OK, here's the deal, I've been out of the PC side of things for a little while, last PC I built was for mum and dad last year (1.4hz Athlon, Geforce4, silly ammount of RAM). So, what is a decent spec of PC at this moment in time? we're looking at internet access obviously and gaming too.

The real problem is that I've got all the accessories like keyboard, mouse, printer scanner, speakers, monitors. So all I really need is the box itself, so the problem comes from where to get a box?

I could build it myself, but I don't want to, got lazy in my old age. So, where would be a good place to get just the box, to the spec or near spec I'd want (and advice on the spec needed)

Anywhere online do this? Scan? Overclockers.uk?

heyyyllllpppp

hello there....

you really need to give more info about what you want to achieve...

if you want to play the next gen of games (doom3 & hl) then the spec is gonna differ greatly from a pc used for playing old stuff...

for new games the graphics card is gonna be the most important bit.. but is still a bit unsure as to whether ati is gonna dominate nvidia in six months time... most people are hedging on ati, but i'm not so sure...

so your gonna need a fast graphics card... best are radeon9800 series or nvidia5900(5950)... lots of cash....

ram 512MB of the quickest and best you can afford...DDR400 minimum

CPU... P4 or athlonXP(much cheaper than P4 in the mid-top range) .... unless you've got some serious cash and wanna go the 64 bit amd route....

Motherboard, not sure on the P4 front, but one of the nforce2 400 boards for the XP....

Harddisk - as big as you can afford, are very cheap these days...

Budget: CPU £70+, Graphics £150-200+, Motherboard £85, RAM £100+, HD £50+

Then any other bits you may need...

If you buy a complete system, mesh are good and so are dell outlet (but the dell wont let you upgrade some bits in the future)

Dom

Dom - Thanks buddy. Good too see you still lurking on here :D

I'm doing a little looking as to what I really want to do on it. You're right about the GFX card, for Doom 3 it's going to have to be kick ass, but I could get a mid-range card now and update to a top end one in the future.

Will check out mesh and dell outlet. Cheers.

Say Hi to Kim and Ben for me.

i would think your budget is gonna differ a little there, more like 200+ for the latest 800mhz fsb p4. Also for your ram you wont get much ddr 400 of decent spec for 100pounds.

Personally i still prefer rd ram, but boards are few and far between, however you can get them, and if you look around you can get pc800 2 x 256 rd rims for about 140-150pounds. Not saying that dual channel ddr is not taking off, but just personal preference, dont really wanna get into teh ddr vs. rd debate.

As for graphics cards, personally i reckon the 9800 radeon is good yes, but on the nvidia, i still like the ti cards with ddr ram, dont particularly like the fx range just yet, again just personal preference.

I guess it comes down to what you want it for, personally i always stick with intel, but i know many gamers like the amds. If you give more an exact idea what you want can give some more recomendations

:)

oh sorry, forgot to mention you might find stak computers a good resource, let me know if you cant find it, i think i have their site somewhere, great prices

been thinking the same thing to, no idea whats out there as ive only a 350 boohoo (when did ATi start getting better than Nvidia?:eek:)

when doing video conversion/rendering, whats more important, the cpu or the videocard or do you really need both to be very good? need to cut down the days to minutes :rolleyes: budget is the key word...