new pc help
 

my pc is getting old and slow, i need a new one.
i dont know much about pcs so if anyone can help i would be grateful.
i live in the uk and my budget is £500

thanks.

- Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, not AMD. maybe Pentium D if on clearance cheap
- 2GB of RAM, consider 4GB if using a pre-made computer and it uses Windows Vista
- 16x DVD burner, Pioneer (1st choice) or Samsung (2nd choice) preferred
- another DVD burner, or a good DVD-ROM, on the opposite IDE channel from the 1st burner, to copy discs
- two hard drives, first one can be any size *80GB, mostly likely), second one should probably be 160GB or more.
- case with fans/good airflow, not a little box with no vents that gets hot
- ATI or nVidia graphics card
- safe to assume you're not using this to capture video?

Well under $1,000 USD, which is equal to 500 quid right now (sad as that is).

thanks for the info
why 2 hard drives ?
what about the Motherboard and Sound Card ?

If you are looking to do gaming I'd say AMD, any type of editing I'd say Intel.Dual core for sure either way.
2 GB of ram,unless Vista and even then Windows will not utilize all 4 GB of ram unless you have the 64-bit edition.
16x burner, I'd say two of them since they are so cheap these days(sub $30 on a lot of good names.)
2 hard drives, no reason not to get 160-250 GB size, again you can get very good HD's for cheap.
Case with good cooling(coolermaster, antec.)
If you are going editing go with an ATI card, gaming I'd go with NVIDIA.
Sound card go with an Soundblaster Audigy card.They are around $30-50 and are excellent cards.
Motherboard I would recommend ASUS mobo's, as they are usually top-notch boards.


Here are some sites that will help you save money and yet purchase quality stuff:

www.newegg.com
www.directron.com
www.xpcgear.com

I've used all three and love www.directron.com the best.

Yes, the Samsung burners rock.
All my computers and my multi burner have Samsung's.

mobos
all much of a muchness these days
asus are probably one of the better named manufacturer
i also like gigabytes mobos
asrock are not bad for budget mobos

sound card
there is really only 1 top pc sound card manufacturer - soundblaster
go for any of the audigy range
and if you can get it second hand all the better
but i'll also say that quite a few mobos with on-board sound might do the trick
on board sound is now a far cry from the rubbish we used to have 10 years ago.

so if you are on a tight budget, buy a mobo with a 5.1 (or even 7.1) on board sound.

have to admit, £500 can buy you a ready made dell or something.
but if you go down the DIY route, maybe £500 is not enough?

these are very rough figures:
75 mobo
100 ram
100 cpu
35 hard drive
100 grap card
20 dvd burner
30 sound card

that's about £460
then there is VAT to add.

if you go for 2 hard drives, or 1 very large hard drive, it'll cost you more.

one other point to note... if you upgrade to the latest or near latest hardware, most probably you will need a new case (desktop, mini or midi tower) which is another £40 or so.

and the most important thing most people forget about is the power supply.
you'll need a 450W or 550W or higher power supply to drive all the new hardware. newer graphics cards need a lot of power nowadays, let alone cpu, ram, 2 hard drives etc.

a good power supply might cost £50 or so.

if you don't play games on the pc, then go for a mobo with on board graphics and on board sound to save you about £150 which you can put towards other parts of the pc.

hope this helps

Don't skimp on motherboard. Intel or Asus.

i found a site to build my pc, the prices look good,
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/index....&select=intel1

if you can give me a hand to build it that would be great,
there is a lot of options.
my budget is £500

One thing to remember is that where we pay $1,000 USD for a good system or decent parts to build one (here in the states), they pay £1000 for that exact same system! I swear, it's like they just change the $ to a £ !! I was over in Swindon a few months ago, building a system for my uncle - Christ, it was cheaper to buy the parts in the U.S. and ship them over.

yep. UK actually stands for sUcK or *UcK.

prices are higher here in general for 2 reasons i think.
we are a nation of non complainers.
don't really try and find bargains or demand more for our money.
plus being an island nation, where can we go?

second, we have a goods and services tax, called VAT, at 17.5%!
that can really push the price up.

futhermore, tax on petrol, i think about 40% or so of the cost of petrol, goes to the government.

these are all "hidden" taxes.

some of the people in the UK want more & better services.
but the same people don't want to pay for those services, at least not through direct taxation.
government has no choice but to either introduce all sorts of "hidden" taxes or cut back on services.

personally i think UK has to raise taxes to about 60% if they want health & education etc to be of a high standard. similar to some scandinavian countries. but cannot see that happening.

don't forget though, USA and other countries impose GST on food. so even the poorest people in those countries have to pay tax on essentials. and with a flat tax rate, those who are poorer, pay more of their income towards the same basic needs. very unfair.

and if you look at the statistics, i think the difference between USA and UK is about 5%, i.e. we in the UK give about 5% more in tax terms than USA.

so maybe not so bad as you might think.

