Techy types

[The Fish 11090]

I'm thinking about improving/updating/usurping my current desktop and was wondering if it's worth getting someone to build from a top system from parts? Instead of buying from Dell and their ilk?

 

if I had £500 to spend, and wanted something to watch tv and movies, listen to music, play things like FM and things like CoD4. Obviously using it for internet and office work too.

 

Bear in mind I've already got a 19" monitor, fair sized external Hard Drive and I could most likely cannibalise memory and other parts from the Dell Desktop I have now.

 

what are your thoughts fellas?

[The Fish 11090]

Yes you'll end up with a better system for your money if ya can get someone to put it together for you,

for what dell will charge you, you can pick exactly make/models of parts you want rather than what oem cheap stuff they have

 

but i doubt you'll be nicking the memory from your current system if your looking to upgrade

new motherboard & cpu & memory are basically the core of any decent upgrade

 

for £500 and not having to buy the like of a new monitor you could build a real decent gaming rig

 

Follow up question, is there anybody on here who knows enough about pc hardware to build one if supplied (after advisement) with the parts and some remuneration for the task?

[Jimbo 175]

I'd just buy one, a couple of years ago it was far more cost effective to build one from scratch, but now with the price of off the shelf systems there is little benefit, plus with an off the shelf PC you'll get a legit version of Windows.

[The Fish 11090]

I'd just buy one, a couple of years ago it was far more cost effective to build one from scratch, but now with the price of off the shelf systems there is little benefit, plus with an off the shelf PC you'll get a legit version of Windows.

Aren't there smaller retailers who will custom your "rig"* and provide a legit Windows program?

 

 

 

 

 

* oh aye, I know allll the terms

[Jimbo 175]

I'd just buy one, a couple of years ago it was far more cost effective to build one from scratch, but now with the price of off the shelf systems there is little benefit, plus with an off the shelf PC you'll get a legit version of Windows.

Aren't there smaller retailers who will custom your "rig"* and provide a legit Windows program?

 

 

 

 

 

* oh aye, I know allll the terms

 

 

Get a quote from your local Computer shop, I'm sure they will taylor one to your needs if you require a bespoke "rig".

[Jimbo 175]

It all depends on what you are wanting to use it for in my opinion, if you want a games machine or something for major graphical work then yes, you need to spend big, but if you are only using your machine for run of the mill stuff, I see no sense in spending a fortune.

[The Fish 11090]

I get frustrated when I'm trying to do 4 or 5 things at once and the computer seems to struggle despite having a decent amount of RAM and a decent processor.

 

I'd like two screens (but that's just because I think it looks cool tbh )

 

I want something that could handle FM, Word and Excel, firefox, iTunes, without any kind of drop in performance, I want to play CoD4 style games that are intensive on the graphics and I want to watch movies and tv.

[Lazarus 0]

http://www.toontastic.net/board/index.php?...st&p=523112

[The Fish 11090]

http://www.toontastic.net/board/index.php?...st&p=523112

If I'm buying a dell one, why not buy straight from Dell and customise it in their online store?

[Fop 1]

I want something that could handle FM, Word and Excel, firefox, iTunes, without any kind of drop in performance, I want to play CoD4 style games that are intensive on the graphics and I want to watch movies and tv.

 

You're going to have to build a bit of a beast to do all that (or run linux instead of windows then you can do it on a ZX81 ).

[The Fish 11090]

I want something that could handle FM, Word and Excel, firefox, iTunes, without any kind of drop in performance, I want to play CoD4 style games that are intensive on the graphics and I want to watch movies and tv.

 

You're going to have to build a bit of a beast to do all that (or run linux instead of windows then you can do it on a ZX81 ).

I meant play FM, be online, listen to music and be working on a document or spreadsheet at the same time, not in addition to playing CoD4 and watching a film.

 

I can do the former on this machine, but it stutters through FM and struggles with anything particularly intense on Word or Excel

 

Edit - Sorry Ant, I meant; in response to Laz's suggestion, I was asking what's the point in buying that Dell pc from pc World, when i can buy the same model from Dell's online store?

Edited September 18, 2008 by The Fish

[Park Life 71]

http://www.toontastic.net/board/index.php?...st&p=523112

If I'm buying a dell one, why not buy straight from Dell and customise it in their online store?

 

Customising it on the online store isn't same as getting a custom pc ya see

 

it's like saying "this pc and this one both have 2gbs of ram"

 

Dell will give you 2gbs of the cheapest generic ram they can lay there hands on, same for the mobo etc

 

whereas for the same amount or more likely alot less money when you get it built yourself you can get 2gbs of ram like

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct....rodid=MY-119-CS

 

which is high end top name branded etc.

which will be a hell of a lot better performing than what dell will give you, a lot cheaper

and has a lifetime guarantee so if it ever goes faulty you post it to them, they post you some new sticks

 

*rinse repeat for other parts*

 

Anty if I was building a new pc what are the best important bits to get for the inside? Cheers.

[Fop 1]

Anty if I was building a new pc what are the best important bits to get for the inside? Cheers.

 

Doesn't matter just make sure they glow in the dark.

[Lazarus 0]

I want something that could handle FM, Word and Excel, firefox, iTunes, without any kind of drop in performance, I want to play CoD4 style games that are intensive on the graphics and I want to watch movies and tv.

