New computer advice.

[Cavan]

Right, so I was hoping to buy a new computer to replace this one that is reaching the end of its functional life after several years of replacement and temporary fixes done by people who know what they're doing !

Sadly none of those people are around as much to be helpful and as a technical incompetant I was hoping to get some advice on how to go about buying a totally new computer with a budget of about £500-£600 (maybe stretching upto £700 with promises that it'll make me a fried breakfast every morning ).

Anyway, i'm mostly looking for something solid and reliable. I don't mind noisy fans or anything like that as long as it's happy to run newer games on at least mid settings .
I've thought about building my own to save money but because nobody i'm comfortable trusting a brand new computer with has any level of technical experience it's something i'm being very cautious of.

Long story short, any advice on where/how to buy such a mythical thing and what to do and what not to do would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance from a long time lurker.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

You're looking to buy a prebuilt? Ewwwww... I just 3 hrs last night building a new computer and that's counting the 1 1/2hr break I took in the middle and the general fart arsing around got up to because I always end up inadvertantly playing a few rounds of "where's the fucking screwdriver?" (the most common answer is "ARGH! In my fucking foot now!")

Anyway... my DIY snobbery aside, if you're going to grab a prebuilt system grab one of the units that are put together by parts suppliers rather than name brand systems. You get better gear at lower prices and they have less tendency to fill your new rig with crapware. I could name some places I've used but as I don't think any of them deliver outside of Australia it would be of minimal use to you. Hopefully some other members of The 'Pist will help you with more local suggestions.

 

[Cavan]

Well i'm in the UK so I doubt finding somewhere will be the problem.

I'm also not against DIY Comp building but I honestly have zero technical skills whatsoever and i'm not willing to gamble anything as expensive as the parts for a new desktop against my ham handedness :/.
Would you honestly consider doing it yourself a good idea if you were in my shoes?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I'm also not against DIY Comp building but I honestly have zero technical skills whatsoever and i'm not willing to gamble anything as expensive as the parts for a new desktop against my ham handedness :/.
Would you honestly consider doing it yourself a good idea if you were in my shoes?

DIY builds may sound intimidating but if you can read a manual, put plugs in sockets and use a screw driver you have all the necessary skills to assemble a computer. These days it's hard to fuck the assembly stage up unless you're being willfully stupid.

That said, though, would you gain anything by building a rig yourself? A lot of people wouldn't because they have not only no interest in doing it but also no interest in learning about things like hardware compatability and benchmarking. DIY building might save them some money but to them spending a bit extra to avoid all the hassle and frustration they'd get from it is well worth it.

In your shoes, though... Hmmm I'd probably get a custom build from a parts supplier and when that was all set up, spend some spare time pulling apart and putting back together your retired old rig to get some knowledge, skills and confidence about putting puters together.

 

[Cavan]

*cough* ressurecting this thread.

Okay after going around for a fairly large chunk of advice I got a list from one person that I wanted to run past people.
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Six Core 2.8GHz 4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM AMD 880 Motherboard Elite 335 Gaming Tower OCZ 600W Barebones Kit - AMDX6-XIG4G
- 1x Add Kingston 4GB DDR3 1333MHz Module 27.49
- 1x Add a Samsung 22x DVDRW SATA Black 10.42
- 1x Add a Xilence 120mm Red Wing CaseFan 3.34
- 1x Add a Asus Radeon 5750 1GB Graphics Card 77.49
- 1x SATA Drive Power Cable 0.64
Also not entirely included in the bundle would be a hard drive like:
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALX 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache HDD, OEM - WD10EALX


Including a windows 7 operating system I believe that comes to about £650.

So if anybody has any comments on that bundle from www.overclock.co.uk or any advice in general i'm here , the only person I know who suggested this isn't from England and freely admits he doesn't intimately know the best places to buy things from, sadly neither do I >_>

 

[Zer_]

*cough* ressurecting this thread.