Texas had no tax on "food stuffs". Tennessee taxes about 9.5% on average. Tennessee food is more expensive too. Double punishment. But property/home taxes are cheaper here. And like Texas, no state income tax. They get it one way or another. Lots of police where I live, so at least the money seems to be well spent!

........
Getting back to the computers....
........

Some rules:
1. No Celerons. Pentium D or Core Duo only.
2. No Vista. Use XP Home, XP MCE or XP Pro.
3. The more USB inputs, the better. Hubs are never as good as direct ports. Many devices hate sharing space on hubs (DVD burners, battery backups, film scanners, etc).
4. No Maxtor hard drives. Western Digital or Seagate only.
5. CD-ROMs and CD burners are useless. Get at least 1 DVD burner and 1 DVD-ROM. Pioneer is best choice for both. In fact, if you can't get a Pioneer DVD-ROM, get two burners (Pioneer preferred).
6. Nothing can be "VIA" branded or have VIA chips. Those are trash. Buy better video, audio and motherboards.
7. No integrated audio. Use a PCI card, even a cheap SoundBlaster. Getting those mega-channel 7.1 cards is silly. They don't do much more than the cheap cards, in terms of what we care about as video collectors
8. Only buy a TV card if it's good (Hauppauge product, these days). You may not need this card
9. Skip cheap surge "protectors". Those do nothing. Buy a cheap battery backup. Those are about $40 in the USA, for the basic APC or CyberPower.

Some suggestions:
10. Intel integrated video is okay. nVidia and ATI graphics AGP or PCI Express cards are better.
11. Do yourself a favor and buy quiet system fans/case.
12. Speakers, keyboard, monitor ... get whatever you like. Personally, I hate wireless mice and keyboard, too much lag time. I like 19" minimum size LCD (not widescreen). If widescreen, I need at least 22-24".

put simply... UK is a bit more taxed than say USA but not as heavy as some scandinavian countries (who may have a better health/education system due to higher taxes)

as for pc advise...
more or less what LS has already posted.

pcie is the way to go with graphics.
but agp will still have about 2 or 3 years of life left.
can get a agp radeon x1950 xt which is up there in performance terms, but pricey.

if you're keen, you can get a core 2 duo and a flexible mobo to overclock. i can get my 1.8GHz core 2 duo up to about 2.6 GHz. more bang for your buck.

but for this, you'll need to splash out on a massive heatsink & fan and you may not like the fan noise.

for video capturing, no need for overclocking.
for converting/tidying up video, then the faster the cpu & system, the better.

decide for yourself.

I went back and edited my last post with a lot of helpful computer info.
Maybe cut your hijack back (edit post) and add something helpful for dsmyth. :)

how easy is it to build your own pc,
are there any good guides for beginners ?

its pretty easy.

cpu, hard drive cables etc can only be inserted one way.
so quite hard to make mistakes.

the power, start, stop cables from pc case to mobo should be colour coordinated, so again straightforward.

graphic + sound cards + memory, again, can only be inserted one way.

possibly the hardest bit is to get into the BIOS and maybe setup a few parameters, like cpu speed, ram speed, first boot device. but even this is a doddle.

and if you have to fit a hefty fan over the cpu can pose a small problem.

just make sure you're static free. you can buy a kit for this.

i've been building my own pc for years.
absolutely a doddle.

for me the hardest bit is waiting for ages for windows software to install itself!

guides, couldn't point to one offhand but surely there must be one or two around. try googling for it.

The BIOS data is almost always in the motherboard box, in the manual. I learned about motherboards by simply reading the books. A few dozen pages at most.

Jumper settings on the drives is another easy thing to miss. But most computers (and most drives) now come set to auto, so it's not as likely to be an issue as it once was.

I started building computers in the mid 90s. It's easy now.

