Brun

With my pc being 6 years old and being a touch dodgy i'm considering trying my hand at building a new one.
I'll be using my existing tower, cables, cd drives and possibly sound and graphics cards to build it.
Not being an IT boy, i've made up a small list of stuff which i guess i would need. Have i missed anything? I'm guessing it can't be this easy?
All picked off Aria.co.uk

£40 Power supply (Just picked a middle of the road price)
£70 Processor (P4 3 Ghz)
£70 Mobo (Don't know the difference so picked middle of the road again)
£50 1 gig of ram
£30 40 gig HD

The only thing my pc does is surf the net, use Photoshop, and play football manager, so i'm guessing i would have a very wizzy machine for this????
Any comments, or shall i stick to what i know - which ain't much?

leonpoole

You'll also need a heat sink and fan for the processor to keep it cool

leonpoole

I'd get a bigger HD too for the extra few quid they cost

Brun

Ok - another £15 i guess for the fan.
I wanna stick with the small HD TBH. I've had my present 19.1gig HD for the las 6 years without filling it. Whenever i get within 3 gig of being full i have a massive deleting session. I really can't be doing with a pc full of crap and i guess if i had the space, i would end up with 30 gig of it given enough time
Am i to assume i've not missed anything major?

leonpoole

No, thats about it other than an opperating system, unless your using your old one

Brun

Guess i need a new operating system too - don't have a disk for my present one
Damn - this seems easy - might just go for it

Daz34

The price difference between a small and a significantly larger hard drive is pennies. Also if photoshop is your thing, maybe two hard drives so you have a separate one for your scratch disk?
Also, make sure you get SATA II compatible drives & mobo for best performance.

JGRIFF

You might want to think about sound and video cards, unless your going to rely on the onboard provision?

Brun

Scratch disk?
Photoshop is only used really for touching the odd photo and doing requests on Scoobynet
The Sata II stuff has gone clean over my head
What's all this 64 bit business i've read about?

Brun

JGRIFF

NotoriousREV

For £40 you can get a PSU with a nice new tower. What spec is your current power supply and why do you need a new one? Assuming you don't have more than a couple of CD/DVD drives (writers or just readers?) anything over 350W should be fine.

For the CPU, get the AMD Athlon 64 3800 Venice Retail (comes with fan/heatsink) for £75 (or if you want the same power as the P4 for cheaper, get the Athlon 64 3000 for around £50 but I'd personally stick with the 3800). If you can stretch to £105 you can get the AMD Athlon 64 3800 X2(1MB cache) that has a dual core and is an absolute flier of a CPU for not much money.

A socket 939 MOBO will be around £45 with built in graphics etc. I'd personally go with Asus or Asrock. You'll need a Socket 940 board if you go for the 3800 X2.

I'd also personally go for 2Gb of RAM, match it to the motherboard and don't buy anything with "value" in it's name.

Given that 80Gb HDD's are the same price as 40Gb drives, it'd be pointless in getting a smaller one.

You should build the PC with Windows Vista in mind as it's a very nice OS but needs some power to run it! I wouldn't consider building anything non-Vista compliant right now.

EDIT: As above, go for SATA II disks and MOBO

bob269

If the processor is retail it will come with heatsink and fan, if its OEM then it wont.

I recently had one built for my nephew seeing as 1) i'm too lazy to do it, and 2) it cost next to nothing for the latest spec so it really wasnt worth me doing it.

I think it was around £380 without the monitor which tbh at that price there's no saving doing it yourself.

If you do want to build your own then consider

www.overclockers.co.uk for cheapish bits but crap service or

www.scan.co.uk for cheapish bits (only used them twice but had no issues)

BTW overclockers (not sure about scan but probably do) sell a barebones system which you select the processor moby etc and stick your own drives /hd's etc in.

