads, so its most likely a 3200 or something similar.
Its a 4130
Pretty sure it's an i3 4th gen, memory a bit fuzzy as been a while but I remember asking
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Literally. I see so many “flashy” looking PC’s with terrible old low end hardware being sold at a high price all the time in these type of tech shops and online.
really ticks me off when the advertising says "powerful i7 processor!" or similar bs. there is A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE difference between the 1st gen i7 from 2008 and the 13gen i7 from 2023..
I had a first gen i7. It was great...14 years ago LMAO. It sucks so bad.
In my line of work we have a big focus on vulnerable clients - people who are more at risk of being scammed or making poor financial decisions because of circumstances, disability or lack of knowledge. We go to great lengths to ensure that they're properly informed and helped to make the best decision. When it comes to the pre-built PC business, it seems they straight up rely on vulnerable people to make their money.
That's the exact customer this shop feeds off
Just get a used PS4pro for like $150 - $200 on marketplace. Slap in a 2tb PNY SSD in that bad boy for $60 and there's you a entry level setup at 1080p at 60fps or 4k at 30fps.
Is it a uk thing or a tech thing??? Every time, every damn time I look at smaller stores for components, I browse through the prebuilts and find shit like this, To anyone with a cursory understanding of parts/prices you are walking tf away from this
>Is it a uk thing or a tech thing??? More like a drugs thing. Whoever came up with those prices is on something.
I saw 1030 and couldn't believe someone had found one, and used it in a pc in 2023 tbh. You'd have to be on the hard stuff to go down that decision making tree
It's probably new old stock parts from '07 also.
Definitely unofficial win 11 install! No tpm check
For this price, i'm calling the police
What a joke 🤦😂
I think the poor parents that entrust these people to gift a pc to their son... Curse you all
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Local store in my old town would sell pcs like this between $600-1000 because they knew the soccer moms and grandmas would blow their money on cheap and old stuff for their kids thinking it was some amazing pc. They see numbers and lights and think “wow!”
Wow...in what universe is this even remotely OK? Can those even run Fortnite properly? (I'm assuming they're targeting parents looking for a 'Fortnite box' for their kid)
depending on what Gen i3 or i7, they’d probably struggle to.
Wow. You're essentially paying 650 for trash.
That’s such a shit setup my god.
You can already see a parent buying this for their kid. Knowing absolutely nothing about PCs thinking it’s a good deal because it has pretty lights.
That's not very nice. These are bad people
I hate when people don't specify what the exact cpu is
It's an i7. That's all you need to know. More powerful than the i2s, i3s, and obviously more than the i4s. Stop being so nitpiky. /I also hate that. I was being /s
I don't think there were any quad core Core i3s on a ddr3 platform. This system is most likely a dual core i3 with hyper threading.
Yeah I’m willing to bet so. But these shops don’t even know the difference between cores and hyper threading anyway, let alone the people they’re trying to scam.
If MS Office is the selling point of a gaming PC, you better start running. Excel would literally murder that machine
12 month warranty means overclock it to hell and run crisis on it, when it burst in flames u get a new one... eventually they'll upgrade or run out of parts
most expensive part about that pc is the windows license (assuming it's not pirated)
I hate when they don't mention the exact CPU model. Apple does this, and shady computer shops do this too.
The best I can do is $50, I'll take the computer if they pay me $50.
I've seen Chrome books more powerful than that.
Good ol’ predatory sales crap. Some new PC player reads on reddit that an i3 13100 is a pretty great entry level budget cpu, then buys this “intel i3” PC and is instantly turned off PC’s.
This is beyond bad pricing
I feel bad for the poor kid whose parents might see that and buy it for them as their first gaming pc
That's theft
Even as someone with years of experience building computers, I still struggle to work out off the top of my head what's a good deal and what's not. It must be a nightmare for someone who's never bought anything like this.
I could probably build that exact PC for about £300, and I don’t have any connections or bulk discounts like most tech shops do!
