Jonny English

A while back I complained about how small high street computer retailers in the UK seemed to be disappearing. Specifically, I was after a USB cable & didn’t want the traffic hassles of driving into town, so tried the 3 small retailers nearest me … only to find they weren’t there any more.

Having spent part of the weekend looking for bits for an upcoming project, the same seems to be happening to online retailers here too. www.chill-tek.com & www.case-sensitive.co.uk seem to have disappeared altogether, with nothing but a non-specific holding page marking where they used to be. www.coolcasemods.co.uk (which was the first place I ever bought modding bits & bobs from) after a gap of many, many months has reinvented itself as www.thecoolingshop.com, but looking at the range of items offered, I wonder how long that’ll be around.

www.casetech.co.uk had a good range at first glance, but they’re expensive, and half the products were out of stock. www.kustompcs.co.uk had a good range, but again were too expensive for my tastes – the case handles that you could get for £1.50 being sold for £9 made me utter a phrase rhyming with “Duck fat!” & move on to the next link in my “favourites”.

The unfortunately named www.littlebush.com are at least still going, but have always been slim pickings for the modder. www.overclock.co.uk had been the retailer I’d been using most, but this time around they couldn’t have supplied more than about half the bits I wanted.

This left www.overclockers.co.uk (who I’d avoided for some time due to poor experiences in the past) as the only retail outlet actually able to supply most of the bits of my shopping list.
And it was a pretty modest shopping list too – a plain black ATX case without any windows & the bare minimum of extras, a modest psu, some bits to sleeve it UV reactive red, a black CDRW & floppy drive, grilles, fans & UV CCs, UV paint & an FD cable.

In the continental US, I get the impression that if you had a list like that & wanted to shop online, you’d have a choice of several retailers, and the issues would be your personal preference, and who could give you the best deal, _not_ who could actually supply it all … and depending on where you lived, you might even be able to drive somewhere & load up a trolley with all the bits you wanted.

It’s never been like that in the UK though, and it does seem to be getting worse. Even specialist modding suppliers can’t seem to react to the availability of new times fast enough to supply it all, and as for general PC bits retailers, I can only assume that they just don’t want to. High street leviathan PC World don’t even stock premodded cases, and Maplin’s range is still pretty half hearted.


So, if modding specialists and big hardware chains won’t supply what I need, who can?

Well, there’s the small traders on eBay – if I wasn’t too fussy about what case I wanted, I could get everything I wanted by picking & choosing from 3 or 4 sellers … BUT the shipping costs would be extortionate. I would be too bothered about paying £10-12 on a order of £150 or so from one retailer, but as no one seller will have all I want, I’d probably end up paying more like £12 postage on a case, £8 on a PSU, £5 for a couple of fans, and so on to a total of £75 on the postage alone, if my past experience is anything to go by – it seems sellers who are in it as a business aim to make more from the postage on what they sell than on the items themselves.


There must be an answer … and maybe a computer fair is it. The last time I went to one it was just for something to do, rather than going with the plan of actually buying something, but I still came away with a 17” Dell monitor for £25, some Pikachu mousemats at £1 each, and a 4.1 speaker setup.
I noticed that a lot of the stall holders were selling modding bits - maybe not as cheap as on eBay, but at least there were no shipping costs. For example, a case that would be £25 on eBay (+£12 postage, £4 of which would be profit for the seller, so £37 {£25 + £8 + £4} ) would be £29 at the fair … so still £8 “cheaper”.

There’s one of these fairs a couple of towns over from me on the 20th of November, so I’ll be going to see what I can get … armed with all the price research I’ve already done of course. Due to not having many ideas for articles at the moment, I’ll probably be telling you how I got on shortly afterwards

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godfoot

Looks like you need to get busy on inventing a time machine.
I can somewhat feel your pain in that I live in a small town as well, but I thankfully still have Newegg.

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r00t

I know how you feel Jonny, Its Hard to get any sort of 'Advance' Computer hardware, modding bits ect the only places being a PCworld located on one of the congested roads in Hastings (My Hometown) a small LAN gaming cafe with bits such as Rounded cables around £15 for one so thats a no no And thats about it, So everything else i buy is at Car boot sales or online Mainly E-bay, Overclockers.co.uk and Ebuyer.co.uk.
Jonny it might help looking around on the sort of websites like Ebuyer that sell everything related to computers and you can often find good deals ie: 2 12" CC's for £2.95 on ebuyer so its good stuff

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M.D.K.

Capitolize the situation?

Many retailers [here in the US] that used to carry that stuff locally have stopped, going back to the boring old computers that they had before the modding 'boom'. It seems that moding has gone into a slow decline in the past year or so.

$SOLID$ Necro

I know it takes a while for you guys to pick up on the new trend over in the UK...here's a tip!

Modding's dead Jonny, the latest rage here in the US is a plain "Retro Beige" case

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nev_payne

I think as a brit look at the few computer shops that are here, It certainly appears that the technology is moving so fast they just cant keep up with anything thats "auxilary market". The closest shop to me is about 5 miles away. AR computing still hasnt grasped the fact the AMD 64 exists and the 775 is somthing of a dream to them. Flat screens were only hipp about 8 months ago, and beige is by far the best colour around.

Their strength is found in repairing old PCs. New PCs just dont seem to cut it unless their black and silver, with a cheap nasty 15" tft at 50ms, and made by some tackiness known as "e-machines". Wonder why they come complaining to me and other "on my own" people repairing PCs sayign that their PC is always wat too slow (e-machines ship some XP pcs with only 128mb memory and onboard video).

The usual exuse you find especially in the nerve centre of small PC shops in somerset (Bridgwater) is "nah we'll be getting some in the next few days" they never will....

Semms the small PC shops are struggling with vicious speed. PC world is not where i wanna go personally, and the small PC shops unless their in a large town are too expensive. Online is where its at.

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r00t

What you said there Nev is all true, Most computer shops (In UK) only stock the cheapest, tackiest looking and working machines they can get there hands on, They stick the "Im an 31337 gaming p00ter" label on and they sell like hot cakes due to the LED fan or the cool CC's in side

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AntiM

Well I live in a large city and I can tell you the decline of the small mom-and-pop shop is not limited to the U.K. or small towns. I can think of half a dozen small shops I used to frequent, that have closed in the last couple of years. At one time computer shops were as common as 7-11 or Circle K's (convenience stores for you Brits). Even gateway has closed all their retail shops in town.

With the exception of Fry's, and a small isle at CompUSA, modding supplies are still a (mostly) mail order business here.

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hmspain

I'm new to modding but it "appears" that case modding is far more popular over the "pond" (I'm in the US) :-). I was looking for a blue led northern bridge cooling fan with heatsink. I had to get it shipped in all the way from GB! Are we playing catch up with you guys?

BTW, I pitched the whole thing a few weeks later for a water cooled solution ;-). Apparently, the life of a modder involves LOT's of spare parts!

Jonny English

Quote: Originally Posted by hmspain I'm new to modding but it "appears" that case modding is far more popular over the "pond" (I'm in the US) :-). I was looking for a blue led northern bridge cooling fan with heatsink. I had to get it shipped in all the way from GB! Are we playing catch up with you guys? ...

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the pond

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