Cheap but good computer?

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Charlie C

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ok i'm looking at getting a new pc for myself.

but i dont want to spend much on it....however, i know that prices have dropped amazingly since i bought my current laptop.

I'd like it to be fast (so good ram and processor i guess) and maybe have a seperate graphics card to help with the speed too. A couple of GBs of ram would be nice (i only have 512mb atm :crying:)it doesn't need much else special though, just the basics (unless i'm being retarded). only XP please, dont like the sound of vista.

So any ideas please? I'm not sure if i'm up to building it myself, unless its easier than it looks. i have a mouse and keyboard that i use with my laptop, so i would need a monitor and comp only.

thanks
Charlie

And i'm a student if that helps cut the price...
 
What sort of budget are you on and what do you want to do with it?

If it is for photo manipulation ie photoshop, you don't need to worry about the graphics card too much. 126MB will be plenty. What you do want however, is plenty of RAM. You can get a 4GB kit from crucial for a good price, so ignore any upgrade options from the retailer.
 
as snake man said, depends on what you want to do, and also how hung up you are on numbers.

you could pick up and older (thinking p4 2.6 northwood ish) machine for around £100 - 150 these days if you look in the right places, and I know from experience that that kind of spec would run cs2 with 1 gig of memmory absolutely fine.

or if you want all new stuff, have a word with some body who lives close by who can built one to spec for you. package deals are usualy a bad idea.
 
As stated second user is a good way to go as its the memmory thats the big issue for photo editing.
For storing your pics i would get an external drive especially if others use your machine.
500gb externals about £75.
Im no expert infact i have had no computer training and have always built my own systems.
Just for the family.
Nothing to it mate im sure lots of pointers on the net.
But prices are so low the only real advantage to building your own is you know exactlywhats in there and you can upgrade components as and when you need.
Only need for cost;y graphics cards are for games and only reson games need them is a graphics card company says hey we can do x- amount of polygons and smart water effects why dont you write a game to use it, oh ok then and so the circle continues.... oh sorry for rant there.
Hope some was of help.
All the best,
james
 
ok i currently only have 512 mb of memory which means CS3 is pretty slow whilst doing things. It would also be nice to have duel core as i'm hoping that will make doing two tasks much easier and quicker (e.g. converting a large file to jpeg whilst adjusting another, atm impossible on my comp).

I'm looking at £300-£400 really.
I'd like a gfx card, but nothing fancy. Just feel it would be useful as i do game a little bit.

I've looked into updating my current comp, but there doesn't appear to be much that can be done, except what looks like a very expensive memory double (but still to only 1gb)

I currently use an external harddrive to store my photos and music, so i'm not too concerned about that. I prefer having them seperately and will buy another when that one comes near full (which it is not anywhere near yet...)
 
Hi Charlie,

I got a pretty good deal at the Dell Outlet

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/default.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dfo

I got a Dell Dimension, running Vista Home Premium, 2gig ram, two 300gig hard drives. 256 graphics, and dual processor all for 500quid or there abouts.

Have a look, youd be suprised what you can pick up.

Do note, that you may have to buy a display etc for it, but mine came with speakers, mouse and keyboard.
 
if you're in that price range dell are hard to beat, search for D025015 on the dell homepage (£430 3GB RAM, 500GB HD (2x250GB), 256mb card, intel duo e6550) . There are more deals on something like rpoints. I've found though, you can get further discounts if you call the sales line.
 
Get a MacBook Core2 Duo, stuff it with RAM, no graphics card required*, and also run Windows XP and all your Windows software on it. Side-by-side and simultaneously if you want.

*It comes with an Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor with 144MB of DDR2 SDRAM
 
I have spec'ing a PC for myself recently, and best prices on new, smashing Dell and everyone else was from computerplanet.co.uk, where you build you own spec from scratch, or start with one of their packages. You can specify XP instead of vista, etc, etc... I would suggest a s/h monitor if you want a good one at a reasonable price though.
 
I've recently bought a laptop from a company called PCSpecialist.

I went with this company as they allowed me to configure the laptop, and they were competitively priced. One of the things I wanted was XP, and that was thankfully one of the options. :)

Apart from waiting for the laptop to be built (ordered on 11th Jan, built on the 29th, and delivered on 30th), and an amazingly oversized delivery box, :eek: everything was fine straight out of the box. :) (y) Seems the big box worked. ;)

They also do desktop PCs, either pre-built or machines you can configure yourself. A bit of knowledge is required to choose the components for a custom PC I think, and seeing as this may be the route you may have to go to get a machine with XP as the OS, some research would be in order to get the 'perfect' system. ;)
 
specialman said:
Charlie C, get yourself a used iMac or eMac. You'll get one for that money.

