We visited PCSpecialist and took a peek inside
From parts to post – A behind-the-scenes look at PCSpecialist
Today, we had the opportunity to look behind the scenes at PCSpecialist, one of the largest system integrators in Europe. A chance to see custom PCs being built at an industrial scale.
Over 100,000 PCs are built here every year. That means that a PCSpecialist computer is delivered every five minutes. This achievement requires an army of PC builders and one of Europe’s largest warehouses of PC parts.
Visiting PCSpecialist is the PC enthusiast’s equivalent of being a kid in a sweet shop. Shelves are stacked with hardware, and there’s enough component variety to build anything you want. There’s nothing quite like it. There’s an almost unimaginable amount of tech being used.
Custom PC building at an industrial scale
Right now, PC Specialist ships systems to over 30 companies across Europe. They also have branches in France, Italy, and Spain, as well as a subsidiary in Germany. The company also has ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 certifications. Today, you will see their PCs on retail shelves, in schools, and in businesses. PCSpecialist doesn’t just build custom PCs; it can also make them in bulk.
Below is a picture of one of PCSpecialist’s setup and testing areas. This is only part of PCSpecialist’s testing space, and all of those PCs will be shipped to customers soon. If you are getting a new PCSpecialist PC for Christmas, it may be in the picture below.
Testing PCs at this scale requires tons of power. That’s why PCSpecialist has a 235.5KWp solar array. It generates approximately 187,900kW per year, enough to power 57 homes. This offsets PCSpecialist’s power costs and reduces their carbon emissions. Furthermore, the company recycles over 95% of its waste materials. This includes cardboard, soft plastics, hard plastics, metals, wood, strapping and polystyrene.
Industrial Scale needs Industrial Stocks
PCSpecialist’s warehouse is the place that PC builders dream of. Industrial racks filled with motherboards, graphics cards, HDDs, SSDs and more. These racks are tall, and they are deep. They need to be if they want to build PCs at this scale.
Below, we can see a picture of some of PCSpecialist’s stock of ASUS AM5 motherboards. Just look at how many ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboards they have. If that’s how many Crosshair motherboards they have, you can guess how many less premium motherboards they have in stock.
Below, we have some stocks of Radeon RX 9070, Radeon RX 9070 XT, and RTX 5070 graphics cards. Again, this is just the stock they have of specific GPU models. Again, this is just a single shelf of graphics cards, a small part of a vast warehouse.
Next, we have a shelf of RTX 5060 Ti graphics cards. An insane quantity of graphics cards to fulfil the demands of Europe’s PC gamers and enthusiasts. While this looks like a lot of GPUs, these images only show some of PCSpecialist’s huge warehouse.
From Box to Builder
As you can imagine, logistics are critical here. Orders come in, and warehouse staff place all the required parts in boxes. These boxes are then sorted and delivered to PCSpecialist’s team of PC builders. PCSpecialist has turned this process into a fine art. The parts must flow!
If a PCSpecialist PC is to be delivered every five minutes, you’ll need an experienced team of PC builders. These folks know their stuff, and they have all the tools they need to construct completed PCs at their workstations.
Note that this is just one line of PCSpecialist’s PC builders. There are many more.
The lads and ladies on the PCSpecialist PC building floor make sure cables are well managed, and PCs are properly configured. If you need to thank anyone for your PCSpecialist PCs, it’s these fine folks.
A special shout-out to the guys above and below. They were very nice to us while we visited and answered all of our MANY questions.
Each station has everything that a PC builder needs to complete a project. Screwdrivers, clippers, cable ties, thermal paste and much, much more. There’s even a string of “Intel Inside” stickers within easy reach. Note that white cable ties are at stations where white PCs are being built. That’s a nice touch.
PCSpecialist is a stress testing master
Every PCSpecialist PC is stress tested. This ensures that all of the company’s PCs are fully functional and fully stable when they leave their facility. These tests help to ensure that PC Specialist doesn’t send their customers a faulty system. Beyond that, it also ensures that each system is set up correctly and includes the pre-loaded software that each customer desires.
If you’re buying a new PC, you want to be sure that it works. PCSpecialist’s team runs a bespoke suite of tests on every PC and laptop that they build. This includes heavy CPU and GPU loads, multiple reboot loops, and other tests that can uncover potential faults. If any faults are found, they are fixed, and the system is tested again.
Liquid Cooling Specialists
If you have ever built a water-cooled PC, you know it takes significant time and attention. Beyond that, the sheer mass of the coolant inside makes moving and shipping these systems harder than most standard PCs.
We got to see several systems while they were being stability tested and leak tested. PCSpecialist tests put these PCs through a 24-hour leak and pressure test before power is put through them.
After that, they are tweaked, overclocked, and stability tested. After Windows and drivers are installed, these systems are then stability tested with a 48-hour burn-in test.
To say the least, these systems are a massive undertaking for PCSpecialist. They require more effort to build, longer testing procedures, and the tedium of manual overclocking. If PCSpecialist wanted an easy job, they wouldn’t make these systems, but PCSpecialist is a company of hardware enthusiasts, and that’s why they produce liquid-cooled systems.
AI Madness
PCSpecialist doesn’t just build custom gaming PCs. Their hardware is everywhere, and many of their customers require specialised systems. We weren’t told who this system is for or what it will do. That said, its use of eight Nvidia RTX PRO 6000 suggests that it will be an AI machine, or do some other heavy computational workload.
Each of these RTX PRO 6000 GPUs contains 96GB of memory and costs over £8,000. This means the 8-GPU system will cost over £64,000 in GPUs. That does not account for any other hardware. This PC is insane! If you need a PC of this spec, you must be doing something important.
When their clients need to go large, PCSpecialist can meet their needs. If you thought Nvidia’s RTX 5090 was expensive, you know now that Nvidia has products that make that GPU look cheap.
PCSpecialist continues to evolve
We’ve visited PCSpecialist a few times over the years. If there is one thing worth noting, it is that the company is constantly changing. I guess that’s how they turned themselves into a PC building powerhouse. If you want a PC, PCSpecialist can probably build it for you, and that applies to both laptops and desktop PCs. This year has seen a big expansion in their use of “back-connect” PC motherboards, enabling much tidier cable management.
We’ve only scratched the surface of PCSpecialist’s operations. We didn’t even get a chance to see their custom laptops. PCSpecialist is a special place and stands at the forefront of the UK’s PC building industry.
You can join the discussion on PCSpecialist’s PC building process on the OC3D Forums.
