buying a pc base unit

GEt a mac then... far superior for music

My tuppenies worth:

Go to Computer Direct on Scotswood Rd, right by the arena, is cheap as fuck.

Get an AMD Barton 2600+, is nicely overclockable to around 2.3ghz, and should set you back around £50 at most. Ooh, and heatsink/fan for £10/£15.

Asus A7V8X-X motherboard, 1 agp, 6 pci, 3 ram slots, etc etc, pretty decent for the price, around £35.

Case - smart and decent one's from £30 including psu

160 gig HD's are around £55/£60 at the mo.

And 1 gig RAM (2 sticks 512) at about £100ish, poss less/more, but make sure it's branded.

Take it you've got keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, floppy, dvd drive, cables, etc from your old pc? If so, the above system for around £275, which'll do canny for a good coupla years.

Very easy, instructions that come with any mobo seem to have been translated into German and back to English again or summinck - but still easy to follow. All you have to do is whack the chip in, whack the heatsink/fan on top of it, put in the memory, screw the mobo to the case (remember to use the risers ), whack in the drives, attach the IDE and floppy cables, then the tricky one - trying to work out which little cables from the case go where, can be a bugger to sort out, but easy enough if you use google.

computer orbit will sell pre-built base units, almost to spec if required. dead cheap too. No o/s though....

its in gateshead. pretty easy to find....

accross the tyne bridge - straight on. Strainght across 2 round abouts, up a hill...and your there.

http://www.computerorbit.co.uk/

I've had bad experiences with Computer Orbit, their customer service is a bit shit (or was, haven't been near there for two years now). Gold Chip in Arthurs Hill, or Computer Direct do base units too, I would recommend both of em. There's one in Bensham on Coatsworth Rd that's really cheap too, but can't remember the name.

If ur on a budget, an AMD chip. Actually, I'd say an AMD chip anyways. Like I said above, you can get a Barton 2600+ for under £50 that's well overclockable and is the mutts nuts too

I personally would go with a Barton rather than a Sempron, better L2 cache and better at overclocking. Not too bad a deal though.

If say you went for the spec I posted above, you could get it built at the shop for £30 extra or so.

Try and decide on a spec that you want, then contact as many places as possible to see what they'll do it for, and also saying that place x will do it for y quid. If you can get one of the local shops round here to do it for a nifty price, will be better for after-sales service.

buy a real PC you get WARANTY

Hey for just a little over your £300 can get a decent branded system from HP, with 3 Years waranty on your kit, and it is all ready to use with anew keyboard and mouse and LEGAL Windows XP, none of your other replies said anything about an OS! Does it run by magic?

Re: buy a real PC you get WARANTY

HP? You have got to be kidding!

Hmm, that warranty is great too - hardware fucks up, you call them. They then tell you to look at the website. Most people hang up and do, and still can't solve their problem. So ring up again, get told to look at the website, say they already have, then hold for half an hour to get through to someone. You then have to walk over frigging coals to prove to them that something is wrong with the hardware. After 9 minutes of talking to them though, they really start pushing you to clear off (re-install the drivers is a fave). Then after a few very-costly phone calls, they book in inconvenient times for an on-site service (if you're lucky and summinck breaks within a year, HP hardware is known to break instantly so you'll be alright), or you wait a coupla weeks for a rtb warranty. Although, with pc hardware the least likely time for something to break is in the 2nd and 3rd year, hence how 3 year warranties are a money maker.

And you don't even get an XP disc with an HP machine, they put the setup files on a hidden partition on the HD, which is handy when it fails.

Also, HP's build quality and components are just shite.

Si - get your stuff independently, you'll get better equipment that'll last longer and be hassle free. If you don't want to use ILLEGAL XP, you can use LEGAL linux

Oh, and guess where I used to work

Computer Orbit, Goldchip and i'm pretty sure Computer Direct are all owned by the same family.

Really?

How come prices/stock etc are different?

And how come Computer Direct and Gold Chip are class, but Computer Orbit is shite?

u ain't been for 2 years dip stick!!! and different shop, different staff... we're not all perfect my son!

they're all brothers and cousins or something....

A coupla peeps I know have been to Computer Orbit recently and apparently they're still shite.

They've poss got some kind of mafia operation going on with all them shops... poss why stuff from Orbit is fucked cos it's been shipped with the finest columbian...

they're cheap and have great selection - they're allowed to be!

if u don't know what u're buying - gan to PC world!

Is that aimed at me?

not directly - unless u DONT know what you're buying? stop moaning about customer service and appreciate their low LOW prices!

Not when the fucker is faulty and have to take it back. Twice. And they also told me that a cdrw that I took back too was working, and that I'd have to pay a £37 testing fee. I went mental and demanded that they put it in a machine in front of my eyes, lo and behold - fucked. :evil:

If I pay £1 or £2 extra elsewhere for summinck it's defo worth it.

what technical training do u have? can u prove this?


did u try rebooting?