This is over your budget but it is from an official re-seller:
http://www.cancomuk.com/products/se...ComboDrive/56k inc OS X 10.4 Tiger [Refurb]

Otherwise, look on ebay - you'll get some awesome deals on Apples.

www.2ndchancepc.co.uk is also good for sued macs, as is www.macagain.com
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i've got all my software for windows atm, and dont wanna have to spend loads of money getting apple alternatives...

plus i'd like to use it for gaming occasionally and there aint many games on macs.

thanks for you help though
 
Mike_J_Smith said:
These computers from overclockers.co.uk seem good value

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/syscon_class.php?groupid=43&catid=1053

I've used them for quite a lot of computer stuff before and they seem a good company. You can customise these as required.

My friend had a Dell and found it good value, but had difficulty upgrading due to some of the stuff they use.

Of course on that website you can spend several thousand pounds!
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that range of PCs from overclockers are based on the Asus Vintage, that's a proprietary single manufacturer's pre assembled bare bones system, ie. Asus supply a ready built package of case, power supply and motherboard, possibly a few other bits too, to which Overclockers are adding processor and memory & drives. I think its a proprietary smallish form factor and may not fully comply with the ATX or micro-ATX form factor standards. It could run into the same problems with serviceability and upgradeability as DELL machines.
 
Wookie said:
that range of PCs from overclockers are based on the Asus Vintage, that's a proprietary single manufacturer's pre assembled bare bones system, ie. Asus supply a ready built package of case, power supply and motherboard, possibly a few other bits too, to which Overclockers are adding processor and memory & drives. I think its a proprietary smallish form factor and may not fully comply with the ATX or micro-ATX form factor standards. It could run into the same problems with serviceability and upgradeability as DELL machines.
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Didn't see that, good point.

Dell outlet store then!
 
thanx for the help guys, loads of places i didn't even know about. I'll have a good look.

I hadn't thought of OC's...but they'd be a good idea possibly.

thanks again
 
Got my new one from www.komplett.co.uk over xmas. Went for a intel gamer model and just changed some of the base spec. Ended up with quad core, 4gb, 320gb hdd, sata dvd, 8400 graphics, wrapped up in a coolermaster case for just under £600 :D All assembled and tested before dispatch which took about a week.

Did a lot of looking around and this was the best deal I could find, about £200 cheaper then novatech at the time :D:D

Obviously a bit more then you wanted to spend but shop around and you can get some great deals. Dell as mentioned are doing some great deals right now with 19" flat panels included for less then £400! :clap: That's got to be hard to beat :D
 
is it easy to upgrade ram yourself?

for example i've found some great deals of comps with 2gb ram, and nice spec. But i'd love to have about 4gb ram. Could i just buy more later and add it myself?
 
Charlie C said:
is it easy to upgrade ram yourself?

for example i've found some great deals of comps with 2gb ram, and nice spec. But i'd love to have about 4gb ram. Could i just buy more later and add it myself?
Click to expand...

Yes, it is easy but it will depend on what you buy. Most new computers will need DDR2 RAM.

If you get a computer with 2GB it will quite likely have 2 x 1gb sticks in it. To upgrade to 4gb you'll either need to replace them with 2 x 2gb or add another 2 x 1gb.

If your adding RAM, then you'll need 4 slots (2 for the existing + 2 for the new). It would be worth checking when you buy that the computer has this. Also you should buy the same speed RAM if you're adding to it.

RAM is dirt cheap at the moment, but from what I have heard (but have no experience of) 4gb is over kill really.
 
overkill sounds good to me, especailly if it doesn't cost much.

Atm i hardly have any ram, only 512 mb, so having loads would be a much happier option for me.

thanx for the help
 
did you get something or eye on something

i'm the same, but will hang on and wait as busy with other stuff.

i've a few year old sony laptop, great for surfing the web, but for image handling it's rubbish.

i want to learn photoshop more, and think i'll pick up a used imac in the future. i know nothing about imac's, but i saw an emac, but it's a big screen. so then i saw imac g4 and g5. will have to see how the budget goes and go hunting
 
just adding a little to this

I just built a system for somebody (last week)

it was an amd 4200 dual core 64bit cpu
only 1 gig of memmory,
dvd writer
new case etc.

she already had a decent hard drive so we kept that, everything else was new
and all i charged her was £180

it did have an onboard graphics card , BUT the on board graphics card was an nvidia 6 series which was fine, even for all but the latest games, and photoshop was fine with it.

