[Fiend]

Budget: £800 max TOTAL (including updated GFX card).

Primary use: Gaming, goat p0rn.

Important things: Reliability, simplicity, gaming suitability.

Must include: Monitor, good GFX card (even if bought seperately)

Have bought Evesham in the past and been happy with them but they've disappeared now. Considering Dell and HP, subject to factors above. Advice please.

[Will Hunt]

 

[tomtom]

Thought about a touchscreen? though this one looks faulty...

[slackline]

If you can be arsed build your own.  I built this last year for around the £500...


New Computer! by slack---line, on Flickr


...and was pleasantly surprised at how simple it was to put it all together having never done so before.  Most concerning part was sitting the CPU onto the motherboard and clamping it down with the special heat sealent, but all went smoothly.

You could easily boost the GPU on that system as I went for a cheap 1Gb DDR2 card, I suspect you'd want more bang for gaming.  You can also save pennies if you already have a case and CD/DVD-drives (if you order a system, leave out CD/DVD-drives and cannibalise your old ones to save around £10 a drive!).

EDIT - P.S. - Bumped into one of your climbing partners from Aberdeen at Cratcliffe Saturday.

[Fiend]

Nope, can't be arsed building my own. I don't trust myself with it really.

Been reccommended Overclockers.co.uk by my gaming geek buddies...hmm...

[slackline]

If you can paint small statues you'll have the finesse required to put a computer together, really is just a case of reading the manual to see where each bit plugs in, very hard to get things wrong.  Admittedly after waiting for the components to arrive it took two hours to do this and get it to the stage to where it was ready to power up.

No experience of overclockers I'm afraid, although obviously if you're looking to squeeze everything out of a system learning about over-clocking the CPU and GPU will aid this (although you'll want to consider serious cooling such as water/oil which they do detail on their site).

[GCW]

How fast a CPU do you want? This will have a knock on to cooling type.  If you don't want to go too mental you could just uprate to a better air cool.

Bare bones used to he an option, but self build always seemed better to me.

I presume you'll want a decent display, so you're looking at about £600 for the tower components?

[GCW]

Do we need to factor in the cost of an OS in all this?

[tomtom]

If you can paint small statues you'll have the finesse required to put a computer together, really is just a case of reading the manual to see where each bit plugs in, very hard to get things wrong.  Admittedly after waiting for the components to arrive it took two hours to do this and get it to the stage to where it was ready to power up.

 

Its piss putting it all together... but if you dont want to, I have had good experience of Mesh and Dell - can't really speak for any others... if you're a complete PC assembly newbie then open up your old desktop and see how that all goes together. Its Pretty much just connecting up Motherboard, HDD and Graphics card. The only slightly wanky bit is making sure you plug the on off switch and front panel LED's into the correct (small) pins...

[slackline]

Do we need to factor in the cost of an OS in all this?

I'll snap at that bait!

No GNU/Linux is free 

(although you might not be able to play all the games you want to natively!)

[tomtom]

If you can paint small statues you'll have the finesse required to put a computer together, really is just a case of reading the manual to see where each bit plugs in, very hard to get things wrong.  Admittedly after waiting for the components to arrive it took two hours to do this and get it to the stage to where it was ready to power up.

 

Its piss putting it all together... but if you dont want to, I have had good experience of Mesh and Dell - can't really speak for any others... if you're a complete PC assembly newbie then open up your old desktop and see how that all goes together. Its Pretty much just connecting up Motherboard, HDD and Graphics card. The only slightly wanky bit is making sure you plug the on off switch and front panel LED's into the correct (small) pins...

Oh, nearly forgot to mention, make sure you wear a nylon jumper and rub your hands on it loads of times before touching the more expensive components such as the processor 


Slackers, I was going to mention factoring in some $$ for an OS then realised the can of worms.... 

[Will Hunt]

Putting it together is piss. Even I can do it. Its getting it to run when you start it up that is a pain.

[GCW]

Why is that, Will?  If it's put together correctly installing the OS ans partitioning drives is easy.

[lagerstarfish]

best desktop recommendation ever

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/direct-pcs
Bubba got his latest machine from here, I've been very tempted. Comes without OS so would have to install your own flavour.

...or check out the Dell Outlet (although it currently appears to be empty, but isn't usually)
http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/dfh/Desktops/ct.aspx?refid=desktops&s=dfh&cs=ukdfh1

Or keep your eye on Aldi's Medion bargains  (which I have to recommend at least every couple of months or so)....
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/special_buys2_14867.htm

Most of these are without monitors but this allows you to get whatever size suits you (sir) from Ebuyer etc for a few fuck alls.

[Will Hunt]

Why is that, Will?  If it's put together correctly installing the OS ans partitioning drives is easy.

Most likely as I'm a total computers punter but I can do jigsaws OK.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Even if I bought a machine with an OS on, most manufacturers pile so much crap on a new PC I'd be tempted to put a fresh install of Win7 on it anyhow. Trials, weird services running, crap anti-virus and strange hidden partitions are all common to new PCs. A brand new laptop I saw recently was crammed so high with crap out of the box it barely ran!

[SpanishJuan]

I purchased a machine from Compsol Computers about 10 years ago and its still pretty good (although I spent alot at the time).

[Paul B]

This is what 128gb of ram looks like by last.fm, on Flickr

128 Gb of Ram might be a starting point (or not)...

Even if I bought a machine with an OS on, most manufacturers pile so much crap on a new PC I'd be tempted to put a fresh install of Win7 on it anyhow. Trials, weird services running, crap anti-virus and strange hidden partitions are all common to new PCs. A brand new laptop I saw recently was crammed so high with crap out of the box it barely ran!

Amen, I didn't even boot my desktop up under Vista with the Acer crap on it. Win 7 boot disc straight in (I couldn't really understand why something with 4gb of Ram would be supplied with a 32 bit OS anyway  ).

[Jaspersharpe]

Too right word. And if I can manage to install Win7 (on both my desktop that had no OS and my netbook that was running XP) then anyone can.