New computer time! (on a budget)

[tonymadge]

MESH sadly will never have my money again after I was lied to prior to buying it.. etc etc after sales..a joke....
If I was looking to upgrade I think I would bite the bullet and buy the bits myself, it may seem daunting but it need not be.
When you upgrade a video card etc or reinstall windows after a format/new hard drive you just install motherboard drivers etc etc so thats not hard. I have fitted memory, hard drives, video cards etc and replaced motherboard fans, as long as you take your time, take digital images of stage by stage you should be ok and will save a lot of money. The two links you sent were not great machines.
I would go for the nVidia 9600GT card at least, this is a good card and can be got for less than £100 it will eat FS9.1/FSX I would go for a duo core or quad core CPU the bigger the better depending on budget. A couple of SATA hard drives so you can have the O/P on one and FSX/FS9.1 etc on the other.
I think a look at overclockers.co.uk or ebuyer.co.uk will surprise you what you can build for your money...
Oh and building your own means you can whack Windows XP on instead of that fat assed memory hogging bloated Vista
Just my opinion ;-)

[tonymadge]

Just had a look at overclockers and this little lot may be useful....

Asus M3A AMD 770 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £52.86

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail £65.79

Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 DHX PC2-6400C4DHX TwinX (2x1GB) £39.94

Leadtek GeForce 9600 GT Extreme 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) £93.99

Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502IJ) £43.46

Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502IJ) £43.46

Asus DRW-2014L1 20x DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter £19.96

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Low Profile CPU Cooler £11.74

Akasa Ultra quiet 80+ AK-P060FG8-BKUKV1 600W £76.36

Asus TA-851 Silver/Black Midi Tower Case £19.96

Total £414.66 including VAT
You can cut back on some items if you already have them etc but as you can see for less than 500 notes you can have a capable system

[ianhind]

I have to admit that I looked at those PC Specialist prices and wondered how much the components would cost. Obviously you have to add the cost of an operating system. If you build it yourself, then you have to add in your time and effort to assemble it all.

Decide how much the warranty is worth.

After all that, do you think that the price of the "ready-to-go" PC is value for your money?

If "yes", decision made.

Ian

[hinch]

I'm fortunate that is my birthday soon and as it is the big 21 my parents have kindly stepped in and upped the budget a little so I can push the boat a little and spend my money on the new CS4 studio... maybe FSX =P

Tony - I have handed that PC spec to my parents for their new system so thank you for that, that is some good value.

This is what I specced up for about £620:

- Intel Quad Q8200 CPU
- 4GB Corsair RAM
- 512MB 9600GT GPU
- 2x 160GB HD
- 600w PSU
- Vista home 64
+ the extra fans, warranty etc.

I think I will go with PC Specialist since the comments are favourable and I think the spec above is good value and it includes the price of an OS.

[tonymadge]

Hinch
That looks good value for money I hope you have a great birthday you will be getting great performance with that PC

[ianhind]

CS4 Studio! Hopefully either an upgrade or the education discount version. The full price of this stuff is :o .

We were lucky with the upgrade to CS3 Extended - bought CS2 upgrade from CS1 which came with with a free upgrade to CS3. Missing an upgrade seemed to save a LOT of money. But I suspect that will be it - not sure of the advantages of further upgrading.

Final comment on the PC - will 160Gb hard disks be enough - check the cost of at least one bigger disk. What you don't want is the ludicrous situation of needing a bigger disk but finding that voids your warranty.

[hinch]

Through uni I can get Flash CS4, Dreamweaver CS4 and Photoshop elements for £310 so not too bad! That's all I need really.

At the moment I'm using a 120GB hard drive and I have used less than 30GB and I've been trying pretty hard to fill it!

[ChrisHunt]

Hinch if you are still looking you should be able to get an Nvidia 8800GT for the same price as a 9600GT - the 8800 despite being a lesser number is actually a better and faster card.

Regards,
Chris

[511Flyer]

I'm another very satisfied PC Specialist customer. Just pick & mix the components, if your'e unsure about anything, a telephone call or e-mail will get a quick response. Having decided on the spec' and placed the order, you can follow the build progress through their website. Mine was delivered within a week.

Dennis.

[05pricej]

I suppose I may aswell show you a similar configuration to what im getting. Its easily fast enough for desktop applications with a mid range graphics card capable of HD playback and (I hope) FSX. Dell's business range is the same stuff for alot less