Okay after going around for a fairly large chunk of advice I got a list from one person that I wanted to run past people.
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Six Core 2.8GHz 4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM AMD 880 Motherboard Elite 335 Gaming Tower OCZ 600W Barebones Kit - AMDX6-XIG4G
- 1x Add Kingston 4GB DDR3 1333MHz Module 27.49
- 1x Add a Samsung 22x DVDRW SATA Black 10.42
- 1x Add a Xilence 120mm Red Wing CaseFan 3.34
- 1x Add a Asus Radeon 5750 1GB Graphics Card 77.49
- 1x SATA Drive Power Cable 0.64
Also not entirely included in the bundle would be a hard drive like:
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EALX 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache HDD, OEM - WD10EALX


Including a windows 7 operating system I believe that comes to about £650.

So if anybody has any comments on that bundle from www.overclock.co.uk or any advice in general i'm here , the only person I know who suggested this isn't from England and freely admits he doesn't intimately know the best places to buy things from, sadly neither do I >_>

If you can afford it, bump that video card up to a Radeon 5770, or an nVidia GTX(GTS?) 460. The 460 is considered to be the beefy one for its price range.

 

[Cavan]

But everything else looks alright?

On checking it neither of those are part of the standard bundle, I'l have more of a look around though, the next option up is the XFX Radeon 5850 1GB Graphics Card for almost double the price, checking through the pricing options the 5770 is about £40 more expensive which would put the price range upto about £700 which I think is pushing it a bit.

I suspect I will be back on monday with a different list from another person to compare.

 

[Kabutos]

Don't get a hexacore.

For 600 pounds you could get a GTX 570 / HD 6970 and an i5 2500k.

However, there's an issue with the new 1155 mobos, so you might want to wait until April or so until the issue is fixed.

Then again, it's only a 5 to 15 percent chance that your 3 GB/s SATA ports will be affected, so I say that if you can get your hands on a SB mobo, go for it.

 

[evilgenius134]

If you are only getting a GTX 460 or Radeon 5770, get a Phenom x4 965 for the CPU. The hexacore CPU is overkill for that setup. £700 is a large budget for a good system.

Search on other sites such as ebuyer.com and scan.co.uk, they often have cheaper prices.

 

[Cavan]

Heh, reviving an old thread because I got distracted by console games instead of doing this while getting some differing advice.

Motherboard+extras: ASUS AMD M4A88T-M 880g/SB710 micro ATX Motherboard with an AMD Athlon IIx3 processor

Graphics card ZOTAC NVIDIA Geforce 450 PCI-E 1GB

Was wondering how those compare to the other things I posted a while ago, since there are some deals on those around my local area and it would come to substantially cheaper than the other computer including all the other parts to go with those 2(since i'm less bothered about building it now that I have somebody to help me not fail so hard).
If money is any indication then they should be better than, but thing's are never that simple, and as a simple person i'd like them to be >_>.

Sorry for being annoying, promise i'l go away soon xd!

 

[Sleekgiant]

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af150/The_FalconO6/CurrentLogicalPCBuyingGuide/Guide.png

Just follow the guide and you can build one easy

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Motherboard+extras: ASUS AMD M4A88T-M 880g/SB710 micro ATX Motherboard with an AMD Athlon IIx3 processor

Graphics card ZOTAC NVIDIA Geforce 450 PCI-E 1GB

Was wondering how those compare to the other things I posted a while ago, since there are some deals on those around my local area and it would come to substantially cheaper than the other computer including all the other parts to go with those 2(since i'm less bothered about building it now that I have somebody to help me not fail so hard).

Well, it'll give you a servicable gaming rig. Won't wow people with it's specs but it should run anything you throw at it on at least medium settings.

CPU is a bit lightweight... Athlons tend to be slower and have less cache memory than equivalent Phenoms. If I were you, I'd look at going for a faster dualcore CPU than the tricore because most game code doesn't handle CPUs with more than 2 cores very efficiently (or, in some cases, at all). OTOH, if you're looking at using this set up for a fair while the tricore may come into it's own as game code gets better at dealing with more CPU cores.

Mobo is solid. ASUS are good and reliable but not too sure about grabbing a uATX form factor one. That's mostly personal bias, though. I find them too crowded to work on comfortably (they also look a bit silly installed if installed in a mid tower or larger case).

GPU seems workable enough. Decent wad of VRAM, from a good chipset generation... Doesn't have the solid rep of the GTX 460 or the HD 5770 for powerrice but it'll still get the job done.