new PC available at Aldi this week

cowbutt

tonyhague wrote: »

I've just built better (or I will when the rest of the parts arrive on friday) for over £100 less, minus OS and the media centre bits (tv + remote)

What's the specification of the system you're building? I priced up the following this afternoon:

Intel Q8200 Boxed CPU w/ HSF £132
Gigabyte EP45-DS3L Motherboard £73
Kingston 2*2GB DDR2 PC800 RAM £29
Seagate 7200.11 1TB SATA HDD £76
Antec Case w/ 380W PSU £47
PNY 9600GT VGA £70
VAT @ 17.5% £74.73
Total £501.73

Note that doesn't include the OS, software, keyboard, mouse, tuner card/remote or an optical drive. The Medion PC at Aldi looks like a good deal to me, especially considering it has a three year system-wide warranty.

happyhero

What about the chip, I just looked it up online and everyone keeps going on about the Q6600 is better and can be overclocked more, although older, I am not really into overclocking so how does the Q8200 compare with the Q6600 if you dont overclock, surely it is newer and better?

DatabaseError

e5200 2.5 £53.61 (I will overclock it to around 3-3.4Ghz. for gaming and most apps it will beat the quad, and I have a quad )
2nd hand 8800gt 512 overclocked £62 ebay
19" w/s monitor £82 ccl
20x liteon dvdrw £11.48
casecom case with leds £16.84
extra value 550w atx ps £18.71 (this is possibly a cut too far )
asus mobo 33.15
4 gb (2x2) corsair 800mhz £32.80
trust wireless keyb + mouse £11.64
500gb seagate barracuda, 32mb cache £42 ccl
all except the gpu, monitor and hdd +vat from ebuyer

samhale

Again, the most crucial thing about Aldi computers is the 3 year warranty, worth £150

vyseyboy

timbim wrote: »

Maybe overkill for more mundane business tasks.

that quote has made my day.

What is a DVB-S.6 tuner? Digital satellite?

DatabaseError

happyhero wrote: »

What about the chip, I just looked it up online and everyone keeps going on about the Q6600 is better and can be overclocked more, although older, I am not really into overclocking so how does the Q8200 compare with the Q6600 if you dont overclock, surely it is newer and better?

almost nowt in it, though the q8200 will draw a little less power.

DatabaseError

samhale wrote: »

Again, the most crucial thing about Aldi computers is the 3 year warranty, worth £150

where does that figure come from?

I've been building then for years, and experience says that most failures occur out of the box (ie doa), next most likely are within a couple of weeks (though i do burn-in, so i can usually break flaky bits in a day). If components make it past the 1st couple of weeks, they should be good indefinitely, and if they do fail, most components are cheap enough to replace. After a year, that £200 cpu or GPU is only worth £80, £150 would pay for an ok upgrade 3 years down the line

cowbutt

tonyhague wrote: »

e5200 2.5 £53.61 (I will overclock it to around 3-3.4Ghz. for gaming and most apps it will beat the quad, and I have a quad )
2nd hand 8800gt 512 overclocked £62 ebay
19" w/s monitor £82 ccl
20x liteon dvdrw £11.48
casecom case with leds £16.84
extra value 550w atx ps £18.71 (this is possibly a cut too far )
asus mobo 33.15
4 gb (2x2) corsair 800mhz £32.80
trust wireless keyb + mouse £11.64
500gb seagate barracuda, 32mb cache £42 ccl
all except the gpu, monitor and hdd +vat from ebuyer

You can't really compare the two systems and say yours is objectively better for £100 less, though!

• You're overclocking the CPU, which will invalidate any warranty.
• Depending on the work-load, a quad-core can out-perform a dual-core (e.g. software development). You're quite correct that a quicker dual-core is better for gaming, though.
• The second-hand VGA card is of a lower spec, and has no warranty.
• The disc is half the size of the Medion's.
• There's no OS or application software included.
• There's no system-wide warranty
• You need to screw the bits together yourself. :-)

Now, I'm sure the machine you're building suits your needs better and for £100 less than Aldi's, and that's great. But my experience is that it's pretty hard these days to build a system using objectively identical-or-better components than the kind of systems that Dell and Medion sell.

cowbutt

vyseyboy wrote: »

that quote has made my day.

What is a DVB-S.6 tuner? Digital satellite?

Correct. DVB-T is for Terrestrial (e.g. Freeview). Note that there's no mention of a CAM, so I'm not sure the DVB-S is terribly useful in the UK.

DatabaseError

cowbutt, in many ways you are right, at stock speeds the quad will perform tasks faster than the dual, but not, to most people, noticeably. And, as this is a moneysaving forum, overclocking (getting more for the same money) has to be a consideration/good thing.
the half sized disk is not much cheaper than the larger one, but 1tb is overkill for my kids (crikey, i only have 800gb over 2 drives, with 300 or so free).
whoever told you that a 9600GT is faster than an 8800GT is thinking newer is better, apparently they are mistaken "gaming performance was only 12% below the 8800 GT on average"
there is no OS in my price, but there is a monitor, vista home from amazon is £64, and there is a cheaper, honest way of getting it (can't find the link).
oh..and office software, i can add microsoft office ultimate 07 for £38.
...and I love screwing bits together