 

You're going to have to build a bit of a beast to do all that (or run linux instead of windows then you can do it on a ZX81 ).

I meant play FM, be online, listen to music and be working on a document or spreadsheet at the same time, not in addition to playing CoD4 and watching a film.

 

I can do the former on this machine, but it stutters through FM and struggles with anything particularly intense on Word or Excel

 

Edit - Sorry Ant, I meant; in response to Laz's suggestion, I was asking what's the point in buying that Dell pc from pc World, when i can buy the same model from Dell's online store?

 

cos the pc world dell system is a refurb. £295 delivered for a quad core, 3gb ram, , dvd rewriter, 500gb hard drive with vista is a canny price. (pc world site code 833578).

 

the dell site pc will be brand new and im sure youll be charged a fortune for delivery.

[The Fish 11090]

I want something that could handle FM, Word and Excel, firefox, iTunes, without any kind of drop in performance, I want to play CoD4 style games that are intensive on the graphics and I want to watch movies and tv.

 

You're going to have to build a bit of a beast to do all that (or run linux instead of windows then you can do it on a ZX81 ).

I meant play FM, be online, listen to music and be working on a document or spreadsheet at the same time, not in addition to playing CoD4 and watching a film.

 

I can do the former on this machine, but it stutters through FM and struggles with anything particularly intense on Word or Excel

 

Edit - Sorry Ant, I meant; in response to Laz's suggestion, I was asking what's the point in buying that Dell pc from pc World, when i can buy the same model from Dell's online store?

 

cos the pc world dell system is a refurb. £295 delivered for a quad core, 3gb ram, , dvd rewriter, 500gb hard drive with vista is a canny price. (pc world site code 833578).

 

the dell site pc will be brand new and im sure youll be charged a fortune for delivery.

That makes smurfing sense.

[Fop 1]

Anty if I was building a new pc what are the best important bits to get for the inside? Cheers.

 

Although if you can't get the glowly bits then personally I wouldn't build/buy now (unless I really had too), a new generation of CPUs are coming out in November-ish which look to have a big performance boost and should be much more power efficient too.

Edited September 18, 2008 by Fop

[Park Life 71]

Anty if I was building a new pc what are the best important bits to get for the inside? Cheers.

 

Depends what your looking to do with it, if its gaming and playing the likes of crysis and call of duty etc

good quality memory, graphics, and cpu and a reasonable stable motherboard (not cheapest not most exp), the core components.

 

Motherboard- the really expensive mobos are for enthusiasts looking to tweak everything and overclock etcetc

Midrange are for people wanting them to work well and not have problems, plug in turn on forget about the advanced stuff etc.

cheapest are for cheapskates looking to browse the internet and play the odd game then go nuts when its a bit slow or locks up

After all this is the thing that all your other parts plug into and have to operate through.

anything around the £70-100 mark should cover a really decent board

 

 

Memory is one of the most fussy things about any pc generally, ya buy cheap stuff generic stuff your more likely to have problems

but these days its ultra cheap even for the brandname high performance chips, for 35£'ish you can get the top of the line lifetime guarantee stuff like i linked above

(corsair dominator or crucial ballistix both good choices)

 

cpu, get what you pay for (if your not overclocking), more expensive it is, the faster the processor, for the top of the line cpu's there is normally a massive price difference

between them and the next tier down,

you want a really quick processor that'll do you for a long time you really want a quad core, 100£'ish will get you something decent

(pentium if you don't mind spending cash for it, amd phenom if you want to save a fair bit of cash but still get really decent performance)

 

and if your looking to play those shoot em up fps games, the one thing you really can't skimp on is the graphics card

even if you have a fast cpu etc, a cheap graphics card in games will force you to tone all the settings right down or it'll stutter and jerk etc it'll just bottleneck everything else

If you want to get a card you pretty much wont have to change for few years and will be able to handle anything at the minute very high-max settings

your talking around the £130-150 mark for a single card

or if you run a dual setup a couple of 8800GT'S which are prob still the best bang for buck card at the minute can pick them up around £60-70 each

(even one of those in single would do most people still, i use one)

 

Harddrives - go for a seagate or western digital, nice quiet well performing reliable drives

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Give me some names for motherboards. Not a really tiny or a really big one. Does Vista take advanrage of 4gig of Ram??

[Lazarus 0]

Only a 64bit OS will use 4gb (or more) of ram. Vista, XP, Server 2003/8 and the various linux distros can be had in 64bit versions.

 

a 32bit Os will only see about 3.2gb.

[Fop 1]

Thanks for the reply.

 

Give me some names for motherboards. Not a really tiny or a really big one. Does Vista take advanrage of 4gig of Ram??

 

I'd probably go for Asus, both because they are quality and the newer ones have an on chip Linux distro (which gives you the choice of a normal boot, or an instant boot [no 1/2 hour vista boot time] to a customised linux distro - if you just need to look at the web/check e-mails etc. quickly). You can buy cheaper ones (MSI etc.) and they can be fine, but equally you do sometimes get what you pay for (I've have a couple fail).

 

But I'd still wait until after the next generation of Intel chips roll out in Nov/Dec, at worst the prices on the current generation will drop significantly, and at best the mid-range next generation CPU's will give very good value for performance.