she already had a copy of windows.

so you coudl very easily build a very good pc for the budget you mentioned in your post, in fact that kind of budget would be an overkill for the usage you mentioned if that budget is just the base unit (eg no added montitor to it)


160 (the components came to 160 and i charged 20 for building it) for the system i mentioned + 45 for a 250 gig hard drive for 45
22" monitor (from an ebay seller - i have seen on of the monitor they are very godo value for money) for 130 (inc delivery)
keyboard / mouse for a £10 and there you have a good system on a big photoshop friendly monitor for less than £350

gah i sound like a salesman
 
Charlie C said:
ok i currently only have 512 mb of memory which means CS3 is pretty slow whilst doing things. It would also be nice to have duel core as i'm hoping that will make doing two tasks much easier and quicker (e.g. converting a large file to jpeg whilst adjusting another, atm impossible on my comp).

I'm looking at £300-£400 really.
I'd like a gfx card, but nothing fancy. Just feel it would be useful as i do game a little bit.

I've looked into updating my current comp, but there doesn't appear to be much that can be done, except what looks like a very expensive memory double (but still to only 1gb)

I currently use an external harddrive to store my photos and music, so i'm not too concerned about that. I prefer having them seperately and will buy another when that one comes near full (which it is not anywhere near yet...)
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I was looking at upgrading one of my machines recently that I run linux on. The memory was a woeful 512Mb and I wanted 2Gb. The machine was running DDR ram and at the moment this is AROUND £40 per Gb. I looked at DDR2 and can get this at £9 per gb saving £62. For £62 I could buy a cheap motherboard and processor to go with the DDR and end up with a machine that was quicker! This is the thing with upgrading older machines, it is often cheaper to start again, especially if you know what you are doing.

If the case, psu, DVD writer and hard drive are ok then you could buy an integrated motherboard for about £30 (you can spend a lot more!), a processor can be bought for around £55 and 2 x 1Gb DDR2 for around £20. Basically this will be a new computer.

SCAN (www.scan.co.uk): cpu (brisbane core 4800+ 2.5GHz dual core) pn LN19291 @54.86 inc fan as it is retail version; ram (generic 1Gb modules 800MHz) @ 2 x 11.74 and motherboard (Gigabyte GA M61SME with on board Video, network etc) pn LN18291 @32.37

You will get everything cheaper if you wait for them to come up on todays special deals or shop around but these were in stock and available now. Total price £112 plus p&p or add another £18 for a new DVD writer and you have basically a new computer capable of anything you care to throw at it other than maybe the latest games (you would want to spend more on the motherboard and buy a seperate graphics card if you want to shoot aliens). In that case change the motherboard (cost approx £80) and add a decent graphics card at maybe another £140, giving a total of £300 ish

Cost of upgrading current machine to 2Gb = £60 (based on it probably running DDR ram which seems to have dropped back to £30 a gig today from £40 last week).

For the extra £60 its well worth it. :)

WOOPS - Just realised you are running a laptop, so add £30 for a decent case and psu plus the DVD writer I mentioned earlier and its still £160 ish

Just opened my email and www.aria.co.uk have 1Gb DDR2 at 10.28 inc, a decent enough case at £12.87, a samsung 20X DVD writer at £14.04, an XFX 8800GT graphics card at £164.44, a foxcomm 945G7MA-8KS2H motherboard at £23.21 and a celeron D336 2.8GHz cpu at @21.09 - That would make a decent enough system - Or replace the motherboard and cpu with something like I mentioned above and you would have a decent quick gaming setup and if you need a monitor both the above companies can do 17" LCDs for under £90 and 19" for under £120.... just a though.
 
Hi.

Komplett is probably not the cheapest place around, and I'm fully aware that you could shop around for individual components and get them cheaper. But just for the purpose of showing you, here is a brand new pc with everything you would need for £448. Now bare in mind, there are a few things that you could tone down, such as the graphics card, memory and monitor. But overall, its not that far over budget.

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/shoplis...61520&su=63862D85-AB2D-4191-839A-4730FCF0D0C7

That pc would be more than capable of playing most games bar the really new ones at high settings. It would also deal with photoshop very well as well.

I'm not saying go for that one specifically, but it gives you an idea that a new and good pc can be had :)

Also the comment about second hand monitors is a good one. I suggest going down this path, and straight away you save yourself a lot of cash. :) hth
 
Woodsy said:
Hi.

