1/5

posted Feb-18-2003

I purchased the following items from OC System:

- Epox 8RDA+ motherboard
- Athlon XP 2700+ CPU
- Thermaltake Volcano 9 CPU cooler
- Copper CPU Shim
- 512 MB Expeditious Gamer PC2700 333Mhz DDR SDRAM
(w/ Purple Aluminum Heat Spreader)
- ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (with optional DVI connector)
- OCSystem ATI 9700 Video Card Cooling Kit

Here are the problems that I have encountered so far:

- Items were missing from the original shipment. OC System forgot to pack the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, the DVI Adaptor, and the Video Card Cooling Kit.

An email sent about this problem was never responded to. I had to spend 45 minutes of my time on the phone to get this problem resolved.

- The Purple Heat Spreader that I ordered is not purple, it's copper. OC System tried to console me by saying that the copper heat spreader is worth more money. That is not the point. I ordered the purple aluminum heat spreader for a specific purpose. I did not receive the purple aluminum heat spreader.

OC System said that if I sent the RAM back to them, they would return it to me with the proper heat spreader. This would mean spending AT LEAST another week without the computer AND I would have to cover the cost of shipping the incorrect item back to OC System. That's not really an option.

- When the missing items finally arrived, it was a week after the order was originally shipped out. The money that I spent on 3-Day Select shipping was completely wasted.

- The OC System Expeditious Gamer 512MB PC2700 333Mhz RAM that was shipped is actually detected as PC2100 266Mhz high latency RAM and will not operate at the advertised frequency and timings. This is the case in both the Epox 8RDA+ that was purchased with the RAM and in a friend's Asus A7N8X motherboard. Corsair 256MB PC2700 333Mhz RAM is properly detected in both of the motherboards mentioned above.

- The Radeon 9700 Pro that OC System sold to me is not the "ATI Radeon 9700 Pro" that they advertise, it is a 3rd party 9700 Pro that uses inferior slower 3.3ns Infineon RAM (as opposed to the Samsung 2.86ns RAM that comes on the real ATI product). I became aware of this after noticing that the card was not performing at quite the expected level.

The card itself is completely void of any Manufacturer labels. There is nothing on the OC System website or in the order invoice that says this card is not an actual ATI product. If I had known ahead of time that this wasn't an actual ATI video card, I would have never purchased it.

- The Video Card Cooling Kit that OC System shipped with the Radeon 9700 Pro is not 100% compatible with the video card. The smallest of the 3 heatsink components is intended to be mounted via two mounting holes that go through the video card. The Video Card that OC System sold to me has no such holes, thus that particular heatsink component can not be mounted to the board.

- Email support, which OC System claims receives higher priority than phone support, is completely nonexistant.

- OC System *can* be reached via phone, but you have to battle busy signals and hang-ups. All told, I probably spent two hours of my time on the phone trying to reach them and maybe 5 minutes actually talking to them.

This has been, by far, the worst online shopping experience that I have ever had. I am thoroughly disgusted and angry for allowing myself to be victimized by OC System like this. I feel as though I have been the victim of a theft.

This review was modified by scottallyn on February 25 2003 01:54:32 PM

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