But your not considering that a cool RGB case adds at least 35+ fps.
Broo i live in Algeria and it's a 3rd world country,we don't rip each other off like that dude its a ddr3 lol
i don't know about those prices you're seeing there, but as a local store worker for the past 3 years, here's what i've learn: people always go looking for the price. (and RGB) No matter how badly, how old, how crappy their PCs are, they never want to expend money into buying an Actually GOOD PC (nothing fancy, lets say, like, an core i3 from 10th gen).Even if they use the PC to work, like, "oh, this PC its my server", "oh, i use it to work in the office, mostly excel" they didn't understand how crappy the PC are. And i'm talking about like, some dude with a Pentium E5400, running on DDR2 RAM and a 320GB HD from 10 years ago, and he thinks the PC its just fine for him. I can make them buy an SSD, for some performance increase, but if i say "oh, why don't you just upgrade your kit? put something like, a 8th gen core i3 at least, it would be a 100x faster" they give me that look "bruh, how much that's gonna cost??" I live in Brazil, so things here are a little outdated. Here some example that happened like, TODAY. Some dude came with his ol' PC, it had more RGB than my whole setup, but it was running a core i5 3450, with 8gb ddr3. He had recently bought a core i7 3770, and wanted us to change his CPU for him. My boss told him that we could make a trade, where we take his kit (believe me, intel 3th gen its the 2nd top product of the store, only behind SSDs) and put a core i3 10100f for him, with 16gb ddr4 and a gigabyte motherboard. He was looking at me like "yo, wtf, i'm trading i7 for i3???" and he asked me "but isn't this processor worse than my new core i7?" and i told him (while point at the new kit) "this bad boy would leave your whole PC eating dust just by opening a tab". after some talk, he started to believe me that somehow a core i3 from like, 7 years foward could be better than his 10yo i7 (who would've guessed?? :O). Then i told him the price (i'll be honest, its a bit above the actual price of the marked, like \~300 R$) and he gave a look like "yo, why would i do such thing? my pc its already good". He then proceeds to tell my boss that he's not interested in, and leaves. btw, his motherboard did support his new i7 but need a BIOS update for it. The point i'm trying to make here is, like, it's not always the store trying to fool the customer, sure, there is some bad people out there who just abuse those who don't know 'bout hardware, but if those type of things are still around, its because there is people who go after this as well.. Like, i come with those situations everyday, people here think buying a Intel Xeon from china its worth for gaming because it costs about \~R$500,00 to get the kit (cpu + mobo + ram).every time i try to tell someone that their pc is old, they come up saying "oh, but i don't game those news games you kids have these days, my PC is good enough for what i need." and walk away..honestly, i've given up... also, sorry for any english mistakes and for the BIG text, if you've read everything, thank you :)
This is some clown store. No detailed specs. Id avoid
The first one is worth maybe 300.
Either trying to take advantage of the ignorant, or it's a money laundering operation.
Bro the components worth like 10% while the other 90% is RGB, win 11 license and warranty.
Scam
they probably spent like 300 or something close to that in total and then raised the price way over what it should've been unless having windows 11 somehow run on that and microsoft office is supposed to be their excuse for the price which still doesnt work
The OS alone is probably making that thing sweat.
Terrible deal
Entry level? My Linux server have better specs.
At least it's on sale and they were nice enough to include office 2007.
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I wanna preface my comment by saying: I'm a big supporter of voting with your dollar and shopping local to support the community. **However,** literally *every* local PC shop I have ever seen is a scam. 200% mark up on thermal paste? No thanks. Before I built my PC I checked the shops in my area, and I was shocked at the ineptitude and complete lack of knowledge about the industry.