Windows XP is something that you start to install, walk away 10-15 minutes, come back and answer some questions, and then walk away for 30-60 more minutes. Come back, answer another few on-screen questions, walk away 10 minutes, and it's done.

im going to try it.

thanks for the help.

i have found most of the stuff i want , just need a motherboard and graphics card, im not sure witch ones to get,
if lord smurf or manthing can pick them out for me from amazon.co.uk that would be great.

well you have to tell us which cpu you're getting.
intel?
amd?
core 2 duo?
quad?

and do you want to play latest games or not?
like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and call of duty 4 and crysis etc?

if so, then you need mega powerful grap card
like the nvidia 8800 series
but this is over £300 or something?

also, looking ahead, go with pcie and not agp.

well you have to tell us in order for us to tell you.

actually, after getting all the other gear, how much have you got to spend on mobo & grap card?

this is what im going to order, let me know if i got the write stuff,


Intel Core 2 Duo
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-2-66GH...6261798&sr=8-1

case
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CASE-Wizard-Bl...QQcmdZViewItem

4GB of RAM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-KTA...6261880&sr=8-9

Seagate Hard Drive
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-160G...6261996&sr=8-3

SoundBlaster
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...pf_rd_i=468294


after that i will have about £200 for motherboard and graphics card

That's a huge case, you could probably have a smaller one if you wanted. But it's a good one, yes.
The other stuff looks great. It'll make a system nicer than what I'm using.

Only advice I would offer, once you get the system, Partition your Hard drive into 2 separate drives. This even applies if you have 2 drives in the machine.

Make the C: drive (your boot drive) about 20-30GB and set the rest as a second drive.

Install WinXP and all your apps on the C: drive. Do a drive image and a backup.

Store all your video on the secondary internal drives. Later on, add an external drive for file storage and backup.

I usually advise against partitions, but it can have advantages (easier to make a c: backup, for example). Just remember a lot of newer software is a pig on space. Adobe CS3 Master Collection alone gobbles up 17GB of hard drive.

smythy... you still haven't said whether you want your rig to play games or not.
this can make a big difference which graphic card to go for.

though with £200 left, you will come in at the mid range.
so you're looking at the nvidia 8600 series.
between £50 and £100.

the 8800 series will set you back between £150 and £300!

a compromise might be a ATI Radeon X1950 pro coming in at around £140.
the x1950 xt is better but will cost about £190.

I have this


http://www.directron.com/bx80552356.html

and a

a 160 gig western digital sata drive w/ cables

http://www.directron.com/wd1600aajs.html

I need funds for Christmas. I was going to upgrade. My daughter 's christmas list needs filled.
So I m selling them. They are both new.
I opened the bx on the Chip to make sure everything was there. Never installed it.

Or just order from there directly. I ve had no problems with directron.
They do international shipping too.

i dont play any games on my pc, just watching movies and some editing.

okay so you're getting 4GB of ram running at 533 MHz
also known as PC2-4200 or sometimes 4300
(4200 / 8 = 525MHz, 4300 / 8 = 537.5 MHz)

lookup say intel's or asus' website
and narrow down a list of mobos that support:
core 2 duo cpu
533MHz ram
s/ata hard drive

say like the Asustek S775 Intel P965 ATX.
i'm NOT saying this is the one to buy
rather this is something like the one you want to consider
there are many that will fit your criteria
get one for about £50 or £60 range

graphics card
okay, go for the cheapest one from the last generation
like nvidia 8600 series
then depending on the mobo you get, you'll have to choose between a pcie type or a agp type
the grap card should also be in the £50 or £70 range

in your case, it really doesn't matter which mobo + grap card you get.
so base it on stability and brand name.
so asus for mobo and either nvidia or ati for graphics will do fine.

points...

1) you're getting 533MHz ram which may or may not be best bang for your buck
there is already 800MHz and faster but is more expensive
and since you're not going to splash out on an expensive grap card, you might have the dosh to get a 800MHz ram?

2) though you're getting a 600W power supply, it may not be up to the task.
PSU by WinPower?
never heard of them.

Seasonic S12 has had good reviews
but costs £70 or so!

you have to be a tad wary of PSUs
simply stating it is rated at 600W is not enough
can it actually deliver power to all parts when everything is going 100%

in the end, you will just have to suck it and see!
in the best case, your pc won't function properly - you'll get all sorts of weird erros, blue screen of death etc. and this will mean your power supply isn't up to the mark.
doddle to take out the one in the case and bung in a new "good quality" one.

