New computer required

Not being a computer whizz, and after reading many magazines, I went to a small company and talked to one guy, who asked me questions, answered mine, and we then started to build a pc that was good for me. Jack at Kustom PCs was brilliant, as is my pc. It lives in Spain, and when I had a problem with it, I took it to a local repair shop, then rang Jack, who without hesitation, offered to sort out any costs - that to me is good service, and I would suggest to anyone looking to buy a pc that given the tales of woe we hear about problems and getting them resolved that some of the smaller companies, who may not be able to compete on price give a much higher level of service, and this is worth a few extra pounds of my money..
Just my take..
Steve

I know fuck-all about computers.

However, I'd rather spend my money with a local private computer shop who will build me a PC to my particular specification/meet my particular needs, than buy an off-the-shelf computer from a major brand.

It's like visiting a decent hi-fi dealer - you state your needs/usage, and s/he he builds you a machine that will not only meet your current needs but will also be upgradable in the future.

This option tends to be much cheaper too if you know the right people.

My PC right now (built in 2001) is in need of more memory and a faster processor as well as an upgrade from Windows 98.

A guy has quoted me about 300 to 400 quid to bring it up to current spec.

Surely this is better than spending a grand at the likes of PC World???

Steve,
It probably isn't worth spending £300-400 on upgrading this machine when you can get a newer faster one with XP, USB2 and a flat panel screen for around £500 from aomeone like Dell! I have exactly the same problem with my PC, bought from Dell in 2000 and now sadly obsolescent.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Toy:
However, I'd rather spend my money with a local private computer shop who will build me a PC to my particular specification/meet my particular needs, than buy an off-the-shelf computer from a major brand.

If you can find a reliable and competent local shop then doing that is fine, but the ones I've had experience of tended to be absolutely crap. I'd much rather build my own than buy one from a small local shop.

My PC's are a mix of big-brand and home built. Quite often I've found that for the spec I've wanted the big-brand machines are cheaper than it'd cost me to buy the parts.

quote:

It's like visiting a decent hi-fi dealer - you state your needs/usage, and s/he he builds you a machine that will not only meet your current needs but will also be upgradable in the future.

The computer market moves much, much faster than the hi-fi scene and future upgradability of machines can never be assumed. For my main machine I tend to buy the the most powerful machine available at the time, with the assumption that I'll have to replace it completely in 4 or so years.

quote:

My PC right now (built in 2001) is in need of more memory and a faster processor as well as an upgrade from Windows 98.

A guy has quoted me about 300 to 400 quid to bring it up to current spec.

Surely this is better than spending a grand at the likes of PC World???

Throwing £300-400 at a 4 year old PC probably isn't a great move as that sort of money will get you a reasonable complete machine instead. A £1000 machine isn't entry level at present as that will get a pretty serious games machine - even SLI machines with dual 6600 graphics cards are available for near that sort of price now.

Depending what you're going to do with it (for example do you want it to run Half-Life 2 at decent graphic resolutions) a 4 year old machine is probably going to need a new processor, motherboard, memory, graphics card and possibly a hard disk drive. If it's already a reasonable speed pentium 4 (say 2GHz) then an updated graphics card (ATi 9600XT for under £100 or a nVidia 6600GT for a bit over £100) may be enough to delay upgrading for a year or two.

What spec is your current machine?

quote:

My PC's are a mix of big-brand and home built. Quite often I've found that for the spec I've wanted the big-brand machines are cheaper than it'd cost me to buy the parts.

I'd partly agree with that, I find that if I look at a set of components and a similar spec off the shelf the machine, the off the shelf machine is a bit less, but if you examine (if you can) in more detail you will find that they have scrimped somewhere. Nowadays usually on the motherboard, but it can also be on lower spec memory.

Even if you consider yourself a novice then I would consider building a pc yourself. It's pretty much like lego, it's pretty hard to connect them up wrong since all the connections are different and they are designed so you can't plug them in the wrong way round.

