Boss's son looking for a desktop machine mainly for School woork and Internet use plus some AutoCad etc. He doesn't know much about the gubbins so won't be upgrading himself hence he needs a decent spec. He wants 17" TFT, fast CPU, 1Gb RAM, 160GB HDD, XP Home or Professional and DVD Re-writer plus the usual bits and pieces. His budget is around

I'm not keeping up to date with current hardware specs but Evesham Micros could possibly put that together within budget - failing that there's always Dell - not my favourite company, not usually easy to upgrade, but usually good value. AutoCAD demands a decent graphics card to get the most out of it sp I'd be wary of anything un-branded with less than 256MB.

Don't think a suitable machine could be done for

It's purely 2d autocad he's using it for though. No 3d work or rendering.

It's purely 2d autocad he's using it for though. No 3d work or rendering.

Will still probably need a Pentium 4 (rather than the cheaper school-work-suitable Celeron)...might be able to get away with 512Mb RAM though...

Rob.

Wait 1 month.

Intel launch core 2 duo at current P4 prices.

AMD will be dropping their prices to counter almost certainly and releasing new chips and the old chips will be cheaper to buy.

Also the Core 2 Duo chips use much less power so require less colling etc and might actually end up cheaper too.

You can buy boards now that will take a current P4 and future Core 2 Duo chips and AMD have just bought out a new Socket (AM2 I believe).

Failing that if you want to buy a whole system use Mesh, From experience Dells customer service is... erm how can i put this, nope I can't say it on here. Suffice to say on site next day support took on average 4-5 days, included a send back to base and goodness knows how many other problems for me.

Can't beat Dell for bog-standard cheap PCs, unfortunately.

Try one of the following:-

http://www.ballicom.co.uk

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk

You should get a good deal at one of those.

Your will not need a very powerful machine to run autocad, I'm assuming your talking about the LT version...?

Chris

At least if just 2D ACAD is required, you won't have to look to the professional ranges from ATI and nVidia. The usual GeForce and Radeons don't fare very well really, knowing this from experience as I support ACAD operators at work and had to swap out a £200 nVidia card after it started stuttering and leaving random fragments on the screen (ACAD '07)

I'll spec you out something quickly if you want? First question - are you in an Intel or AMD mood today?

As said - £600 is going to be more realistic really, especially if it includes a half-decent 17" TFT (£180 region).

Like everything, you get what you pay for...

Steve

AutoCad LT is correct. His budget is fixed at

Hmm - evidence of them cutting corners there. Integrated graphics for a start - avoid like the plague! Also a MicroATX motherboard so less flexibility for future upgrades. And I suspect the 250w power supply will struggle to provide a good quality supply.

Also unbranded monitor and they don't mention the makes of the RAM or Hard Drive. I can understand that in a pre-built system, but they've named the m/board maker? :confused:

Steve

Under normal circumstances I would build a system for him with dedicated graphics, decent 400w PSU and ATX MB with good flexibility but you how it is with sods law and all. With him being the bosses son i'd be roped into fixing everytime he screwed it up.

Ah right, fair enough can understand that - been there, done that! Just spun through a custom spec and can't get the price south of £530 inc VAT and TFT. And that's bare prices without any labour costs too.

Will send it to you if you like, if it would help? It's an Excel sheet, with links included to all the products. I just scaled down a quote I did for someone last week.

Steve

Seriously wait until mid July, you will be able to get a new system at todays prices or todays system at about a £100-200 discount.

Hmm - evidence of them cutting corners there. Integrated graphics for a start - avoid like the plague! Also a MicroATX motherboard so less flexibility for future upgrades. And I suspect the 250w power supply will struggle to provide a good quality supply.

Micro ATX is fine as you probably wouldn't use more than 3/4 PCI/e slots anyway as sound and LAN will be integrated these days. 250W depends on what that supply is like. eg is that a we can deliver 250 without a problem supply. I know of many servers that come with 325W PSUs and run 4HDD's and a Raid card too.

Integrated graphics are fine as long you realise they are not for extreem 3d. Most cards are the same speed for 2d, the difference is between instant and more instant. However don't buy a system without a PCIe x16 slot as without this you couldn't put a better card in when it is needed.

Also unbranded monitor and they don't mention the makes of the RAM or Hard Drive. I can understand that in a pre-built system, but they've named the m/board maker? :confused:

Steve

Unbranded monitor, or just brand not mentioned. If it's their own brand it is fine,and anyway there are onloy about 4 factories in the world churning out the TFT pannels used anyway.

No manufacturer will specify the brand of RAM or Hard disk, just sizes and speed.

If company X has a supply problem they don't want to have to worry about specifying a drive by X and long delays if they can instead supply a comparable or better drive from company Y instead.

Mobo, fair enough I am supprised they have named that TBH.

Don't agree on MicroATX I'm afraid, as they often only come with 2x RAM slots as well. If space saving isn't a consideration, why limit yourself unneccesarily?

Onboard graphics are not fine, they're terrible, even performing standard tasks. Do you run them yourself? You just end up creating a massive system bottleneck, as the RAM is servicing graphical requests as well as managing allocation for applications.

On the TFT issue, true, there's not that many factories making the actual panels, but you have to take into account maximum brightness & contrast levels, response time, connectivity options, colour satuation etc.

On the branding of components I know exactly what you mean, which was why I was surprised to see the board manufacturer mentioned. Evesham did specify all parts for a while, when I was buying corporate systems from them, 2000-2003, but they did run into issues keeping to that as stocks of items fell, models changed etc.

Steve

Onboard graphics are not fine, they're terrible, even performing standard tasks. Do you run them yourself?

I run integrated graphics on both my iDEQs, seems fine to me? Admittedly I don't do anything more advanced graphically than using the CorelDRAW! suite, but nonetheless it runs fine...

Rob.

I know people who do circuit board design on onboard graphics, I use an intell GMA 915 myself, they are fine. No they don't have all the 3D gaming bells and whistles, but they are fine for 2D.

Remember that todays integrated graphics are about equivalent to the previous generation of graphics cards and that some of them have dedicated RAM in the chip, albeit only about 8/16MB, but a frame buffer none the less. He isn't playing games here.

As for MicroATX, I have a workstation built on one, it has a PCIe x16, a PCIe x4 and 2x PCI devices with onboard sound and LAN. It has 2 pairs of DIMM Slots in two banks.

Seriously how many add in cards do you use today, because I can only think of a graphics card update being wanted, and not much else for a workstation bearing in mind the person is doing CAD not uber Games or music production.

Its a tough one with the