Thinking of buying/building another pc

[Hector's House]

I've been thinking about upgrading my pc or buying a new one, I have about £500 to play with. If i Build it I'd still use the 2x 250 gig harddrives, 1x dvd read/cd writer, 1x dvd (ram) writer, the case plus 450 watt (i think) psu I have xp home and (if i can find the key) xp pro.

If i buy I don't really need a monitor as i'm quite happy with my iiyama4636d tho nothing is set in stone.

Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated

[zinglebarb]

usage first

[Hector's House]

Sorry the usual home stuff plus i paly an online game I have an agp radeon 9800pro at the moment which is adequate for the game, so nothing too out of the ordinary

[dragon]

http://www.hotukdeals.com

Can sometimes find good deals on prebuilt systems usually Dell towers on that site.

Depends on your usage really as to whether you should Buy or Build
I bought a prebuilt pc and it serves me well enough, although i've added a couple upgrades since

Just remember with a Prebuilt pc you may be limited in terms of expansion esp as some are very stingy on the psu.

We had to change the PSU to fit a better Gfx board in my housemates pc.

The advantage of prebuilt is sometimes its actually cheaper than doing it yourself and of course it comes pretty much ready to go.

[Hector's House]

I've looked at a few ready built ones but everyone i've looked at up to now is always lacking in something

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Hector's House

I've looked at a few ready built ones but everyone i've looked at up to now is always lacking in something

As stated it does depend on your usage.

Using a Dell tower here, although I've since Added an X-fi card boosted the ram to 4gb and change the Graphics card.

[alferret]

Originally Posted by Hector's House

SNIP!
I have xp home and (if i can find the key) xp pro.


Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated

I think you'll find that you wont be able to use a pre-registered ver of Home or Pro. You'll have to add the cost of the OS to your spend.

[Hector's House]

Originally Posted by alferret

I think you'll find that you wont be able to use a pre-registered ver of Home or Pro. You'll have to add the cost of the OS to your spend.

I've never registered it it, i've activated it tho.

I've been looking at the dell 530 and 530s can anyone give me any advice on the ati radeon hd 2400 xt and the hd 3450(?) xt?

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Hector's House

I've never registered it it, i've activated it tho.

I've been looking at the dell 530 and 530s can anyone give me any advice on the ati radeon hd 2400 xt and the hd 3450(?) xt?

Both not great

I think most dells use a 305w psu (average not peak) and apart from the shortage of connectors they aren't bad.

Managed to get a sata > molex adaptor form a US site that allowed me to use the unused connector for the 2nd optical bay to power the gfx card.

Not managed to cook it yet.

Im using a 512mb 3850 (recently replaced a 256mb 7800GT)

[Hector's House]

Originally Posted by dragon

Both not great

I think most dells use a 305w psu (average not peak) and apart from the shortage of connectors they aren't bad.

Managed to get a sata > molex adaptor form a US site that allowed me to use the unused connector for the 2nd optical bay to power the gfx card.

Not managed to cook it yet.

Im using a 512mb 3850 (recently replaced a 256mb 7800GT)

The psu and the lack of connectors is a little off putting and I'm leaning towards building a pc using the harddrives, optical drives, psu and case I already have. This would seem to be the cheaper option.

So I would need (stating the obvious I know) M/board, memory and a graphics card, but I'm really not sure what to get, certainly a dual core cpu or even quad core. The M/board needs to have sata/raid on it and take atleast 4mb of memory. I've looked at the 3850 you mentioned and I am thinking of going for that or the 4850 my llyama monitor has a DVI-I socket as well as a VGA btw.

I really would appreciate your advice and suggestions

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Hector's House

The psu and the lack of connectors is a little off putting and I'm leaning towards building a pc using the harddrives, optical drives, psu and case I already have. This would seem to be the cheaper option.

So I would need (stating the obvious I know) M/board, memory and a graphics card, but I'm really not sure what to get, certainly a dual core cpu or even quad core. The M/board needs to have sata/raid on it and take atleast 4mb of memory. I've looked at the 3850 you mentioned and I am thinking of going for that or the 4850 my llyama monitor has a DVI-I socket as well as a VGA btw.

I really would appreciate your advice and suggestions

Depends on the price of the 3850, I got mine becuase it was on offer for £50 which is quite resonable for that card, they are normally £70 or so in which puts them closer in terms of price to better cards.

The 48xx series is supposed to be quite good.

It depends on how serious you are about gaming I suppose.

With the Ram I'd sugggest getting something like Crucial or one of the other Major Brands since i've been burned by Cheap ram in the past.

I think Intel still have the performance Lead for CPU's but saying that you can get some AMD cpus pretty cheap thesedays becuase of it, Depends on how fast you want to go really, while the AMD cpu's might not be quite as fast they aren't slow either.

[damien c]

what sort of a budget have you got in mind if you were to build your own

have you looked at the likes of overclockers and aria places like that for there pre built systems they are quite good and seem quite cheap aswell.

[Hector's House]

Thanks for he info and advice I'm looking at several options now

[Aragorn]

I've just ordered my new rig from Novatech (mainly)
E8400, Asus p43 mobo, 4Gb Corsair RAM, etc from Novatech (£370 inc disks and case)
Sapphire HD 3850 from Amazon (£66)
Not top of the range spec but certainly within your budget.

[zinglebarb]

why did you go for the P43 mobo over a P45? I am running the Asus P5Q pro and am very happy with it the P43 just seems a little cut down for my tastes