DinoLAN 2017: An Introduction to DinoPC

This past weekend, DinoPC held its second DinoLAN event in its North London offices and showroom, giving customers a chance to come and meet the team that may well be building their next PC, to try out and compete in a selection of the latest games, and to learn the basics of PC building for themselves. We popped along for a few hours to catch up with the team and put in some distinctly mediocre lap times in Project Cars 2.

For those unfamiliar with DinoPC, the company is a UK-based system integrator offering a range of fully customisable desktop PCs and also acting as a reseller for certain laptops, peripherals, and components. Not many system integrators can claim to be based in London, but DinoPC is one of them, and it moved to a new, more spacious premises in 2015. The full team of 11, including builders and in-house technical support, is based out of this office, part of which has been remodelled into a showroom so that local customers can come by, meet the company in person, and have their questions answered.

It was also the location of the second annual DinoLAN, a free event for local gamers and PC enthusiasts. As well as the obligatory VR showcase, DinoPC had a range of its own systems set up running the latest games like Wolfenstein II to showcase their power. Gaming experiences can be quite hard to communicate through a website alone, so one key aspect of the event is allowing customers to go hands-on with systems that demonstrate a clear uplift in gaming potential e.g. having one system running a game at about 60fps at 1080p while another showcases it running at higher frame rates on a 1440p panel.

Tournaments for games like Project Cars 2 and Tekken were run throughout the day with winners taking home some Asus peripherals. After that, attendees could blast aliens in VR and even take a nap in the dedicated nap pod.

One part we particularly liked was the PC building masterclass, whereby a DinoPC system builder took interested customers through the entire build process, including cable management, overclocking, and stress testing. This might seem counter-intuitive to the fact that DinoPC offers this as a service, but it is a reseller of parts too, and it’s a nice way of sharing knowledge with its community – the interest here was certainly high, and it was encouraging to see so many young faces there discussing brands like EK with knowledge and understanding the impact that Ryzen has had on the CPU market, for example.

It’s always cool to see companies like this opening their doors to the public, as it stops them from looking like faceless websites like so many others. If you’re interested in finding out more about DinoPC (or even want to visit for those also based in London), you can find the team on their website and through the usual social media channels.