3) you're getting S/ATA hard drive, though S/ATA II is out
S/ATA transfers at 150Mb/s
S/ATA II at 300Mb/s
i haven't found out whether you're HD is actually a SATA I or II
you can do that for yourself at the seagate website

the biggest bottlenecks in a pc are the hard drive and the ram
cpu has to wait for data to be read from much slower devices
then wait for data to be written back to the much slower devices
so the more you beef these up the better

but the crucial factors are 1) do you just want an okay rig or do you want a bleedin-edge rig and 2) how much time & money you want to invest in getting the best bang for your buck?

only you can answer these questions.

sorry but i'm just a tad busy to really dig up info for a "recommended rig parts"

i leave with this tip...
goto dabs.com
they have a pretty good "refining" search engine
you can select brand name, then size, then speed, then interface, then price etc and keep narrowing until you find something you like / within your range
even if you don't buy from them, you can still use the refining / search engine

dabs are competitive in pricing terms
but are bloody b@st@rds if you have to return goods

best of luck

and remember, if your rig blows up blame LS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

personally smythy, going by your reply, it might be easier for you to get a mid-range ready made pc from pcworld for about £400.

will save you a hell of a lot of time & effort.

yes, pcworld is a bag of crape.
but they are probably a 5 min drive away and you can easily change your rig.

just a thought

I really hope you are using a 64 bit edition of Windows, otherwise half of your 4gb of Ram will be wasted.You can use 2GB of Ram with the 32 bit editions and use the extra dough on your video card.

Windows XP uses just over 3GB of RAM on XP Pro 32-bit, so 4GB is a good option. There is some waste, yes.

Here is an essay I wrote on computer builds. This may help. Good Luck


Essay # 5


Descriptive Essay



This essay will teach you to build a computer from start to finish. I will include

the best websites you can visit to, buy the parts you need at a great price.

To start with we must determine what kind of computer we want. Is the computer for

School, movie editing, work related or my favorite a gaming computer?


For this essay we are going to build a gaming computer. Now that we know what

kind of computer we are going to build lets talk about what components we want. We

will be looking for the following items; a case with big power supply, motherboard, CPU,

heat sink, memory, upgraded video card, hard drive, DVD + or – RW Rom drive, CD

Rom, a 3 ½ inch floppy drive, Ethernet card, wireless network card, nice set of speakers

and an extra 4 port USB card.


I have found that I get the best prices at Tiger.com, E-bay, and computer shows.

Once you get all the components to the computer, you start building. Start by

unpacking the components. Check everyone as you unpack to ensure there are no flaws

or deficiencies.


First thing we do is take the metal back plate that comes with the motherboard

and match it up to the back of the motherboard to see what slots need to be bent back.

Should be one USB port and the Keyboard slot; just bend the metal up and out of the
way. Now snap that metal plate into place on the back of the case.


Put the case on its side and count the number of stand-offs in the case (stand-offs

keep the computer from touching the side of the case), there should be ten total. Take the

four stand-offs on the outside out of the case, and the two at the bottom and move them

down one hole. Lay the motherboard on top of the stand-off’s, and then snap

motherboard to the metal back plate. The six stand-offs should match the six holes on

the motherboard. Then put in the six screws and tighten snuggly, but not to tight.


Now we need to put the CPU on the motherboard just unhitch the metal lever on

the motherboard, then place the CPU in place. Then hitch the metal lever back down to

lock it in place. Put the fan and heat sink on top of the CPU and snap all four corners

down. They will lock in place. Undo the power cable from the fan and hook it to the

dedicated slot on the motherboard.


Now take the two Gigs of memory and pop them into their slots put them in

their holes; and push down on each side until they lock in place. We will then add the

Ethernet card, wireless card, extra four slot USB card and the upgraded video card. They

all will pop into the proper slot; they either fit or don’t. If they fit it is the right slot; if the

don’t fit you know they are in the wrong slot. Make sure after you have everything in

place you hook anything that needs power to the motherboard right away.


Now we will put the drives in. Let’s start with the hard drive. Pick a bottom

compartment to put it in, slide in put two screws in to lock it in place. Hook the gray IDE

cable up right away and the power supply to the back of it. Make sure you set your

jumpers to cable select. Now install the DVD and CD drives at the top of case. Punch out

the two black covers, insert both drives, and attach the second grey IDE cables to both

drives and attach both the power supplies to them. Now for the floppy drive, pick a slot

in the middle of the case, place the floppy drive, attach the smaller grey cable to the

back of the drive and attach the power supply that is attached to the motherboard to it.


Now stand the case up and turn the power button on. When the power comes on,

insert the OS (Operating System) disk. When the first screen appears hit F8 on the key

board go into your Bios and change the order of start up to CD Rom as first device, hit

Esc and then F10 to save. Reboot the machine and