Where shuld I buy my new PC from? [Archive] - SV650.org

Sir Trev

22-10-09, 12:28 PM

My elderly lappie had a blue-screen-of-death moment a few weeks ago. The Thinkpad restore function thingie eventually gave me the original version of XP back again and has now finally uploaded all the SPs and other updates that have been released on Live Update since. It runs like a dog though and as the munchkin is about to start her CGSE work we're going to splash out on a new one.

But where to buy it?

Recommendations please folks.

the_lone_wolf

22-10-09, 12:35 PM

Do you not have a friend who knows PCs?

I personally enjoy the task of building one from scratch, often do custom ones for folks who "want a new computer for £XX.XX" but have no idea who to buy from, you can then concentrate on the bits people need and not so much on the bits they don't

Failing that a small back street shop will probably talk you through what you want and build it to your spec, even if you have to wait a couple of weeks for it

Personally, if I were going to buy an off the shelf I wouldn't discount Dell, I bought my laptop from them because I can't build it myself and it's been solid and reliable in a well put together chassis, all for a good price during their summer sale

hindle8907

22-10-09, 01:22 PM

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ have some good deals on at the moment.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-200-OK&groupid=43&catid=1078&subcat= not a bad spec for a buget price PC if you are just using for normal day to day browsing and office documents. .

Depends how much you want to spend .

Holdup

22-10-09, 01:25 PM

Ar you after another laptop though? or a desktop?

Quiff Wichard

22-10-09, 01:48 PM

overclockers are in stoke where I used to live.. they have a good rep.

hindle8907

22-10-09, 02:05 PM

overclockers are in stoke where I used to live.. they have a good rep.

yeah i have had a Pc from them and i buy quite alot of parts from them too.

wyrdness

22-10-09, 02:07 PM

Apple ;-)

the_lone_wolf

22-10-09, 02:14 PM

Apple ;-)

He said computer, not jewellery;)

Now you've gone and dropped the "A" bomb in a thread Soulkiss is subscribed to...

**takes cover**

hindle8907

22-10-09, 02:17 PM

He said computer, not jewellery;)

Now you've gone and dropped the "A" bomb in a thread Soulkiss is subscribed to...

**takes cover**
lol

Viney

22-10-09, 02:25 PM

Mesh. Several friends have bought form there and are happy bunnies. I had mine built. Great but then you fall out with your friend and have no come back if it goes wrong.

tigersaw

22-10-09, 03:18 PM

Heard a rumour pc world are/will be selling vista stock off cheap

zsv650

22-10-09, 05:01 PM

i built my computer i know exactly what's in it and it has no cheap **** that other's get away with flogging as people don't know better.

7755matt

22-10-09, 05:10 PM

Id have a look through Ebuyer.com either at pre-built, or get the parts and build your own, its dead easy!

Overclockers is ok, they do have a reputation, and thats for appalling customer service, I only ever go there if Im desperate and nowhere else has the stuff

Warthog

22-10-09, 05:12 PM

Overclockers or Novatech I'd suggest.

Sir Trev

23-10-09, 12:20 PM

Heard a rumour pc world are/will be selling vista stock off cheap

Went to PC World last night for a lookie - yes they are selling off some Vista kit but the prices were not that good to be honest, and most of them had rubbish spec and no boxes. Obviously ex-display stuff.

Time to come clean. I was after recommendations so I could compare our employee shop deals, and after looking at the suggestions perhaps we're not being ripped off after all. A Pavilion p6210 (1TB, 4GB) with 21.5 HD monitor is now on it's way to me.

Thanks for the suggestions.

IrishRob

23-10-09, 03:48 PM

Probably irrelevant now but....

A desktop I would normally build myself, but if I was being lazy I would probably buy if from Mesh.

For a laptop I would probably go to a shop (Currys, PC World or John Lewis) as I want to inspect the screen (viewing angles) and the build quality, feel of the keyboard etc.

