Breaking Warranty Seals on a new PC ??

There was something I meant to ask a few weeks ago to all you computer experts out there......:hehe:
To upgrade your RAM or Graphics Card, etc, necessitates you gaining access into your desktop computer. However, if it is fairly new (mine is 9 months old) it will come with Warranty Seals attached to the base unit. If I have to break these seals to take the cover off does this then invalidate your 12 month / 2 year warranty, or whatever, and if so, how do you overcome this issue please ??
I'd rather do something myself, than waste labour and time costs, etc, taking it to a dealer, for a 5 minute easy task....

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

Unfortunately, breaking the warranty seals will void your warranty. Some places are more forgiving of that, though they are few and far between. Hopefully, if you have to take the computer in, your computer dealer would be nice enough to keep the charge fairly low... (few places do this too...)

Chris

ex-railwayman said:

There was something I meant to ask a few weeks ago to all you computer experts out there......:hehe:
To upgrade your RAM or Graphics Card, etc, necessitates you gaining access into your desktop computer. However, if it is fairly new (mine is 9 months old) it will come with Warranty Seals attached to the base unit. If I have to break these seals to take the cover off does this then invalidate your 12 month / 2 year warranty, or whatever, and if so, how do you overcome this issue please ??
I'd rather do something myself, than waste labour and time costs, etc, taking it to a dealer, for a 5 minute easy task....

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

Click to expand...

It depends who the warranty is with. By adding any items to a PC there are some risks, the first is static electricity may harm some components, the second adding memory etc places an extra heat source in the computer thus technically it shorten the life of the other components, or place extra strain on the power supply. Third you may knock a cable off when ferreting around inside.

These risks are not high but technically they are there.

Realistically if it works for the first three months then it will probably work fine for the next five years so the risk you will need to have work done under warranty is very low, except for the hard drive, whose life can be a bit shorter.

Cheerio John

There's also a need to clean out the dust from the fans every so often, including the fan on the video board.

John

Yeah.... We'll sell you the computer, and upgrade parts.. heres how to clean it, just dont open it up... go figure!

psycho_aussie said:

Unfortunately, breaking the warranty seals will void your warranty.

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No, not really quite correct, just contact a consumer affairs, or department of fair trading (for Australia) in your state &/or country, and ask them and see what THEY SAY (not the manufacturer or retailer) . Ex-railwayman, not sure what UK's consumer affairs contacts are.

EDIT: Ex-Ra/man, not sure if this site is it: http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/

By the way, I've never seen warranty seals on Dell computers.

John

How good are Dell? Because over here, at first (Please note at first), if I remember they had a bit of a bad reputation?

A lot of people don't like Dell, which is fair enough if that opinion is based on evidence and experience rather than purely rumour and prejudice. I've found them generally very good. I like being able to specify exactly what options I want.

I've had close dealings with two Dell desktop computers at work, plus two of my own, and one that belongs to a friend. There have been no serious problems with any of them (fingers crossed). One had a CD drive fail after a few years, which was easily replaced. Another had a video board fail due to me not cleaning the dust out of its fan and it overheating, again easily replaced.

I don't have any experience of Dell laptops.

I don't have enough direct experience of other well-known makes to say if Dell are better or worse. However, Dell computers do seem to be much more reliable than local shop cobbled together systems that some other friends have purchased, which seem to fail fairly frequently.

John

My second comp. is a Dell 4500 purchased over five years ago from Dell Outlet (returned/refurbished ones). Still going strong without any problems....oh oh what have I done? Please Mr Murphy be kind

Thanks for your answers guys, and thankz to Red Rattler for his link, unsure if they will be of any help, I can try, but.........

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

Red_Rattler said:

How good are Dell? Because over here, at first (Please note at first), if I remember they had a bit of a bad reputation?

Click to expand...

They built their reputation by putting in reasonable power supplies, paying attention to the card layout inside the computer, having engineers look at the thermals and building to order.

The result of this was computers that gained a reputation in corporate circles for solid machines and reliability even if they weren't the fastest on the planet. By building to order they could take advantage of falling component prices whilst other manufacturers had a stock of three to four weeks or so supply in the supply line.

Quite a few competitors felt very threatened by Dell, direct marketing didn't put money is salesmen's pockets in the high street and their ability to under cut others didn't help either. I'd double check the source of anyone saying they're rubbish we had far fewer problems with Dell than any other manufacturer and that includes an HP server that was supposed to run 99.99% of the time, mine had three separate hardware faults, it took the service down three times not good. The half dozen Dell servers I ran never had a problem. Mind you the other 100 servers which included IBMs, HP, Dell etc. in the computer room were all fairly reliable.

Today the computer market has matured and Dell no longer build every machine to order. They still do the thermals though.

Cheerio John

I my own experience when I bought my last custom computer and after waiting a year to open the case after the Warranty expired. I found that the shop that built it had broken one of the clips that holds the cooling fan to the processor. The Tech. would have known about it before sealing the case and I believe they put seals on it to keep me from finding out about it until it was too late. Even though the repair was a minor one you should never trust the manufacturer or the computer shop that sells you the computer. I say that if you want to install a upgraded component into the computer contact the people who built it and tell them you are bringing it in to have a component installed for free because you do not wish to break the terms of their warranty. Really how much should it cost to open a case and plug a card in. It isn't rocket science by any means. I now build my own systems because really the only work you can trust is your own.