TESCO 3GHz Athlon PC AND phillips 17" TFT monitor

malcolmord

Great buy

NERRAD_4

Me thinks you would save about £100 building yourself. Sure your parts would have a warrantee but if you don’t know what’s goosed you won’t know what to replace. I build myself and have a boatload of used parts for testing broken machines so this helps.

Also the amd cpu will b a Athlon 3000+ which runs at 2.167 GHz not 3 GHz

Claddie

Yea building for yourself will save some money

I would not build for anyone else though. When they muck up they invariably come running and expect you to sort it ASAP

To be honest the time spent building etc I could put to better use so I doublt if I'll be building any in the near future. Like it or not the branded machines have pretty much got it susses when you take into account time/convenience/hassle into account. The other side of it is that many people build and upgrade power machines not because it is essential for them to have but because it is fun for them.

Different strokes people

Claddz

bluey9

Please mods. Delete all the boring nonsense the anoraks have posted.
I'm sure there are forums for those who delight in discussing the intricacies of how a PC works. 99% of people just want to buy one, plug it in and use the bloody thing.
Stop trashing other peoples posts you ungrateful techno geeks. Post if you have a bargain to tell us of or thank someone for taking the time to tell us of one. I've seen this on a few posts about pcs and it's out of order. I had one built for me early this year and I'll never do it again. The monitor blew after two weeks and although I got a new one it was almost two falls, two submissions or a knockout to decide the issue.
We don't care if you can biuld 'em cheaper. We like going to a store with a good reputation and a good warranty.
Bythe way don't include PC World in that category, they are gits.

Cheers
Bluey

PS Thanks for the original post. If I wasn't still using this "built for me" pile of junk I might have bought one.

eightpints

can someone start a thread about where from and what to look for in building your own spec pc.
I have added components to my pc, but not built from scratch, the only thing that puts me off is if i buy something thats not compatable with something else and knackers up one or both.

biglugs

Eightpints - best thing to do is subscribe to one of the more techie computer magazines and spend some time researching all the pieces before you even start.
Personally I like Micro Mart and Custom PC.
I still think most people though should steer well clear of building their own PC, and would be better off spending the time looking for a good priced offer e.g. the Dell Dimension 3000 deals which were around a few weeks ago.

JPS

Personally I like Micro Mart

Wa hay! I have been getting Micro for years now - great magazine

£$&*"($£&(

I think it's a decent deal. I think the procesor is a 3000+ Sempron so it's not a 3 Ghz processor but still decent.

However this is a Time computer and I've read many sad tales from their customers.

TeamMCS

Some lengthy text...

You make a very good point, effectivly what I was trying to point out.

I would personally choose a "local community" tech centre to design and build a machine for me. As you said they are usually more willing to help and are less fanatical about profit margins and other profiting crap.

But I've got to say, automatically assuming you can build a system "cheaper" (note, cheaper not better) than a mass producer is mad, as I mentioned before they have the buying, produceing and financial power to cut prices to rock bottom.

In some cases (Especially ultra low end machines) you just cannot beat a company such as dell on price alone. But as you also elegently put, its not all about cost. They spec their machines up to sell. They identify a few different points. CPU Speed, RAM amount, Hard disk size, Screen size (TFT or CRT) and some random crap like Firewire. However teh usually neglect to mention important factors such as RAM and HDD speeds (Bandwidth, latencies etc), motherboards (as you said onboard video is a killer and usually non upgradable [AGP, PCI-E]) and finally screen quality.

Owning a TFT screen (the flat panels) doesn't automatically bring you picture perfect clarity and colour diversity, many things have to be taken into account such as contrast ratios (how many "shades" of a colour per pixal [IIRC]), refresh speeds (the slower it is, the more blurred things look when you scroll or play games), connection type. DVI or VGA (DVI is of higher quality, sends a digital message opposed to analog). Also "Dead Pixals" can be a major problem, this is where a dot on teh screen becomes stuck to a perticular colour. Hey, would you like a big fat green light in teh middle of your word document?

And again, like he said. A lot of the major brands buy-in the LCD panels to order, infact a lot of companies use the same panels just to different specifications (qualities). However, I must disagree in assuming that certain brands arn't better than others. For instance, Samsung tend to have very high quality displays along with Song and some of the older Hurcules screens. However overall, for a "DECENT" flat screen you need to spend in the region of 250-300 pounds for a 17" screen. If you cannot afford to pay this then consider a CRT as they are of much higher clarity but at a rock bottom price - you can always upgrade later


Sorry for rambling on for so long, but maybe it can help someone

TeamMCS

I think it's a decent deal. I think the procesor is a 3000+ Sempron so it's not a 3 Ghz processor but still decent.

However this is a Time computer and I've read many sad tales from their customers.

Semprons are rebards Athlon XP's, these are processors which came out 3-4 years ago...


To give you some idea of the comparison against an Athlon 64, you need to take 300-400 PR away from the suggested performance rating.

In this case a 3000+ Sempron is about 2400-2500+ PR compared to an Athlon 64 3000+