Demonz

23-10-09, 07:36 PM

I just brought some more for the office from here: morecomputers.com

Cheapest I could find online for the particular model I was looking at.

Dave20046

23-10-09, 07:38 PM

me :)

maviczap

23-10-09, 07:43 PM

I've bought from Aria & Ebuyer before. Aria are good value & I like Ebuyer too

http://www.aria.co.uk/

Bought a 'Barebones' system and just added the drives & processor myself. Dead easy, I've done it twice now. Although its about time I built a new system, but if it aint broke why fix it

Swin

23-10-09, 07:49 PM

Overclockers or Novatech I'd suggest.

+1 to Novatech, the PC before this one was ordered from them, very good service

DarrenSV650S

23-10-09, 08:00 PM

How cheap do you think I could build a decent gaming pc? Already got a mouse, so....

ThEGr33k

23-10-09, 08:17 PM

Jayneflakes

23-10-09, 09:25 PM

Carol says Apple too, but to be honest, I think that the Office suit could be better. I have recently had issues with MS Publisher Documents in Non Microsoft applications and a lot of schools use Publisher these days.

Swin

24-10-09, 08:22 PM

I don't use publisher myself, but for everything else on our 4 machines at home we use Openoffice, saves me buying MS Office and so far I haven't found anything that MS Office does that it can't do.

kwak zzr

24-10-09, 08:28 PM

ha a big fat "0" for pc world lol

DarrenSV650S

24-10-09, 08:29 PM

Where in the world?

Talya

24-10-09, 08:36 PM

Apple :D If your daughter is at school you can get a discount here: http://store.apple.com/uk-edu

lukemillar

24-10-09, 11:42 PM

Funnily enough, I'd go with Apple as well :)

However, the one time in my life I bought a PC, I got it from here:

http://www.europc.co.uk/

It was a brand new refurb and saved around a third off the price that buying new from Dell would have been.

ThEGr33k

25-10-09, 09:36 PM

What is the obsession with the apples? I suppose if you dont want to play games it might make sense... But tbh Windows has so many programs I probably would miss (other than the games) that it would never work out. :rolleyes:

How cheap do you think I could build a decent gaming pc? Already got a mouse, so....

I reckon just the tower £400 will get you something pretty decent! :)

zsv650

25-10-09, 09:41 PM

and don't go cheap on your psu or you'll pay for it in the long run.

madnlooney

25-10-09, 09:43 PM

if building yourself id say computer fairs, novatech, scan, overclocker all do good prices on things.
If pre build sometimes Aldi have the medion pcs for good prices i think and include 3 years warrenty.
here (http://www.medion.com/ms/aldi/md8335/uk)
here 2 (http://www.medion.com/ms/aldi/md8328/uk)

but it also depends what price you are thinking of paying

7755matt

25-10-09, 10:14 PM

If you want to build a PC I have a fair few spares kicking around. Couple of tower cases, dual core cpu, ram , hdd psu, just no mobo or gpu.

May even have some watercooling bits :D

DarrenSV650S

25-10-09, 10:23 PM

I think it's mental you can get a great spec pc for £400-£500. Couple of years ago you spent a grand and got a piece of crap pc

jamesterror

25-10-09, 10:29 PM

Mr Dell has never let me or the 3 PC's + 1 laptop in my house, had a fault with monitor at 6pm in the evening, was replaced at 8am prompt the next day.

ThEGr33k

26-10-09, 12:48 AM

Mr Dell has never let me or the 3 PC's + 1 laptop in my house, had a fault with monitor at 6pm in the evening, was replaced at 8am prompt the next day.

