Building my own computer

[Daize]

I would love to but I am in France

[Mo_Robusto]

Depending on distance (i'm in Nottingham) I can certainly help out with that if you want. Failing that I can give you all the advice you need in terms of what parts you can keep from what you have (case and hard drives for backup, that sort of thing) and sort out a spec for you given a budget.

Thanks for the offer Tzusskin

But I'm all the way up in the western isles, so distance is a big problem

I dont do much on my PC, just use the net to do some browsing and some times watch movies on it that i download and like i mentioned store my photos, and some word documents. I used to be a big mouse potato but sort of lost interest in the 'net', lol

What kind of a budget do you think i will need for a new computer?

Mo

[monkey66]

I am a big fan of Dell, some real bargains to be had sometimes on desktops.

[SmokeyDave]

For pre-built machines that are very competitively priced I find www.overclockers.co.uk excellent, I've bought all my components from them for the last 10 years, only now they do their own pre mades & I'd struggle to beat the prices buying the bits separately and building it myself ..... plus you get a warranty on the build not just the parts. The quality of the builds are good with cables neatly routed etc.

I'm loathe to spend a fortune on top kit now, having sold my nearly new motorcycle some years ago to build a 'Crysis killer' machine. It still runs everything fine but I could have upgraded my machine twice during that time for the same amount of cash I spent on that one build.

[daverave999]

For pre-built machines that are very competitively priced I find www.overclockers.co.uk excellent, I've bought all my components from them for the last 10 years, only now they do their own pre mades & I'd struggle to beat the prices buying the bits separately and building it myself ..... plus you get a warranty on the build not just the parts. The quality of the builds are good with cables neatly routed etc.

I'm a fan of OcUK too, especially for the more specialist parts.

[Tzusskin]

The system that has been tagged as "the affordable all rounder" in the last hardware guide on the Bit-Tech site I mentioned earlier comes in at ?440. The specs on that are:

	Affordable All-Rounder
	Product	UK Price (inc VAT)	US Price (ex tax)
CPU	Intel Pentium G6950 2.8GHz	?70	$100
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H	?70	$95
Memory	4GB 1,333MHz DDR3	?40	$45
Graphics Card	Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 768MB	?125	$150
PSU	Antec Earthwatts 380W	?35	$40
CPU Cooler	Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro	?15	$30
Case	Antec One Hundred	?40	$60
Optical drive	SATA DVD-RW	?15	$20
Storage	500GB SATA 3Gbps	?30	$50
	Overall Price:	?440	$590

OK so the CPU is not one of the latest and greatest but for what you have listed will be perfectly fine. It will chew through most things apart from a few high-mid to high spec games. The graphics card is a monster for the price (I am running the 1GB version of the same card) and although the storage shown is 'only' 500 GB, 1TB drives are about ?50 or so at the moment so adding in another 1 or 2 of them at a later date would not be a crazy amount to spend.

The memory can also be added to and as it uses DDR3 shouldn't be too scary on price either as more and more PCs are using that now.

You would need to factor in a copy of Windows but that can be picked up for about ?120 ish now for a copy of windows 7 64bit home premium (you will need 64bit to utilise that amount of memory).

[Stevieboy]

Christ Daize...that's what I call a heat-sink!!

[Daize]

Christ Daize...that's what I call a heat-sink!!

It cools great

[Detroit_Waves]

Oops, I meant to say that the case was ?140. I was a bit tired last night.

Phew! Thank god for that haha!

Also, off topic, but whereabouts in Nottingham?

[Tzusskin]

Not sure. What I mean is I am not 100% whether I am on the edge of Broxtowe, Bilborough or Strelley. I can just about see all 3 from the house.

[Detroit_Waves]

Not sure. What I mean is I am not 100% whether I am on the edge of Broxtowe, Bilborough or Strelley. I can just about see all 3 from the house.

Haha silly question really, as I only really know Sherwood!

[Tzusskin]

Well I was there last week too. Dentist is in those shops just up from the Japanese restaurant.

Anyways, back on topic I'm assuming that the fans on that heatsink are blowing down onto the board, it's a different layout to the ones that seem to be doing well in terms of the testing reviews and stuff, most of them are blowing towards the back of the case and the rear chassis fan:



Like so (and yes, that is a full sized motherboard, the case is just huge)