Komplett is probably not the cheapest place around, and I'm fully aware that you could shop around for individual components and get them cheaper. But just for the purpose of showing you, here is a brand new pc with everything you would need for £448. Now bare in mind, there are a few things that you could tone down, such as the graphics card, memory and monitor. But overall, its not that far over budget.

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/shoplis...61520&su=63862D85-AB2D-4191-839A-4730FCF0D0C7

That pc would be more than capable of playing most games bar the really new ones at high settings. It would also deal with photoshop very well as well.

I'm not saying go for that one specifically, but it gives you an idea that a new and good pc can be had :)

Also the comment about second hand monitors is a good one. I suggest going down this path, and straight away you save yourself a lot of cash. :) hth
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I would tend to agree that buying something like that is a good option if you are not up to building one or don't live near someone who can. The spec of that machine is pretty good, the graphics card is not as good as the one I quoted above from Aria BUT the processor is better and overall it would be a better computer for photography and graphics work due to that. Photography and graphics (unless high end 3D video) rarely touch the graphics card. That computer does include an OS too which mine did not, although you can buy XP pro OEM for about £60.

I would also look at DELL (no i'm not mad). Dell often have some real bargains on their site. If you buy a Dell and it arrives faulty they send you a new one and collect the old one. They then fix it and sell it as B grade! Often the only problem was a loose graphics card or a broken hard drive but once these a fixed they are literally as good as new with the same full warranty. A friend of mine just picked up a bargain from them after we calculated that I couldn't build it for the amount they were selling it and theirs included the OS!
 
I'd highly receommend www.novatech.co.uk, they have a wide range of good value PC's. I'm now on my 3rd from there and it's good (laptop is wife's and new, my desktop is about 5 years old and oh so slow!). I'll probably be going back.
 
Toothie said:
www.ebuyer.com do some really good deals. I got a maxdata from them and i have no complaints.
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So did I - it's a really good machine. I use it all the time for Photoshop, Illustrator and CorelDraw. I have several programs running together and it's never slowed down. Another bonus is that it has built in card readers, plenty of USB's and 2 firewires.:agree:
 
wow great info guys! thanks so much. i think i may have to look into building my own some point in the future, its just by far the cheapest option from what i can see.

theres loads of good site too though if i dont think i'm up to it...oh i dont know what to do...?

thanx again for all your replies. really helpful stuff.

but if i was interested in making my own how would i go about it? are there some good guides online or something?
 
loads of info on the web, just google. But to check that the components work together before you buy, places like overclockers and ebuyer have forums that you can list your intended build to get recomendations.
 
Look for good deals here - http://www.dmxdimension.com/dell-uk/inspiron-1525-deals-vouchers-codes/ - Something with a dual core processor and 2GB RAM would be good. For a little more money you could move up to a 17" screen - http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_inspiron_1720.html.

Personally, I would not shy away from Vista. I'm running Vista on two PCs (a Dell and a Shuttle) and three laptops (a Dell and two Philips) at home and don't have problems with any of them. Three of them came with Vista installed and I personally installed Vista on the other two. If you have some bespoke software or old peripherals (maybe a printer) that do not run under Vista then I guess you may have a problem. But if a machine is supplied with Vista (Vista has been out for over a year now) then really it should work just great.

If you can buy from Dell via Quidco you should knock another few % off the purchase price.

EDIT : Almost forgot, I posted some videos of my one year old (in January) Dell laptop running Vista, under stress, on YouTube. Have a look here - http://uk.youtube.com/user/dodd9999. No problems at all.
 
tdodd said:
Look for good deals here - http://www.dmxdimension.com/dell-uk/inspiron-1525-deals-vouchers-codes/ - Something with a dual core processor and 2GB RAM would be good. For a little more money you could move up to a 17" screen - http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_inspiron_1720.html.

Personally, I would not shy away from Vista. I'm running Vista on two PCs (a Dell and a Shuttle) and three laptops (a Dell and two Philips) at home and don't have problems with any of them. Three of them came with Vista installed and I personally installed Vista on the other two. If you have some bespoke software or old peripherals (maybe a printer) that do not run under Vista then I guess you may have a problem. But if a machine is supplied with Vista (Vista has been out for over a year now) then really it should work just great.

If you can buy from Dell via Quidco you should knock another few % off the purchase price.

EDIT : Almost forgot, I posted some videos of my one year old (in January) Dell laptop running Vista, under stress, on YouTube. Have a look here - http://uk.youtube.com/user/dodd9999. No problems at all.
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i heard there are still driver problems with graphics cards,printer cards, and the like?

nice tests btw. How much ram is on that test machine?
 
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