That is a nice service, no doubt about it. But you do pay for that service. To get the same £400 tower your looking at close to £1000 for the dell version!!! :confused:

wyrdness

26-10-09, 08:57 AM

I used to build my own PCs, until I worked out that Macs are actually cheaper in the long run.

barwel1992

26-10-09, 09:27 AM

overclockers are in stoke where I used to live.. they have a good rep.

overclockers rep sux these days !! im on a forum called guru3d (computer modding) and one guy had a whole £2000 order go missing, money was taken no goods recived, lets just say they had no chance when it went to court as it was in there finance records but no item codes to go with the order.

lol use www.scan.co.uk (http://www.scan.co.uk) they are one of the best companys with great tech support and they dot just sell pc parts.

PS build one ure self

7755matt

26-10-09, 09:31 AM

Yes, they have a reasonable stock list, but the prices are too high and customer service seriously sucks. If you have a problem they try to fob you off with going back to the manufacturer. They try anything they can to not have to deal with you once you've paid

punyXpress

26-10-09, 12:38 PM

Sir Trev

26-10-09, 12:46 PM

Apple :D If your daughter is at school you can get a discount here: http://store.apple.com/uk-edu

Theres no point in buying an Apple when the only thing they use in schools (around here anyway) is PCs.

I should have mentioned that my tower unit (AMD Athlon II X4 620, 1TB, 4GB) is £427 with free delivery. For that price most other places would only give you half the disk space and less RAM.

punyXpress

26-10-09, 04:01 PM

So where DID you buy it ?

ThEGr33k

26-10-09, 05:17 PM

Theres no point in buying an Apple when the only thing they use in schools (around here anyway) is PCs.

I should have mentioned that my tower unit (AMD Athlon II X4 620, 1TB, 4GB) is £427 with free delivery. For that price most other places would only give you half the disk space and less RAM.

Sounds pretty good. Only thing I find with pre builds is they skimp too readily on the Graphics card. Shouldnt matter toooo much if you arnt planning on playing games though to be fair :)

zsv650

26-10-09, 05:19 PM

and the ram is usually slow speed and a rubbish make so might fail.

ThEGr33k

26-10-09, 05:25 PM

and the ram is usually slow speed and a rubbish make so might fail.

Ah, to be honest the RAM speed seems to make pretty small difference. I went from 667mhx to 1066mhz and the improvement was pretty small... The only real gains are with the i7 (and maybe i5/i3, im not sure about those, not read up on them...) when they get integrated memory controllers and man they FLY! Like triple the bandwidth of old ones! Infact then memory throughput from the RAM is nearly as quick as Cache, though no doubt still loses out on latency, which is to be expected with the much greater separation...

But I digress.

I guess make sure you keep the receipt! :)

zsv650

26-10-09, 05:25 PM

ram speed make's a big difference trust me.

ThEGr33k

26-10-09, 05:57 PM

Hmmm. I didnt get much from the benchmarks... Oh well.

Out of interest what BW does your ram get? Ill check mine in Sandra...

Mine is: 5.63GB/s BW and 77.6ns latency. Not as good as the newer ones :( I got a Q6600, X38 mobo, 3GB PC8500 Crucial Dominator RAM. Oh well, still fast enough for me atm. :)

I think the best upgrade for me now will be a SSD. They seem to boost speeds like crazy. I get a read transfer of 87MB/s out of my primary HDD, if I can get close or over 200MB/s out of a SSD and virtually no latency then oh yea :D

7755matt

26-10-09, 07:04 PM

SSDs are truly awesome. I had 2 set in RAID0 and they flew, but were just too expensive to warrant me keeping them.

I miss the speed now though

zsv650

26-10-09, 07:16 PM

they are amazing but very expensive.

ThEGr33k

26-10-09, 08:10 PM

SSDs are truly awesome. I had 2 set in RAID0 and they flew, but were just too expensive to warrant me keeping them.

I miss the speed now though

Aye... ~£250 for 128GB is a little steep. But then tbh if you run OS and Games off of that and use HDD as storage then I guess you'd be ok. I guess I might even be able to get away with 64GB. Ill see. :rolleyes:

wyrdness

28-10-09, 07:20 PM

Theres no point in buying an Apple when the only thing they use in schools (around here anyway) is PCs.