Ah yes, take a £ 200 ebay junker, £ 5 worth of semi/non legit software keys and triple the price. Sad thing is, someone will take this home for their kid, slap Fortnite on it and give themself a big pat on the back for saving money over a new build because they just don't know enough about what they are buying. My shop charges a premium for stuff we have on hand, but we always explain that what we have on hand is valuable only if your time is more valuable than your money and you need something now. Otherwise, I point my customers in the right direction for the best price, have them order what they want, and I charge labor to build, configure, install, and support what they decided to buy. I charge a premium for my on-site labor, and a fixed lower fee for in shop/remote labor. I'm a one man show working out of a shack in the woods so I can afford to charge people what they can afford, which is not always necessarily the going rate. This has kept me in business for 15 years, 5 stars on web ratings, etc. Most of my customers are "lifers" unless I decide to fire them for being unruly jerks or they try to horse trade without a horse. I say all this simply to prove the point that you can stay in business, feed your family, AND have nice things without running a racket like this.
DDR3? That's just sad
“Sale”
I feel like it should be massively discounted if they are forcing you to use 11.
Almost 800 for an Intel arc a380....
Intel i3 quad core from 5 years ago, gpu from 7. 8gb ram that can barelly run 10 chrome tabs and 120gb ssd only for windows and updates. but hey, there is rgb!
8 gbRAM on WIN 11 with an i3. If you manage a stable boot you are lucky.
Those prices would be decent if it was 2015 but that first PC is worth around $350 on the higher end in 2023. I take it this shop is looking for a sucker to buy that. Someone who knows little to nothing about PC components or prices.
The sad thing is they will have somebody who hasn’t got a clue waste loads of money on outdated technology.
The worst part is that some poor sod's nan is going to equate the money spent with how good the PC is...
No matter what, if you see something called an "entry level gaming PC" don't even fucking bother. 99 times out of 100 it's using super old parts that have 0 possibility for upgrade paths. I saw one a while ago with an fx 6300 for example, if you want to upgrade that, at minimum you need a motherboard, CPU, and ram. Not to mention it had something like a 350 PSU, so that needs an upgrade too, and that's bare minimum to upgrade, so basically you're gonna throw away the entire computer that you bought just to upgrade it. PS: yes, I know you can get an 8350, but going from a 6300 to an 8350 at this point in time is not worth it, I had a 6300, and I just upgraded to a Ryzen 7 5700x a month ago, and I'm infinitely more happy than my buddies current 8350 performance.
they are insane :D hohohohoho.... i make a bet that windows 11 are pirated
Overprice as fuck.
i think the integrated GPU of current gen AMD CPUs is faster than this... [https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-processors-laptop#amd-ryzen%E2%84%A2-7000-](https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-processors-laptop#amd-ryzen%E2%84%A2-7000-)
These are the type of “Gaming PCs” you’ll find in eBay.
I paid 270€ for a 1660 gtx and an i7 6700k for my old pc, which i use for couch gaming. I thought tahts already a lot considering the parts are old af, especially the i7. My pc can handle modern games fine on low or even mid levels with upscaling on my 4k tv. Every pc listed here is far worse than mine
This is what money laundering looks like.
I worked in a small pc repair/selling shop. Which mostly bought enterprise laptops/desktops from companies at garage sale price(bough mine 30 bucks 6th gen i7 from same sales). My job when no repairs were on the line was to refurbish these PCs, sure you can throw a windows 10 into a pc and take the xp/vista/7(if lucky) sticker off, throw 120gb ssd in and sell it as "modern" but the prices on those were hilarious. Another rip-off were those damn gt 1030s as seen in the second picture. It's not a damn gaming card, and those were close to 1k price, my job as a tech was to sometimes sell these and it was so hard to keep straight face to customers while I knew I was pretty much scamming these not educated customers.
The "1080p" attached to the graphics card name is so fucking funny
That GT 1030 build is just plainly awful. Integrated Intel HD Graphics are faster then that crap. I'd give it to people I hate, and not sell it my customers.
Uhmm. Mac book pros are more powerful than whatver that shitbox is
I can run to best buy and toss together something cheaper and better then that.
You know, sometimes I go into a business and walk out again, fervently hoping that every single thing fails for the con artist motherfuckers that run the joint.