Richard Work

Hi all,

I think it is finally time to upgrade my crumbling 200MMX, windows 95 PC..... I quite fancy building my own as 1. I'm skint and 2. i'd just like to do it!

I will mainly be using it for surfing, home office stuff and I would like to do video editing too, also the odd game. I have NTL broadband so it needs an ethernet port and I can reuse my current 17" monitor.

Could anyone post up a shopping list for all the bits and pieces I would need to build a reasonable system from scratch?

Would it be possible to get something of this standard: Aria Atholon PC with the upgrades below for much less than £700 or should I just buy it ready made from them?

120 GB Hard Drive
CD writer
DVD Drive
512MB Memory
ATI 9000 64MB Graphics & 5.1 Sound
XP Professional

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Richard

jfrf

This has a few example systems and parts needed/costs

http://freespace.virgin.net/m.warner/ExampleSystems.htm

Dream Weaver

Building a PC yourself is actually more expensive and time consuming than buying one, but the beauty is you get to choose everything.

I went to CCL a few weeks back and ordered all the parts necessary for my system. It is nice to be able to specify exactly what you want, and it is actually fun building a new PC.

My spec was:

2.4ghz Pentium 4 533FSB Socket 478 processor
ASUS P4PE Motherboard, G-F-SATA-GD
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 soundcard
Videologic ZXR500 5.1 Speakers
19" Iiyama VM1451 LS902UT Monitor
80GB Western Digital HDD
128mb XFX GeForce 4 Ti4200
512Mb DDR333 (PC2700) - Samsung
Silver Nokia style case, with 350w PSU
Windows XP Home Edition Retail
New Keyboard
CD Rom 52x

Which came to £976

Then just awaiting delivery of a new 80gb external HDD for backups, and a Logitech mouse for another £200.

So for nearly £1200 i have the exact system I want.

jfrf

i built mine, so it shows that any idiot can do it
Although I guarentee that you will get issues and problems whjen building which will make you tear your hair out.
if you build yourself i reckon ure lookng at 500 quid for decent mini tower

Ray_li

trying a computer fair. dont know where you are but have a looking here for your local fair.

http://www.computermarkets.co.uk/

dont know how to make it clicky

Ray

Ray_li

Dream Weaver
Good job you're using for work. would be a shame to use it just for playing games. Bcuz i do

Ray

InvisibleMan

seems to be cheaper just buying one these day, tho you do get some cr@p bits in them

Dream Weaver

Games in the evening Ray

Just on with Sportscar GT at the moment, Nurburgring yippee

P1 Enthusiast

Gonna quickly price it for ya using some prices i have to hand;

40 = Lite on 48x CD writer 40 = Decent Case / Dunno about shuttle price for case?
40 = Decent PSU around 350W i recommend
58 = Twinmoss 512 megs DDR2700
85 = 80gig WD SE HD
93 = Epox Nforce 2 MBoard OR 110 = Same board with Geforce 4 MX inc.
25 = LiteOn DVD drive
81 = Radeon 9000 128 meg card(better to have 128 meg for little extra)
76 = Athlon Tbred 2100+
20 = Keyboard, mouse etc
*** = Monitor, as little as 100 quid for decent CRT.

Rough total = 658 (inc 100 for monitor)

Now personally i would prefer that system as its hand selected.

kamikaze

Ill take this setup for 500 quid with monitor

Case Nokia Fascia Midi Tower ATX case (300W) £22.95
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-7VA £47.95
Processor AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (Retail) £65.96
HS & Fan N/A £0.00
Memory 512Mb PC2700 DDR SDRAM £39.95
Hard Drive IBM Deskstar 180GXP 60Gb £54.51
Floppy Drive Alps 1.44Mb £4.09
CD-RW Lite-ON 48x24x48 £34.67
Cables IDE cable £1.50
Graphics Card ATI Radeon 9100 64Mb £47.24
Sound Card 6 Ch Realtek AC97 (on-board) £0.00
Keyboard Microsoft Multimedia OEM £12.95
Mouse Microsoft Optical Wheel Mouse £9.95
Monitor Iiyama Vision Master Pro 1402 17" £88.02
Total £429.74
(£504.95 inc VAT)

Richard Work

Thanks for all the info guys

Still not decided whether to build or buy though....

Kamikaze where were those components from novatech or somewhere like that?

So it looks like £401.52 (excluding monitor)is the price to beat! There's a bottle of wine to anyone that can beat that, otherwise it goes to Kamikaze

Cheers,

Richard

andrewdelvard

I bought,thought about building but I KNOW if I had my girlfriend wiould have blamed me for any future crashes etc etc.

super_si

The most annoying part is finding out why it doesnt work

Takes between 1-2hours to build with OS install.

That easy

Si

Richard Work

The girlfriend issue could be important....

carl

I've just ordered a PC from NEC as they seemed much cheaper than everyone else (Mesh, Elonex, et al) and they're a well-known name.

At the moment they're doing one that's either a Celery or a P4 1800 for £499+VAT with a 15" TFT.

I went for one a bit dearer (just over 1k including Office XP) as I need it for business use.

[Edited by carl - 3/6/2003 10:48:49 AM]