I don't buy that argument at all. It could actually be advantageous to your kid to be able to use both a PC and a Mac, rather than just know how to use once kind of computer. Bright kids will probably want to install Linux on it anyway ;-)

If you can get a Mac on educational discount, then go for it. I've got a friend who bought a Mac with the educational discount and sold it three years later at a profit. I've just sold a Mac that only depreciated £60 in three years. I bought an iMac earlier this year and they're selling now on Ebay for £100 more than I paid Apple for it. In contrast, my home built PC's were only worth scrap value after three years. Macs hold their value really well, unlike PCs which depreciate like a 1980's Lada.

Macs are much nicer to use too. I've spent the day working from home with my brand new company dual-core PC laptop. It's such a relief to pick up my brand new dual-core Macbook after a day of swearing at Windows.

Talya

28-10-09, 07:23 PM

I used to build my own PCs, until I worked out that Macs are actually cheaper in the long run.Yeah my iMac is 2 years old now and runs as quickly as the day i bought it.

You'll never change a windows fanboy and you'll never change a Mac fanboy but if you have a preference for neither definitely give both a good try in a shop before you decide

boot

28-10-09, 08:41 PM

PC's are easy to build, agree with comments about some manufacturers using poor quality parts.

I have a Notebook PC and Mac, but every now and again build PCs for friends and family. I'd say that £ for £, a PC works out cheaper, but a dual boot Mac with Windows 7 and large hard drive is good for versatility.

Personally, if you've the readies, buy yourself a shiny mac, and visit crucial to upgrade the memory in the old dog, and donate the machine to daughter for her room.

If you know someone travelling abroad, they can purchase a Mac from Dixons, Currys, whatever, in the duty free for you, and have it delivered to your home, saving you some quids. Everyone's a winner.

My experiences of Apple aftercare is that they are bunch of useless wayne's that really could do with having English as their first language.

Oh, and I recently upgraded the hard drive in my iMac to 1Tb and found a spare wire (yes really) kicking about in it. Why they can't stick bigger drives in, I'll never know.

barwel1992

28-10-09, 09:21 PM

you just need to be careful with mac's when gaming as a few of them have blown up in the past(year or so) and i do mean blown up in a puf of smoke and flames

http://images.leelevel1.com/IMG_0002.jpg

also when you want to upgrade a cpu or somthing they can be verry temprimental with what you put in them.

Talya

28-10-09, 09:21 PM

Wow that is well impressive!! lol

barwel1992

28-10-09, 09:28 PM

^^ it is, my colage has had a few gone this year (new about 7months old), and been on the IT tech corse we get to play with the burnt ones lol, i will try and get some pics of them, and the ones that blew were only used by the music students.

i would just keep a wach on them with a temp monitoring program

or you could just get a pc like mine had have done with it :D (65cm tall, with a load of high power fans huge cpu cooler, hdd cooler,custom modded case)

http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo16/barwell1992/P1030719.jpg

http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo16/barwell1992/P1030726.jpg

ThEGr33k

28-10-09, 11:52 PM

Indeed big ar$e cases and CPU HS are the way forward!!! :D

Goin to make this into a geek thread? :p

http://forums.sv650.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=5520&d=1256774179

Bit of a poor quality picture I know but is the phone. The Heat Sink will keep my Q6600 at about 38*C idle with the 2 case fans at rear on low, on high (it makes a bit too much noise tbh) as low as 30*C (core). heh. Happy days I say.

barwel1992

29-10-09, 12:48 AM

^^ yup geek thread :P

im on e8400 @ 4.2ghz (per core) idle about 24c load about 55c per core gpus get a bit hot but only on 45% fan and get to 70c

my pc is nearly silent thogh so its all good lol

ThEGr33k

29-10-09, 12:22 PM

^^ yup geek thread :P

im on e8400 @ 4.2ghz (per core) idle about 24c load about 55c per core gpus get a bit hot but only on 45% fan and get to 70c

my pc is nearly silent thogh so its all good lol

That is nice. I got a few mates who run those, they do OC well. I had a E6600 which I had running at 3.8GHz for a couple of years, did bugger up though, eventually something didn't like the clock and I had to put it back to 2.4GHz :( Still fast enough for what I needed ha ha.

