PC Buyer's Advice Bureau

[Tel Aviv]

Bonjour!

 

Turns out I'm in the process of pur-chasing a new desktop PC and, being unversed in such lingo, I was hoping I could gauge your opinions and consume your advice (like so much stale pizza) on reliable brand names, rewarding set ups, what to look for etc.

 

Thinking about it, I don't even know what the average spec is these days. Is 3.00 GHz good? I remember the heady days of the P166. You couldn't go wrong with a 166. Or 133, I forget which.

 

At the moment I'm cruising Dell for offers, and looking to spend... hmm... 700 English pounds at most. I'm a lowly student you see.

 

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products...dhs1&l=en&s=dhs

 

So how does the above machine sound, anything you'd care to recommend?

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited November 14, 2005 by Tel Aviv

[mkreku]

The GPU in the machine mentioned above is not a very strong one.

 

The AMD 64 line of processors is a really good buy too, since it's generally cheaper than Intel equivalents and are better suited for gaming.

 

1 GB of RAM is the minimum I would recommend nowadays (just like the machine you linked to has), since anything below that is going to be a bottle-neck in the system. Corsair makes some good memory modules at a decent price.

 

Go for a Nforce 4 motherboard. Make sure it has all the ports you need, If you need Firewire (for example) you'll usually have to spend a little more money to get that specifically since not all motherboards have those. Asus makes good motherboards. Abit too.

 

You didn't mention if the setup should include a monitor or not.

 

Anyhow, I looked up a system I could recommend at a decent prize (excluded monitor) and you would have to build it yourself, but if you ever built LEGO, you'd have no problem with doing this:

 

# Antec SONATA II Piano Black SmartPower 2.0 450W

# Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra 4DDR-DIMM 3PCI 4PCIe SATA Raid Audio GB-LAN Socket939 ATX

# AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual-Core "Manchester" 90nm 3800+ 2.0GHz 512kb+512kb Boxed (with cpu-cooler!) Socket939

# Corsair Value Select 2x512Mb (tot. 1024Mb/1Gb) Dual DDR PC3200 400MHz 184pin CL2.5

# Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L250S0 250Gb 7200rpm 16Mb NCQ S-ATA150

# NEC ND-3550 Dual-Layer DVD 16X DVD+R and DVD-R BLACK IDE

# Point of View GeForce 7800GT 256Mb DDR3 TV-out DUAL DVI VIVO SLI-ready RETAIL PCI Express

 

This would set ypu back around

Edited November 14, 2005 by mkreku

[Tel Aviv]

The GPU in the machine mentioned above is not a very strong one.

 

The AMD 64 line of processors is a really good buy too, since it's generally cheaper than Intel equivalents and are better suited for gaming.

 

1 GB of RAM is the minimum I would recommend nowadays (just like the machine you linked to has), since anything below that is going to be a bottle-neck in the system. Corsair makes some good memory modules at a decent price.

 

Go for a Nforce 4 motherboard. Make sure it has all the ports you need, If you need Firewire (for example) you'll usually have to spend a little more money to get that specifically since not all motherboards have those. Asus makes good motherboards. Abit too.

 

You didn't mention if the setup should include a monitor or not.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the fast feedback eku! A monitor would preferably be included, at the moment I'm on a brick of a laptop, the damn thing can't even run Arcanum, so I'm in need of the works I suppose.

[Tel Aviv]

I could stretch to 800, I think. Its the building that sounds ominous... I got my dad to build all my lego, I just destroyed it. I'm out of my depth.

[mkreku]

I could stretch to 800, I think. Its the building that sounds ominous... I got my dad to build all my lego, I just destroyed it. I'm out of my depth.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, the problem with the build i presented is that it doesn't come with a screen. You could, however, downgrade the GPU from a 7800GT to a 6800 of some sort, and instead get a screen. The problem is that you would probably want to buy a good screen, but good screens are expensive. If the screen eats up too much of your budget your computer build will suffer heavily. It's very difficult to balance them both out.

[metadigital]

I could stretch to 800, I think. Its the building that sounds ominous... I got my dad to build all my lego, I just destroyed it. I'm out of my depth.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You could pay someone to build it for you! The December issue of Custom PC has a computer for a

[Atreides]

Tip: Consider saving on a 2nd hand monitor (but one that's decent) to tide you over till you decide on something permanent later.

[metadigital]

Or buying a CRT if you have the room. They cost more to run, are subject to burn-in, and are capable of frying / carcinogenising any small objects placed in the unschielded zone near them (behind the monitor), but they are about half the price of the thin screens.

 

And Philips are testing a roll-up plastic screen (initially for their hand-held computing designs), so LCDs aren't going to be around forever ...