Andy McCord

Brun, make sure size wise youre old case will accept the new M/Board

Brun

Ok - my pc is now really fooked, so it's very possible this could be my last post for a while
Anyway - a mate (IT Manager) has recommended CCL in Bradford so i'm gonna see what i can get from there
Decided to bulid a new one from scratch only retaining my cd drives
I'll post up how i do

Brun

Just looking at the operating systems and they have OEM and retail. What's all that about?

Brun

Tried google on that and i'm not sure i get it

Shark Man

OEM is supposed to "Only sold with a new compluter". So yes go for it at its ££s cheaper and what your buying constitutes as a new PC.

Basically you get just the disc and sticker with the serial number, and no manuals or other junk.

Brun

MJW

CCL are pretty good, I've used them for quite a few of my bits and pieces.

Andy McCord

Ive used these for mail order also Brun

http://www.scan.co.uk/

Brun

Cheers for that Andy Good site.
I think, however i'm gonna put a system together using the CCL website. Once i have decided on which components i want, i'm gonna shoot across to them and talk to someone about my choice and why it's gonna do the job or not

Brun

Just realised - my pc has worked for 15 minutes without me having to hit reset

alistair

I upgraded one PC, but after paying for XP etc, it was cheaper to buy a new one. I then bought a couple from Dell Outlet on eBay which worked out cheaper & easier.

The Snug Rhino

I had one built to spec...i would have saved about £30 (on a £1k pc) by building it myself - and it would have taken 3 weeks and still not worked!

no point in self build.

lightning101

That's just not true. If you have a decent reseller to buy parts from and you already have keyboard, mouse, monitor, software etc, then self build is ideal.

I am not talking about overclockers, ebuyer or aria either .


Most people just can't be bothered to look hard enough for the right deals.

orbix

My computers a self build the only problem I had with it was I used a graphics card out of a old machine. It worked for a couple of days then stopped. It took me quite a while and a bit of expense to find the problem.
And i find that illegal copies of software more trouble than there worth if something goes wrong you can't really take your computer to a shop and say "install this for me".

lightning101

But you can buy OEM originals for £40 of XP

Shark Man

It's all down to what you want:

Biggest problem with Os and software OEM computers at the lower end of the market is when they come with software and an OS, so yes it's all legit ect.
But it's OEM install. And very often they don't give you the ruddy install discs. So all you have is a poxy restore disc....which is about as useful as a chocolate firegaurd if you want to repair a corrupted registry, as you have no reapir option or recovery console. So running the disc can lose everything in "My documents" and every piece of software and update you installed after you bought it

For bargain bin, "does the job" stuff you can't beat a Dell. But, they are under-specced, and when you start putting on the upgrades to bring it a little more current, the prices start jumping up considerably. Don't forget that aftersales support is useless, if not inconsistant at best (remove the support option - its useless and saves you even more money ).

I'm current doing a self build, the first i've done for years, as I've always had ex-business lease Hewlet packards, things were as solid as a rock, but are basic spec and not much scope for upgardes (i.e 2 ram slots, 200watt psu etc). But then, I pay £100 a shot for them (inluding screen and OEM o/s).

Compare to my current build: Intel Core 2, 2gig RAM and 160gig Sata HD, at my door for £540: Tell me how much teh cheapest Dell with same spec would cost

Brun

Well - i went ahead and did it.
Spec -

AMD Athlon 64 3700 San Diego Duel Core
Asus A8N SLi-SE (939) Mobo
1 Gig DDR400
80GB ExcleStor Sata drive
512MB XFX GeForce 7300GS
Shiney white case
Legit Copy of XP Pro
And one or two cables

All in - £392
I dare say i could have done better on price but i wanted to do the simple thing and buy all from the same place at the same time.
The build took a few days as i was squeezing it in between bird duties , but it all seemed straight forward. The only thing which had me really thinking was attaching the front USB ports to the Mobo. Before the first power up, i did get my IT mate to check it over and all was well. If anyone is considering giving it a go, i would say go right ahead. Really happy to have done it myself
Thanks for your input everyone

Brun

.......Oh yeah, it was damn scary having to swing on the Mobo clips for the processor