I've had this (Q6600) running at 3.6GHz but tbh I didnt get a bennefit worth the risk so atm im back at 2.4GHz with this one, though I might go back to 3 for that little bit of a kick.

Suppose ill have to have a look at one of the new i7's some time, those things are sick! Then get SSD and whatever is the top of the next gen card list (those 5870's look mental!). :rolleyes:

TheRamJam

29-10-09, 12:31 PM

Just build your own PC. Its easy done and fairly cheap. That way you get exactly what you want/need.

;)

TheRamJam

29-10-09, 12:31 PM

IrishRob

29-10-09, 12:47 PM

Looking at that case with the PSU reminds me of a conversation I had with an ex-boss. We used to supply CAD workstations that were built in the USA and the quality was dismal. Quite often they would turn up missing screws, in this case there was only one screw holding the PSU in place. My boss didn't appear bothered until I told him that it was 'one screw keeping the big, cheap heavy thing suspended above the small expensive things.'

barwel1992

29-10-09, 01:31 PM

^^ lol not good

my psu dosent need screws but i still use them just dont fancy £500+ of hardware been crushed lol

ps my case never used to look like that (giggabyt aroura 3d 570)

befor
http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo16/barwell1992/P1030623-1.jpg
after
http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo16/barwell1992/P1030699-1.jpg

if you want some advice on building a pc ure self visit hear all the info you need (www.guru3d.com (http://www.guru3d.com))

ThEGr33k

29-10-09, 02:21 PM

Ah, though you say big heavy cheap thing, both my PSU's were pretty expensive. I got a Coolerpower true power 850W in one and a 1000W version in the other ha ha. Shouldn't have to upgrade either of those for a fair while... I hope!!! heh.

barwel1992

29-10-09, 02:23 PM

^^^ lol yup mines a 750w and was £75 (i am 17 and dont have any money..) but some of my mates have 1.5kw psus with tri sli 285's with a i7 975 lolll ovver killlll

ThEGr33k

29-10-09, 05:13 PM

^^^ lol yup mines a 750w and was £75 (i am 17 and dont have any money..) but some of my mates have 1.5kw psus with tri sli 285's with a i7 975 lolll ovver killlll

Jesus, that is silly. If there is one thing I have learnt about using 2 3870's in Crossfire its that its a waste of time. The small (even if its big!) gain isnt worth the messing about or the money. Simply buy one single core one, so much easier and a 260 216+ card will play everything at decent FPS. Just overkill. :rolleyes:

But if they want to "waste" their money then fair enough I guess.

TheRamJam

29-10-09, 08:37 PM

Jesus, that is silly. If there is one thing I have learnt about using 2 3870's in Crossfire its that its a waste of time. The small (even if its big!) gain isnt worth the messing about or the money. Simply buy one single core one, so much easier and a 260 216+ card will play everything at decent FPS. Just overkill. :rolleyes:

But if they want to "waste" their money then fair enough I guess.

Just buy a GTX295 and be done with it. Both Crossfire and SLI are hardly worth the extra wonga for the little if not any benefit over a single GPU :|. Some games like Crysis perform worse in the FPS battle with dual and triple GPU setups.

ThEGr33k

29-10-09, 09:05 PM

Just buy a GTX295 and be done with it. Both Crossfire and SLI are hardly worth the extra wonga for the little if not any benefit over a single GPU :|. Some games like Crysis perform worse in the FPS battle with dual and triple GPU setups.

Exactly. And its not like in the games that do benefit they are going from unplayable to playable...