Sorry, not trying to be rude, but your post and response to me suggests you know better than Naim. Perhaps you should contact the OP and do the repair yourself, if it’s not complicated. The OP will send you an hdd with his HDX.
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This seems to me to be an extremely incongruous discussion, and I think a little clarity is required before antbody is in a position to cast judgement.
For a start, the OP says the charge is $1000 but we don’t know if that’s US$ or something else, so we have no idea what the price is.
Then we have Richard’s comments that this is not a price from an authorised Naim dealer, and that the actual price Naim service dept would quote may be significantly lower. (Although I’m not sure how an unauthorised dealer would even get Naim to supply the required parts or service?)
We also have little clarity on what the charge covers. Recently Naim have often charged a flat rate for servicing, and if that’s what this quote represents it may cover a large amount of work to bring the device to more-or-less as new contition. This may include any number of repairs given that the HDX has an internal power supply, a colour touchscreen, DAC, network card, etc. While I admit that Naim’s service charges look far from cheap these days, this price does appear somewhat more reasonable if it includes a whole raft of repair required to bring the unit back to ‘as new’ state with a warranty rather than just a straight swap of a single component.
I think the reality is the HDX is a dinosaur. Put it out to pasture and upgrade/move on. I am willing to bet a pi 4 is more powerful.
So you keep saying, but the HDX is as powerful as it needs to be so I don’t see why that’s relevant. Unlike a Pi its also a ripper, store and DAC with upgradeable power supply so a Pi is hardly a viable alternative.
It was as powerful as it needed to be ten years ago. Would you spend 1000 to fix it now or seek an alternative?
agreed. And i’d not even be that sad. 14 yrs is a great run for a product like that.
We’ve all been “there” with cars, phones, what-have-you. If it were me, I’d view is as the right time to update, be it a Core or something outside of Naim.
It doesn’t need to be more powerful now to work as it should, I don’t know why you think that’s an issue.
We don’t know what the actual cost of this proposed repair is, or what work it entails, but if I owned one and used it, I would certainly consider getting it fixed. The HDX has a very similar level of sound quality to the 1st gen NDX, so if you can live without having the latest streaming services and just want to play from local storage plus iRadio it could well be worth keeping one going.
An alternative would be a Uniticore with Naim Ndac, if the OP wants to stay with Naim and doesn’t want to bother ripping on a computer. So around 3 k .
That could be a good option if you don’t mind having two non-matching boxes and you don’t mind the reduced functionality of the Core compared to the 1st gen servers. The NDAC is getting old now as well, so you may need to budget for a service there too. Almost certainly a better sounding DAC than the one in the HDX.
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Well yes if the only hifi available in the world is naim I guess that’s his options.
I’ll swing back to my original point again. Don’t rely on hifi manufacturers to come up with servers. This particular area has been covered off for years by those specialist in this area, admittedly without a fancy logo on the front.
No i dont know more than Naim, i just have issue with how much they charge for a simple HDD swap and the reasons they provided in support of the high cost.
Here:
Perhaps Naim could clarify on your last point whether the charge above covers more than gthe HDD swap, but doesn’t look like it based on Steve’s replies.
€700 is not $1000, and Steve made it quite clear that an authorised service centre would normally find caps and other components in need of replacement, so it is perfectly clear that whatever the charge is, it’s not just for a straight swap of the HDD.
Add the VAT and use an exchange rate before the euro’s recent collapse and it gets very close.
You are also assuming things. The OP made it very clear its just for the HDD swap, and in any event Steve has never seen the HDX in question. On what basis are you assuming that Naim’s quote includes components to be changed / swapped when Naim hasn’t even gotten the unit?
I’m not assuming anything, just observing that people are using this thread to have a dig at Naim for their (admittedly high) charges with little or no grasp of the facts.
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So what are the facts that you are aware of that we are somehow missing?
We are here because of our passion for Naim products. But that doesn’t mean we have to agree with all its policies / decisions. I’d argue that pointing out issues (e.g. the crazy high service cost, which you also agree, which directly led to a lost customer) would actually help improve the brand in the long term if Naim management pays attention to it.
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People have been cherry picking alleged facts such as that the cost is $1000, and choosing to ignore Richard’s clear statement that “I made enquiries with Naim and the cost of repair should not be anywhere as high as $1,000”, and they have tried to claim that the alleged price is only for the changing of a hard drive, ignoring the other work that Naim service dept would carry out as explained above by Stevesky.
If anyone wants to have a rant about Naim’s prices that’s fine by me, but they shouldn’t ignore the facts which Naim have clarified on this thread just so that they can let off steam.
… after long explanations by Naim how it isn’t a simple hdd swap 
The OP then posted the quote he got from Naim was 700 euro + vat? You missed that?
Including in a quote for other work that may be performed on a HDX that Naim has yet to receive? Lol
I have also responded to you on this point previously. If you are going to have a debate at least read the posts carefully.
Perhaps this whole discussion has gone over your head.
You can read the various posts above why ppl are doubting the complexity of the steps involved in the HDD swap, and that competitor can do a similar job for 5% of the cost that Naim charges.
Naim has also lost me as a future customer for its server products. And sadly there appear to be a few of us on this tread alone.