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"Tell me if you think this PC is worth the dosh."

I always buy my PC's off this guy I know called Ray. He's really reliable and proffesional at buiding PC's. I gave him some specs for a new PC and he said he could do all of them except, he said that the Pentium4 chip and 3000mghz board costs around 400-500 alone.

So he suggested that I get a 2.4ghz PC as it's a lot cheaper and most of the games nowadays have a 600mghz minimum requirement speed. So he said that in roughly 5 years, the minimum requirement might just be up to about 2ghz. And we always change our PC's after about 5 years anyway.

The other specs are:

512MB
80GB
GeForce 4 Titanium 4200 128MB DDR graphics card with free games.
No modem as we have Broadband
Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Dolby Digital sound card
Microsoft Windows XP home edition
Surround sound speakers.
And obviousley all the other programs like Word, paint and Excel.

He said he could build that for £1098

Do you think it's a good deal?

One I saw in Pc world which I was interested in had all of the above except surround sound speakers and the speed was 3.6ghz. BUT, it was by a company called Advent and I'd never heard of them.

So I asked Ray and he said the problem with Advent is that they build all of their components onto the mother board so if one goes wrong, they all go wrong where as Ray builds all of his stuff separately into it. He also creates drives C, D, E, F and G each with like 15GBs on them so again if I got a virus on one drive, wouldn't have to format the whole comp.

Oh I'm waffling on, anyway, do you think it's a good deal for £1098?

Thanks.

long story short, I couldn't be bothered to read it.

Possum in a bottle wrote:
> Dude . . . I dunno what the HELL you just said, but it touched my
> heart.



If you look closely, you will notice that it was in fact written in English! Am I amazing or what?!

I think you can get what that is roghly off of Dell for 900, so, I don't know. Hmm.

Miserableman wrote:
> First of all, I congratulate you in going to a person who knows about
> PCs, rather than popping down Currys or whatever. Ray is right when he
> says his PCs are incomparably better than what you might find in PC
> World.
>
> Now, as to the PC spec you've listed, it could be a good or moderately
> bad deal depending on the exact details of what you get. First of all,
> is the software licensed? A private seller will often bundle
> unlicensed software, which can be a good thing - as long as you get
> that money off, or spent on other things. Bear in mind that Word and
> Excel aren't a part of Windows, but of Microsoft Office, which is like
> an extra £200. Find out if you are paying for this, and consider
> whether you really need it.
>
> Secondly, what about the monitor? You want either a 17" CRT or
> 15" TFT (CRT are the bulky old style, CRT are the wafer thin
> jobbies :O) as an absolute minimum, and tbh a big monitor on an
> average PC far outclasses an average monitor on a fast PC. If that
> setup comes with a 19" (or possibly even a 21", they are as
> little as £220 on letsbuyit.com) monitor then that's a bonus.
>
> Ray is right about the processor speeds as well - you will pay through
> your nose for a 3Ghz PC, and the only difference between it and a 1Ghz
> PC is that one will load Word in a blink of an eye and the other will
> do it in a fraction of a blink of an eye. 2.4Ghz is right on the edge
> of the realms of affordability (the threshold at which buying faster
> means throwing money away) - I assume he means a Pentium 4? A 2.4Ghz
> Athlon XP is spectacularly rapid, more so than you require, so if he's
> building you an 2.4Ghz Athlon system you might want to ask him to put
> together something a little cheaper.
>
> Beyond that, it entirely depends on component quality - make sure he
> isn't putting in some crapola 300W power supply and a case made of tin
> foil, you want 400W minimum in a machine like that.
>
> I build my own systems and some for other people, and I recently
> specced up a machine for a friends Dad that was roughly similar to
> that spec you listed, except it had a 2Ghz Athlon, a cheaper graphics
> card and unlicensed copies of Windows XP and Office. It came to
> roughly £800. If he's giving you all that you listed, plus a
> 19" monitor and licensed copies of Windows and Office, then
> that's a good deal.


Dude . . . I dunno what the HELL you just said, but it touched my heart.

Thats about rite but have to tag an OS on top and lots of software tho

Processor
AMD Athlon XP 2400 (2.0GHz)

Case
ATX 400W Alum Midi Tower (AMD/P4)

Motherboard
Asus A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard

RAM
512MB 333MHz DDR RAM

Hard Drive 1
Seagate 80GB Hard Drive 7,200RPM

Hard Drive 2
Not Selected

CDRom 1
CD Re-Writer 48/12/40 BURN PROOF

CDRom 2
DVD-ROM Drive 16x Speed

Floppy Drive
1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive

Zip Drive
Not Selected

Graphic Card
128MB DDR GeForce4 Ti4400 AGP

PCI Card 1
Creative SndBlaster Audigy 2 Player

PCI Card 2
Network Card - PCI 10/100

Operating System
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition


£967.35 inc VAT


£35.11

this is more worth it i think.

Some good points raised about monitors here. Unless u r on a tight budget, don't go for a traditional crt with a slightly rounded screen. Most modern good crt monitors now have flat screens. These are good, and fairly cheap upto 17inch. The newer desktop LCD's (all types of flat LCD screens), have an edge, although there is some difference between different makes. These have an edge in sharpness, but usually have a more restrictive viewing angle than a flat crt monitor. Try before you buy! Modest size LCD screens are now getting tempting price wise - if you like them.

I think you mean 2.6 ghz but the short answer is no

Ive bought a similar system about 4 months ago with a 120 gb hard drive and a ton of fire wire tv in out tv card etc for 750 for base and 130 for monitor ---> aldis crap chip set (sis) but the rest rocks

Possum in a bottle wrote:
> Update2.01 wrote:
>
> Go for an optical mouse would be another thing I would ask for at no
> extra cost.
> Good point, I forgot bout the mouse. I've got a cordless at the mo
> and my friends got one of those optical red ones but I hate the wire.
>
>
> It's got USB? U wan't that.
> I've asked for like 5 USB ports.
>
> DVD-ROM drive is a must.
> I don't want a DVD rom as I never watch them on this PC.
>
> CD-RW drive would be nice.
> It's got a CD-RW

Due to the massive sucsess of dvd movies, many people think thats all dvd is for. But dvd can do so much more. With a PC dvd-rom drive you can read the newest software which will ship on dvd-rom discs. O, and u can play movies on it as well.

cookie monster wrote:
> TFT screens rock!
>
> Ive got one here. The picture quality really is fantastic compared to
> the CRT monitors.

Not if you want to play games or edit images. Plus I'd wager my 21" CRT beats your TFT :O]]