I built one over the weekend at a cost of $2300 CAD (approx £1000) and for that got a Athalon 64 3800+, 2 gig ram, 160 gig hard disk and a gt6600 GT graphics card, plus the other usual stuff (dvd drive, floppy drive, case, power supply).

Static electricity is a costly lesson for younger players though.

A chap I know, an IT consultant whose firm for which he's been working has just gone bust, and who phones me direct when he wants a taxi to the nearest town with a decent nightlife, has offered to build a computer from scratch for cost + one return taxi fare to said town (£25).

He has also offered to patch up my existing computer by installing more memory and Windows XP for fuck-all - that is how happy with the service I have provided him as a taxi driver.

He himself stated that I'd be better off now going from scratch rather than installing a new motherboard, CPU, graphics card, fan, hard drive etc. into my existing tower.

Current spec:

Celeron 633 (don't laugh)

Maxtor 30 gig hard drive

64MB SD RAM.

I need a better CPU with perhaps 2.5 gig and 512 MB RAM.

As for graphics cards etc. I have no idea.

My landlord should be coming round to fix a water leak in the next couple of days so I'll ask him for permission to get Broadband installed by BT via AOL.

But, tbh, the biggest HEADACHE I've got right now is the bass boom/room node problem with my hi-fi...

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Toy:
A chap I know, an IT consultant whose firm for which he's been working has just gone bust, and who phones me direct when he wants a taxi to the nearest town with a decent nightlife, has offered to build a computer from scratch for cost + one return taxi fare to said town (£25).

He has also offered to patch up my existing computer by installing more memory and Windows XP for fuck-all - that is how happy with the service I have provided him as a taxi driver.

With more memory (256MB as a minimum) your existing PC will run Windows XP fine for web browsing and word processing etc.

quote:

He himself stated that I'd be better off now going from scratch rather than installing a new motherboard, CPU, graphics card, fan, hard drive etc. into my existing tower.

He's correctas your existing case will probably have something like a 200W power supply and you'd be better off with 350-400W nowadays. Cases are cheap anyway.

quote:

Current spec:

Celeron 633 (don't laugh)
Maxtor 30 gig hard drive
64MB SD RAM.

I need a better CPU with perhaps 2.5 gig and 512 MB RAM.

As for graphics cards etc. I have no idea.

There is certainly a limited amount you can do with that machine although, depending on the motherboard, it may be possible to upgrade the processor to something a fair bit faster.

Going for the home build option then, using bits from www.dabs.com I'd recommend something like this:

80GB UDMA133 hard disk
Socket 775 Intel Celeron 2.53Ghz processor
2 x 256MB PC3200 DIMMS
Sapphire Radeon 9600SE 128MB AGP graphics
16 x DVD-ROM
Dual layer DVD-RW
Midi tower case with 350W PSU
ASRock 775 motherboard with LAN, sound, USB2 etc.

That comes to about £265 for the bits and you'd also be somethink like £75-£85 for a copy of Windows XP (a lot of people won't include this when comparing specifications as either they'll already have a license or they'll be pirating a copy). That's a total of £350 for a machine which will cope fine with all current games and has a decent upgrade route as the socket 775 motherboard can take processors nearly twice as fast as the specified Celeron.

Looking at Dell your £350 could get you something like:

Dell Dimension 3000
3.0Ghz Pentium 4 processor with 800FSB
Windows XP Home
1 year collect and return warranty
512MB RAM
80GB HDD
17" CRT monitor
48xDVD/CD-RW drive
Dell speakers
v92 modem
Keyboard and optical mouse
MS Works
£356

I've seen some other Dell deals recently that would get a similar spec of machine but with a 15" TFT monitor instead of the CRT one.

The homebuild machine has better optical devices (e.g. a DVD rewriter) and much better graphics for gameplay, plus it's 775 socket processor makes it more upgradeable. The Dell has a considerably faster processor, a warranty and is a full package (screen, keyboard, mouse etc) plus it comes already built other than plugging a few cables in. Adding a DVD-RW would cost about £40 later, and decent graphics cards are available from £45 upwards (to about £450!) - both are easy to fit.

