Help speccing a new pc

Originally Posted by keith_d

For a similar budget to yours I recently built myself:

Quad Core Phenom II
MSI motherboard
4Gb DDR3 (2 x 2Gb)
GTS250 Graphics card
Mirrored 1Tb hard disks
Blu-ray reader

If I was more interested in video games I'd have budgeted for a faster graphics card, and I'll probably upgrade to 8Gb sometime. But at the moment it's running Windows 7 very nicely.

+ 1 on the Phenom II family. Value for money-wise I believe they beat i5 and i7 no question.. I went for the Quad core 3.2GHz option and am very happy with the performance

[hindle8907]

Originally Posted by martianskippy

+ 1 on the Phenom II family. Value for money-wise I believe they beat i5 and i7 no question.. I went for the Quad core 3.2GHz option and am very happy with the performance

+1 i have OC'ed mine to 3.8ghz too.

Have you tried turning it off and on again? i hear that solves all computer related problems

[hindle8907]

Originally Posted by GeneticBubble

Have you tried turning it off and on again? i hear that solves all computer related problems

99.9% of the time it does ...
I work in IT aand tell people it should be the first thing you try before calling up the I.T dept

any possibility of re-using current bits and bobs to save money?

And while we are here, unless you have a Virgin cable broadband connection your screwed. My interenet capability has gone down the pan. I can't work with 2.5 mb/s connection which disappears between half 4 and half 8 after being on 20mb/s for over a year.

Invest in better internet as it will always, always pay for itself.

a big +1 to the phenom 2 range massively impressed with mine really stable oh and a tip do not go cheap on the psu they are crucial.

Originally Posted by thefallenangel

any possibility of re-using current bits and bobs to save money?

I've pretty much only have:
- 2 intelli mice
- DVDR
- a game theater 7.1 soundcard which is handy for plugging into my guitar amp
- 21" mitsubishi CRT which will have to be replaced
- a frankenstein sound system which I won't be replacing until I move out

Originally Posted by thefallenangel

any possibility of re-using current bits and bobs to save money?

And while we are here, unless you have a Virgin cable broadband connection your screwed. My interenet capability has gone down the pan. I can't work with 2.5 mb/s connection which disappears between half 4 and half 8 after being on 20mb/s for over a year.

Invest in better internet as it will always, always pay for itself.

I really have to disagree with you on this. Mine and my friends' experience with Virigin broadband has been appalling. Out of the few of my firends who were lucky enough to get Virgin to connect them majority are complaining about the really bad download and upload speeds. I myself tried to get connected to Virigin as the placed we moved in was completely refurbished and there was no telephone line. Their customer service department was less then helpful and showed general "I cannot be arsed attitude " In the end, after numerous phone calls (they did not call me back even once despite several promises) I was told that on of the other flats already has Virgin broadband, and they didn't think adding additional connections in the same building (there were 4 independent flats in total )would be "worth the expense"
We ended up paying for having BT line connected but at least that opened the way to choosing any broadband provider we wanted. We went with o2 and I could not praise them enough. My package was sold as up to 10Mb and I was consistently getting 9, 10 or sometimes even 11 Mb which I could not believe. When we moved to Kingston we took the broadband deal with us. Initially the speeds were not really consistent but once I re-wired the internal phone line in the house (don't know what muppet connected it before) I started getting the same speeds as before.

So my advice - stay well clear of Virgin broadband..

Ps. sorry for sidetracking the thread

[hindle8907]

I am with BE broad band owned by O2 ... and its amazing i am on a 24mb connection and download at around 1.7-1.9Mbps all day every day. its super fast and not been down once in 2 years i have had it. (not that i know of anyway and i use my pc every day)
there call centre is in india but they are very good at customer service .
i pay 15 pounds a month and have 2 static IP's to choose from.
I rate them 9.5/10 they would get 10/10 if they supplied a better modem/router.

Virgin are overpriced and when i was with them i didnt rate them at all.

I'm with o2 for broadband for 2 reasons one is because the wife works for them and we get a deal, secondly because you pay a set amount for whatever speed you get. The normal router is basic but any problems and it gets sorted straight away. Luckily we have the business router ( thanks to the wife and a certain member of the IT staff ).
I will be upgrading my wifes PC soon, so this thread will help, cheers guys

Ste.