Looking To Buy A New Pc

[LHC]

Okay, so I'm supposed to be getting a new PC, but can anybody advise me on where to get it from?

My budget is small, somewhere around the £500 mark I imagine. My mum's paying for it, but I can't see the budget being much higher as she wants to get one for my brother also.

I understand that building it myself would give me the best value for money, but I have no idea how difficult this is and if I'm capable.

The only places I know about are
www.novatech.co.uk
www.ebuyer.co.uk
www.overclockers.co.uk (this seems pretty expensive)

Is there anywhere else I could get a prebuilt PC as powerful as possible for around £500? Or otherwise could you give me an idea of the relative difficulty of building my own, given the only thing I've ever done is install a graphics card?

Thanks

 

[DemonStar55]

building one your self isn't as hard as you would think just need to make sure everything will work together

I would recommend getting an AMD because they are cheaper

EDIT: when I built my own(only thing I did before that was install graphics card and an extra hdd) only problem I found was becuase I was using my old hdds and windows is stupid so I had to put all the old stuff back in and uninstall some drivers and thenb put everything back in. I had to do this http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/ot...rd/problems.htm

 

[Titcher]

As long as you buy the same kind of everything and ground yourself when putting the computer together, you'll have no problems.

 

[spray]

if you're on a budget, try dell.

elitists will witter on about various things but all the experiences i've had with dell have been good ones.

i'd recommend going to your local news agents and getting hold of a cheap magazine called micro-mart. its a pretty generic computer mag and makes pretty much all its money from adverts, its full of them. this is good though as you get a lot of indenpendent retailers advertising quality machines.

do you have a monitor, keyboard etc. from a previous machine that you can use? this would help with the cost.

 

[spray]

As long as you buy the same kind of everything and ground yourself when putting the computer together, you'll have no problems.

​

this is such a ridiculously vague comment as to be absolutely useless

 

[LHC]

if you're on a budget, try dell.

elitists will witter on about various things but all the experiences i've had with dell have been good ones.

​

Yeah, I have a magazine for Dell, it has an okay system £399 (inc VAT and delivery).

2.66Ghz celeron (yeah I know celeron is pretty crap)
512MB DDR ram
160GB 7200RPM hard drive

It also comes with a 17" flatscreen (flatscreen is important as it is for uni) and speakers/mouse/keyboard etc and doesn't look too ugly.


This, I thought, was a good offer. But I always thought Dell was considered fairly expensive so I thought "hey, if there's such a bargain at Dell, there must be an even better bargain elsewhere."

 

[DemonStar55]

if you're on a budget, try dell.

elitists will witter on about various things but all the experiences i've had with dell have been good ones.

​

Yeah, I have a magazine for Dell, it has an okay system £399 (inc VAT and delivery).

2.66Ghz celeron (yeah I know celeron is pretty crap)
512MB DDR ram
160GB 7200RPM hard drive

It also comes with a 17" flatscreen (flatscreen is important as it is for uni) and speakers/mouse/keyboard etc and doesn't look too ugly.


This, I thought, was a good offer. But I always thought Dell was considered fairly expensive so I thought "hey, if there's such a bargain at Dell, there must be an even better bargain elsewhere."

​

according to the commercials all Dells use celerons now

 

[LHC]

Well there are some Pentium 4s in here too, so the Commercials are wrong B)

 

[spray]

nope, dells use "P4 with HT technology" as well.

 

[finty]

If I was you I would go for an AMD64 machine, the P4 is old. Also I wouldn't buy a Dell if you are looking to game.

 

[LHC]

Yeah I know the AMD64 is preferable, but I have little money, so I'm not sure it's an option.

I'm not really bothered about gaming either. I wouldn't expect to be able to afford a (modern) gaming PC for £500, although it would be a bonus I suppose.

 

[spray]

If you're looking for a solid all round machine complete with monitor then go with the dell.

a number of my friends at uni have them and they haven't failed them at all, when advising my ex's family on a family computer they got a nicely customised dell and couldn't be happier.

 

[Goity]

Noo way... look around your local shops... always way cheaper. cost me something like £350 for a really good athlon gaming pc.

 

[declaration]

If you will compromise and just get a CRT monitor you could easily afford a pretty good PC. I picked up a 17" CRT monitor for £10 from Oxfam before starting Uni and it was fine.

Without the expenditure on the monitor £500 is easily enough for an AMD 64 3000+ setup with semi-decent graphics card.

My PC cost less than £500 in total and it will easily run any game on the market right now and I expect that to stay the same for a while to come.

If you dont want all the hassle tho and need a TFT monitor then I guess dell is the easy option.

 

[DemonStar55]

trooper helped me pick out my computer parts ona budget and he did a good job

 

[trooper]

trooper helped me pick out my computer parts ona budget and he did a good job

​

Any chance you could list your pc spec`s and how much you paid ?.

It may give LHC an idea of what is possible on a low budget.

It`ll be great if you could.

Trooper

 

[DemonStar55]

2ghz AMD Sempron
512 RAM DDR
and a PCCHIPS M848A motherboard
(trooper helped me w/ these. Thank you so much Trooper!!)

I had only $200

I also payed $50 for a nVidia GeForce FX 5200
mom got me a casefan because I needed one and didn't have the money
and my dad bought me a 350 watt ps for $50

so tahts about $300

and now Im using my old computer parts to build a MAME cabinet

 

[tekt5]

hey demonstar, where'd you get the parts from?

(I'll be being myself a comp at the end of summer too)

 

[DemonStar55]

hey demonstar, where'd you get the parts from?

(I'll be being myself a comp at the end of summer too)

​

www.newegg.com

 

[tekt5]

thanks I'll look into that.

how bad was shipping cost?