Hi everyone I'm after some help and advice off people regarding a new desktop PC as my old one is rather outdated now and rather loud too.

I'm mainly after a pc with a mid range spec so to speak. I want it to have a largish sized HD 1-2TB as I have a lot of films and music.

I connected my previous tower upto my 32" tv, which brings me to my next thing. I would like to be able to watch my films in Full HD so I know I need a HDMI slot to do so?

I'm happy enough to buy a tower on it's own as I already have a wireless keyboard and mouse and Logitech 5.1 Surround sound so can connect these upto it.

I sometimes play games on it aswell but nothing recent which will make a 'modern' computer work hard.

I've got a budget of around £400 so any suggestion's from people will be most welcome

Adam

I just bought a pc from palicomp. Co. UK very impressed with it. They have a good range of different machines

Sent from my MZ601 using Tapatalk 2

If you fancy a DIY job, you could check out Novatech bundles, based on Intel celeron cpu's with MB & memory. For gaming, I'd expect you'd need more memory( and you could then install Win7/64 ) . For general stuff ,the Celerons get a good write up, and that's compared to the better ones in the range,these being slower. Gaming ,possible you'd need to look at some of the faster ones, to get a faster FSB.

You should be able to get by with a DVI port and an DVI-HDMI adapter to watch in HD if it opens up your choices at all.

If your previous PSU/case are any good, it might be beneficial to just build you own. Existing HDDs, RAM, cables etc might be re-usable too if they're new enough.

The case in itself is a decent one yes, and the PSU is also okay. It's a fairly oldish comp around 2005ish so not sure what would be very useable. The DVD drive play's up so would need a new one of them too. I'd love to build my own comp, and went to do it in the past but I've no idea what I would need and what spec of stuff goes together. Can anybody give me a brief idea with links to parts to build a decent spec comp if they have the time?

Adam

If I were building on at the min, this is the stuff I would get.

Bundle (case, motherboard, processor, ram, PSU: http://www.novatech..../bb-41004f.html - £214.99 + postage

HDD for Windows: http://www.amazon.co...8032210&sr=8-10 - £93.19

HDD for Storage: http://www.aria.co.u...productId=48301 - £71.94

DVD Drive: http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/Samsung+SH-S222BB%2FBEBE+DVD+Writer+?productId=48004 - £11.70

Plus, of course, a copy of Windows.

I would also add a graphics card for about £50, http://www.aria.co.u...productId=50957 - £46.19

Giving you a grand total (without Windows) of £438.01

Edited 19 September, 201213 yr by djswivel

Novatech is an awesome place to go to and I could spend a fortune there. Their bundles are pretty good. I'm looking myself but thinking either high spec i5 or mid range i7. Must have a SSD too

I'd recommend Novatech gear as well, I've had a good ten PC's/Laptops from them and not one has missed a beat, their barebones systems are part assembled, have you ever built one before, it's really simple tbh, things only fit in the right place so you can't really go wrong and of course google is your friend !!

i got most of my newest stuff from AWD-IT, motherboard came with cpu,fan and ram all setup and overclocked, connected the ssd, dvd, gfx card and psu and good to go

Edited 19 September, 201213 yr by the mad monk

I've part built a comp before so I have a rough idea with what I'm doing. I just dont know whats decent products for the price of them and what items need to go with what to work exactly.

Ive bought a few computer related items from ebuyer in the past and had a nosey on overclockers too

I built one for about that recently. I put in an Intel i3, 8Gb ram and a 1Tb disk.

I did have to add a gfx card more recently since the onboard stuff wasn't quite good enough.

Might be worth checking the deals on UK Hot Deals they often have offers come up.

Or the Dell outlet. I got a cracking deal on a laptop from there.

I've part built a comp before so I have a rough idea with what I'm doing. I just dont know whats decent products for the price of them and what items need to go with what to work exactly.

Ive bought a few computer related items from ebuyer in the past and had a nosey on overclockers too

Have a mooch about and link us some items and we'll let you know if any good and what you do/don't need to go with it.

Nothing like self builds for nowing how your set up works, hand picked parts always better than pre built imo.

Been having a nosey again this evening at component's. I'm planning on reusing my old case, had look at it tonight and it has a 400w rating, and the case currently has 1 case fan but has the potential for another 2 I reckon which I think I will add aswell during the build.

Case fan's http://www.ebuyer.co...k-co-9050004-ww

Processor http://www.ebuyer.co...l-bx80623i52400

Motherboard http://www.ebuyer.co...z-p8h61-mx-r2-0

Memory http://www.ebuyer.co...x1600c9d3k2-8gx

Graphic's Card http://www.ebuyer.co...rd-gt620-1gd3-l

Hard Drive http://www.ebuyer.co...rive-dt01aca100

DVD drive http://www.ebuyer.co...m-sh-222bb-bebe

Will also need one of these as my old comp is on IDE drive's? http://www.ebuyer.co...cts-4pm15pfsata

Also a couple of these for the HD and DVD drive? http://www.ebuyer.co...6cm-est-sata3-0

Added all together it comes in at a fractions over £350, that seem like a decent setup?

Edited 19 September, 201213 yr by Southy

How many IDE drives have you got ? as that board doesn't have a connector by the looks of it.

The rest looks good to go, although I would highly recommend an SSD, I mean like really recommend !!

Well the old comp has an IDE HD drive and a IDE DVD drive but that's faulty so not bothered about using that hence the new one. Not majorly concerned if I don't have the old HD in the new comp as there wasn't much on it really. (previous HD failed and didn't have anything on it)

What's the advantage's to having an SSD?Would that setup be able to take an SSD without changing anything?

