AndyW
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| posted on 25/11/09 at 03:33 PM |
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new desk top advise
my pc is knackered and old. Monitor small and am now looking at buying a new desk top before vat goes back up. Any recommendations?? What to avoid
etc. looking at about £400 max....
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tegwin
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| posted on 25/11/09 at 03:37 PM |
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Seeings as this is the locostbuilders forum...
I would buy all the parts from Dabs.com (or where ever is cheapest) and build it yourself.
If you pick the components very carefully you end up with an amazing machine...
Bear in mind that a computer in PC world might say its a 3ghz etc... but if the components (hard disk, memory, motherboard) are as cheap and nasty as
they usually are, the thing wont perform much better than a 1960s steam driven calculator...
I built a PC for a friend a few weeks ago..
and these were the parts we put in his...
Asus S775 Intel P45 ATX A L PCI-E
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 S775 2.93GHz
Crucial 4GB (2x2GB KIT) 800MHz DDR2 PC2-6400
SATA WD Cavair 320gb 8mb cache
XFX GeForce 9500GT 550Mhz 512MB PCI-Express DVI
Akasa 500W Black Ultra Quiet with 12cm Fan
I have an XL spreadsheet with the product codes etc in if you want to find those products... all of them came from DABS. Came to about £300 for that
lot.. leaving you a few bob for a DVD drive and a nice flat screen
[Edited on 25/11/09 by tegwin]
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Would the last person who leaves the country please switch off the lights and close the door!
www.verticalhorizonsmedia.tv
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m8kwr
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| posted on 25/11/09 at 03:49 PM |
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I have built a few over the last 6 months, buy most of the components from scan.co.uk
Even if you haven't built one before, you can pay about £3 for build insurance, just in case you break anything while you are putting it
together.
For £400 you should be able to build yourself a nice dual core, if the £400 was just for the computer (not the screen), then you could do a quad
core.
Do not get a crap power pack, it is a very important component that can be overlooked - i think it is on many pre-built machines....
Don't forget your os, unless you are using linux.
But is does depend on what the machine is going to be used for.
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balidey
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| posted on 25/11/09 at 03:50 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by tegwin
Seeing as this is the locostbuilders forum...
[Edited on 25/11/09 by tegwin]
Seeing as this is the locostbuilders forum... I would suggest keeping the old PC and installing Ubuntu / Linux. Its very forgiving of older hardware.
I am using an old pc that was being thrown away as it was too old and slow (on windows). A quick install of Ubuntu and its a cracking PC now.
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martyn_16v
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| posted on 25/11/09 at 04:48 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by balidey
quote:
Originally posted by tegwin
Ubuntu / Linux. Its very forgiving of older hardware
Unless you have an ATI graphics card/chipset. ATI have stopped support for a whole load of old chipsets (and ATI have decided 18 months is old), and
the latest drivers from them just don't work well at all on legacy hardware. This means any new release of a linux distribution that uses the
latest x-server and the current ATI drivers is likely to be troublesome on older machines. Stick to a slightly older distribution and you'll be
fine.
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bmseven
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| posted on 25/11/09 at 08:42 PM |
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My son swears by
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/
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