For most people I'd advise going the Dell (or equivalent) route but if you know what you're doing the self build option gives more flexibility.

Usually for my main machine I tend to buy a well specced Dell (£1000 buys a lot of computer these days) but my current top machine is a self build as I was reusing some bits I already had (including software licenses) and it therefore only cost about £200 to put together.

Regards
Steve

Great and informative post Steve.

Thanks

quote:

Originally posted by Two-Sheds:
I built one over the weekend at a cost of $2300 CAD (approx £1000) and for that got a Athalon 64 3800+, 2 gig ram, 160 gig hard disk and a gt6600 GT graphics card, plus the other usual stuff (dvd drive, floppy drive, case, power supply).

That's a nice spec of machine. If I was spending £1000 at the moment I'm not sure if I'd build my own or go with a manufacturers machine. From Dell £1000 would get me:

Dimension XPS Gen-4
3.2Ghz 800FSB P4
XP Home
1GB RAM
160GB SATA HDD
256MB Nvidia 6800GT graphics
DVD/RW etc

The Dell has a slower processor and less memory but has a considerably faster graphics card.

On checking the UK component prices it looks like it's quite possible to build a socket 775 3.8GHz P4 800FSB with 2GB PC3200 RAM, 160GB SATA hard disk, DVD-ROM & DVD-RW, case etc. & 256MB 6800GT graphics for about £1000 so I expect that's probably what I'd do.

I probably wouldn't myself go with a processor as fast as a 3.8GHz at the moment though as there is quite a price premium (£410 v £187) in going for that over a 3.4GHz one.

Regards
Steve

The thing you have to ask yourself is whether or not you want the grief.

The problem with building your own is that OK it's pretty easy to buy a bunch of bits but that assumes everything works and nothing ever breaks - often when it does you get in this horrible ping pong battle between vendors who each blame each others hardware or drivers for the problem, if something breaks you don't always get an instant replacement, and unless you almost have access to a bunch of spares it can be difficult to prove that a given component is faulty.

Whilst I'm not Dells biggest fan in some areas, there is a lot to be said about something just turning up and working, and paying for a warranty so that if something does break someone just turns up and fixes it.

The same can be said of most of the big PC vendors, Dell just seem cheaper than most of the others.

Paul

I was considering the faster graphics card (6800GT), but in the end I went for the faster processor and the extra gig of RAM because I'll also be doing some self training and want to run a webserver and maybe a database on it so the extra RAM will be useful.

Also a vague plan of wait 6 months for the graphics card to drop in price, buy another 6600GT and run them both since my mobo supports dual SLI-e graphics cards

quote:

Originally posted by Two-Sheds:
I was considering the faster graphics card (6800GT), but in the end I went for the faster processor and the extra gig of RAM because I'll also be doing some self training and want to run a webserver and maybe a database on it so the extra RAM will be useful.

Sounds reasonable although I prefer to run those things on a seperate machine so that they're always available no matter what I'm doing on the other machine. I tend not to run databases at home either as I'm spoiled by having access to the servers in the office and I can access those via the web when I want.

What database are you using?

quote:

Also a vague plan of wait 6 months for the graphics card to drop in price, buy another 6600GT and run them both since my mobo supports dual SLI-e graphics cards

Sounds like a plan. Two 6600GT's should give enough graphics processing to get by for a few years I'd have thought!

quote:

Originally posted by Two-Sheds:want to run a webserver and maybe a database on it so the extra RAM will be useful.

If this is a genuinely externally-accessible web server then it takes a lot of expertise (and ongoing maintenance) to keep the machine secure from hackers.

It would also be a pain never to be able to reboot such a multi-use machine.

cheers, Martin

quote:

What database are you using?

oracle.

quote:

If this is a genuinely externally-accessible web server then it takes a lot of expertise (and ongoing maintenance) to keep the machine secure from hackers.

It won't be externally accessible, it is purely for my own use for self training mainly with J2EE stuff, but I may also try and familiarise myself with different servers since I have currently only used BEA's weblogic.