Dell Dimension 1100 £292 del. with 17" Flatscreen (merged)

TDIfurby

All this talk of buying PCs, yet I've just seen the light. Its building your own PC. I've just spent £150 on the essentials, CPU, case, board, PSU, and assuming a value for other bits, excluding my time putting it together - for £200 I've got myself a AMD64 3700+ PC, Asus board, silent 430w PSU, 512 ram with basic CD/HDD tower. Now you don't see many AMD64 systems around that price. Build your own, its the future.

(coming from a total I.T numpty too. Anyone who can follow instructions is capable of this feat)

bargains83

TDIfurby wrote:

All this talk of buying PCs, yet I've just seen the light. Its building your own PC. I've just spent £150 on the essentials, CPU, case, board, PSU, and assuming a value for other bits, excluding my time putting it together - for £200 I've got myself a AMD64 3700+ PC, Asus board, silent 430w PSU, 512 ram with basic CD/HDD tower. Now you don't see many AMD64 systems around that price. Build your own, its the future.

(coming from a total I.T numpty too. Anyone who can follow instructions is capable of this feat)

Would you care to give a run-down of the prices/places where you got the components from as im considering building a new tower

dc

TDIfurby wrote:

All this talk of buying PCs, yet I've just seen the light. Its building your own PC. I've just spent £150 on the essentials, CPU, case, board, PSU, and assuming a value for other bits, excluding my time putting it together - for £200 I've got myself a AMD64 3700+ PC, Asus board, silent 430w PSU, 512 ram with basic CD/HDD tower. Now you don't see many AMD64 systems around that price. Build your own, its the future.

(coming from a total I.T numpty too. Anyone who can follow instructions is capable of this feat)

Methinks you are exagerating somewhat, the cpu is well over £100 alone.

£142 here
http://www.lowestonweb.com/Products/DisplayInfoMain.asp?e=15A902DF-0E55-4E4A-82BA-6E9DB9746A47

Oh and then there is the software?

Please tell us where this bargain basement is, cos you havent skimped on quality. I would like to get one for that price too

biglugs

The cheapest version of XP alone is going to be around £60 - it is possible to build a machine for around £200 if you want, but it's not going to be great quality and I bet the parts aren't all new. Plus once you add in the cables, fans, DVD drive, graphics card (if none on-board) the costs start to mount.
All the Dells I've ever bought (3000s and 5100) have been pretty sturdy, robust machines with fairly good quality parts, so I reckon sub-£300 for a basic machine with a TFT screen is a great deal for those people who only want to browse the web and do WP and spreadsheet work.

amancalledchip

TDIfurby wrote:

All this talk of buying PCs, yet I've just seen the light. Its building your own PC. I've just spent £150 on the essentials, CPU, case, board, PSU, and assuming a value for other bits, excluding my time putting it together - for £200 I've got myself a AMD64 3700+ PC, Asus board, silent 430w PSU, 512 ram with basic CD/HDD tower. Now you don't see many AMD64 systems around that price. Build your own, its the future.

(coming from a total I.T numpty too. Anyone who can follow instructions is capable of this feat)

what operating system (xp £60 )
what tft monitor (about £130 )
what mouse and keyboard (£15 for a half decent pair )
what hdd

without the hdd size and the dvd/cd rom drive which you havnt stated that adds £200+ to the total.

build your own pc is the past mate,not the future.

Sid_Harper

I used to build PCs for a living until it got to the point where the big boys through their volume purchasing power made it impossible to compete, and trade component prices are often above internet sellers. Add to that the cost of a licensed XP (essential), putting it together (your time), the risk of components being incompatible (which used to happen, but nowadays not so much an issue), and the hassle of working out what is wrong/cost of sending parts back/waiting for warranty repairs if something fails, this Dell was an absolute steal!

I opened mine up yesterday and, yes, it's a budget machine with no AGP slot or SATA and missing a floppy caddy (floppies are out - USB keys are in!).

But it's well put together and works!

bargains83

amancalledchip wrote:

what operating system (xp £60 )
what tft monitor (about £130 )
what mouse and keyboard (£15 for a half decent pair )
what hdd

without the hdd size and the dvd/cd rom drive which you havnt stated that adds £200+ to the total.

build your own pc is the past mate,not the future.

But I suppose he is right in a way though and it is cheaper to build your own because most of us here are already using our own PC. Will already have the monitor, Mouse and Keyboard as well as a licenced copy of windows xp so those don't need to be bought again.

I don't think you could build a decent spec for under £200 tho like he is saying because assuming you build it based on the Athlon 64 chip you will need.

Essential:

CPU (£100+)
New motherboard (£80+)
New Ram (£30+)
PCIx or SLI Graphics card (£30 assuming u go fior a crap one)

Total cost: £240

Possibility of Requiring:

New PSU 400W+ (£20)
New Case (£30)
SATA Hard Drive (£50 - £80)

I would still be interested to hear though where TDIfurby got his parts and a price breakdown as I will soon be looking to build a new 64-bit system.

The trade-off in cost between buying a complete system and building your own is now pretty much equal where as 3 or 4 years ago it was a lot cheaper to build your own.

There is still one key benefit of building your own though and that is the fact that you can put in it what you want and be satisfied rather than having bvits in it you'll either never use or aren't the required spec.

amancalledchip

bargains83 wrote:

But I suppose he is right in a way though and it is cheaper to build your own because most of us here are already using our own PC. Will already have the monitor, Mouse and Keyboard as well as a licenced copy of windows xp so those don't need to be bought again.

thing is the innitial thread includes monitor,mouse keyboard, windows xp, and other software.

so really, if he has found a better deal , then its worthy of being here, if not.........

biglugs

I have built a bumber of PCs for myself and friends in the past 3 years and now I don't bother. I bought myself a Dimension 5100 and my son a Dimension 3000 and I'm very happy with both. My other kids will be getting Dell machines to replace their Athlon XPs as soon as Dell have another decent offer.
If you time it right you can pick up a very quiet quality PC for less than £300 (without the monitor), and as I can sell the bits on my current Athlon machines for about £100 it's a pretty reasonable upgrade path.
It just isn't worth the time and effort to build my own PCs anymore - unless you are a real enthusiast it isn't economically viable.

wack_2

Sid_Harper wrote:

Even then you had to select 90 days support - I paid a bit more to get a 1 year warranty and the recovery CDs.

All dell PCs come with 12 months warranty, all the 3 month option means is they'll only collect it for repair in the first 3 months, after that it's up to you to get it back to them if it needs work on it.