Buying a new pc

[Mersey_Red]

hi guys just wondering if anyone has any advice, im looking at buying a desktop computer, (no monitor required) Budget of about £300 - £350. Any advice where to look would be great!

[The Dude Abides]

You won't beat this place for prices. hardwareversand.de - Konfigurieren Sie Ihren Wunsch-PC

 

You could build it yourself or they will put it together for you.

[Andy M]

eBay + Mac Mini = :)

[Mersey_Red]

Cheers guys will have a looksy

[cochyn]

Try here: DELL outlet

 

Loads of refurbished and (mostly) cancelled orders from Dell: It's cheaper for them to sell 'em cheap than pull them apart. I got a £750 desktop four years ago for £295. Put in a decent GFX card (5 minute job) and I was away. 2 year guarantee, but no problems at all.

[DJLJ]

What do you need the machine to do? What should it be able to do? Then we can more easily guide you, when we know what you need it for.

[Mersey_Red]

What do you need the machine to do? What should it be able to do? Then we can more easily guide you, when we know what you need it for.

 

Standard home pc really, i dont play much on it (thats what my handy Xbox is for!) except football manager which wont need too much i imagine.

[Uncle_Meat]

Price example.. Build a PC for my mate yesterday, put it together myself for him and only charged him cost price on the parts.

 

Asus m/b with onboard gfx, AMD X2 250 (3Ghz dual core), 2Gb RAM, 500 Gb HDD, CD/DVD writer, decent case, memory card reader. All came to £180. Stick on the operating system of your choice (he only wanted XP, hence 2Gb RAM) and off you go.

 

You could make it cheaper by skimping on the mainboard and case/PSU, but a bit of a false economy doing shit like that.

[Fink]

Just go to Dell, is the best way really. Just make sure you max out processor and memory and dont take any of the peripheral extras as they are pricey.

[The Dude Abides]

That's no advice really. What do you even mean by "max out processor and memory"?

[dirk grout]

2 top tips:

 

1. Don't go to dell.

 

2. Don't go to dell.

[Fink]

You need to qualify why you dont want him to go to dell - otherwise its a pretty useless statement.

 

I bought a 200 quid vostro from dell a few years back = changed the psu and added a graphics card and it still runs sweet. Thats about 350 quid for a gaming rig that still runs high res gfx hungry games.

 

That's no advice really. What do you even mean by "max out processor and memory"?

 

Dell is the best bet if you dont really understand what you are doing. Yes you can getter elsewhere but bang for buck, you wont get much better.

 

Set your budget and pick the best memory and CPU (chip - the bit where it says Intel blah de blah).

[Liquid football]

Hope no-one minds if i slightly hijack this thread. I'm in a similarish position. I know what i'm after but i'm a bit out of touch on what's good value. Found this one, which seems good value considering you get a 22" monitor too. I was planning on going for a 1TB hd and 4GB ram which comes to £352. I'm opting not to get an OS with it either so that's something to factor in.

 

Have i missed anything obvious or is this decent for £350 quid?

 

Computer Technology AMD Athlon II 250 DDR3 Full System [CT Prebuilt AMD 250 System] - £258.99 : Internet CT & Computer Technology

[George Costanza]

Dell are shit nowadays as their reliability is very poor. 7-10 years agao they used to be rock solid. Now its cheap compenents put together as cheaply as possible.

 

with os (windows 7 hp) you should be able to pick up a decent tower for £250.

 

Meat - don't see a great deal of difference between 2gb of ram running on xp or win 7. Given Microsofts new laws unless you can buy an oem copy of xp from registered retailer you might as well put a pirate copy on.

[Uncle_Meat]

Dell are shit nowadays as their reliability is very poor. 7-10 years agao they used to be rock solid. Now its cheap compenents put together as cheaply as possible.

 

with os (windows 7 hp) you should be able to pick up a decent tower for £250.

 

Meat - don't see a great deal of difference between 2gb of ram running on xp or win 7. Given Microsofts new laws unless you can buy an oem copy of xp from registered retailer you might as well put a pirate copy on.

 

 

 

The point of the 2Gb was my supplier was offering me 2Gb sticks for an insanely good price at the time, one of those "1 day offer, it's flying out at this price" things. It was about £17 per stick. At that price, if he would have wanted Win7 I would have suggested "Stick as much in as you can for that price".

 

As for the XP, I've got a shitload of XP Pro COAs here which install and validate quite happily, so I stuck on of those on for him. He's a bit Luddite in his ways, knows his way around XP and preferred to stick with what he knew. Besides it was free...

[Red Mist]

What do you plan on doing with the desktop? If it's for gaming or using power applications you can't buy or build a decent machine with just £300. If it's for general web surfing and word processing or the like your best bet is to go the likes of Dell who can build a solid machine of that type. Personally I would build the fucker myself but these days that's more expensive than buying an assembled machine.

[Cardie]

I'd echo the don't go to dell advice.

 

Bought three dell laptops

 

XPS M1730 - both Nvidia graphics cards went within a week of each other followed a few months later by the memory and motherboard.

 

Studio 15 - battery died and only runs off mains, gone through two power units because the connector splits where the wire connects to the plug laptop side.

 

Inspiron - been the least problematic with only the left mouse button on the pad going funny.