SSD go like the clappers, everything loads up much faster, admitely you 'll only have a small system drive so juggling games can be a problem, I run a 120GB for windows and games (about three at a time) and 2 TB HDD for storage and temp files etc. If you're running old games you should be ok as they arn't that big. If you had a SSD and HDD system you can play around with the disc set-up though to suit your needs regarding temp files etc. Of course you'll need to do a bit of learning but thats part of the fun.

Although, your IDE issue is not a major problem http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000P9XGIO/?tag=hydra0b-21&hvadid=11069495165&ref=asc_df_B000P9XGIO

http://www.ebuyer.com/289039-kingston-32gb-v100-ssd-sv100s2-32g Would that be suitable just to load Window's 7 on which I have a copy of already?How do I connect it up exactly, as you can imagine I'm not overly clued up on computer's thanks very much for your help

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200756479900?item=200756479900#ht_3531wt_1271

For what you've suggested you'll use the machine for I think an i5 is going to be overkill. Better to get an i3 and spend the rest on a better gfx card.

I've got an i3 and an ATI 6850 (~£85) and it plays everthing I've thrown at it.

It might even be worth trying the onboard graphics first. The Intel stuff is better than you might think.

Plus £22 for a fan! Just get the £2 ebuyer special 120mm, it's not noisy I've got 3 of them in my case.

http://www.ebuyer.co...ector-pfs12bk4p

SSD deals a few on at the moment..

http://www.hotukdeal...-ebuyer-1315109

SSD might be a good idea. I picked up a 60Gb for £30 the other day. You'd have to just use this as a boot drive with the operating system and put your programs and files on a bigger slower hard disk.

Edited 20 September, 201213 yr by Aspman

I understand where your coming from in regards to that, my thoughts behind the i5 was the computer is going to be slightlyfuture proof in regards that the processor is fairly modern so I can add other more upto date part's as and when I want and fund's allow. Is there much of a performance difference between the 2 of them?

http://www.cclonline.com/

All processors are monsterously powerful these days. The i3 is a dual core with hyper threading (so it can look like 4 to some software).

I think some of the i5s are the same then at some point they make the switch to a true quad core. the i7 has quad cores with hyperthreading so they can act like 8. The i5 has better onboard gfx than the i3 too.

The problem with all these cores it that unless the software is written to take advantage of them they give no advantage at all. Most software is still written to work on 1 or 2 cores so if you've 4,6 or 8 you get little benefit.

That's why I went with the i3. I was going to go the AMD route and get the 6 core processor but I don't do much video processing or CAD work so it was just wasted money.

The ATI graphics car has a programmable GPU and I can offload some of the video coding to it anyway.

You'd be best looking online for benchmarks between the processor in the tasks you'll be doing. For me there was no advantage in having an i5 and I benefitted from putting the money onto the GFX card.

I think you'd see the biggest benefit from spending on an SSD. The HD is definitely the bottleneck in my system.

Hi everyone I'm after some help and advice off people regarding a new desktop PC as my old one is rather outdated now and rather loud too.

I'm mainly after a pc with a mid range spec so to speak. I want it to have a largish sized HD 1-2TB as I have a lot of films and music.

I connected my previous tower upto my 32" tv, which brings me to my next thing. I would like to be able to watch my films in Full HD so I know I need a HDMI slot to do so?

I'm happy enough to buy a tower on it's own as I already have a wireless keyboard and mouse and Logitech 5.1 Surround sound so can connect these upto it.

I sometimes play games on it aswell but nothing recent which will make a 'modern' computer work hard.

I've got a budget of around £400 so any suggestion's from people will be most welcome

Adam

Are willing to reuse any of your existing kit? If so let me know what with spec ( like 500W PSU) and I will give you a list of kit to buy and put together within you budget if you want. I assume you will be building this yourself?

The only real thing I could see useable is the case with a 400w psu on it,thats about it the restnis fairly dated really.

Edited 21 September, 201213 yr by Southy

Intel Core i3 2120 3.3GHz Socket 1155 3MB L3 Cache Retail Boxed Processor 254978 148 in stock £90.11 £90.11 Asus P8H61 B3 Revision H61 Socket 1155 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard 261403 3 in stock £56.99 £56.99 Crucial 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333Mhz Ballistix Tactical Memory Kit CL7 (7-7-7-24)1.5V 310971 20 in stock £33.83 £33.83 Palit GeForce GTX 650 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI mHDMI VGA PCI-E Graphics Card 397639 5 in stock £101.98 £101.98 Crucial v4 128GB SATA 3Gb/2.5" SSD 386369 31 in stock £59.99 £59.99 Liteon IHES112-115 12x BD-ROM with DVD±RW DL & RAM SATA Optical Drive - OEM Black 343959 187 in stock £49.98 £49.98 Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA 3.5" SATA-III Hard Drive - 7200RPM 64MB Cache 319641 > 25 in stock £79.98 £79.98 Save as List Cart total inc vat: £472.86

It is ove the budget due to good graphics card and dual storage system where SSD drive is for OS and mission critical software and 2TB internal HDD for your films etc. this should last you for good few years Case, PSU, keyboard, monitor(s), cables you all got I assumed. You may need to buy two SATA cables for HDDs and depending on how old your PSU is power leads for them. Graphics card should have an adaptor in the box.

Only savings I can think off is cheaper graphics card and 1TB Int HDD, may get you back to £400

Hope this helps.