Decent desktop PC for >£650

fazza82

I start university in September and i''m looking for a new desktop PC (laptops are too unreliable).
I've looked on the dell website and to get the following specs it'll cost £639:
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3 Processor 540 (3.06GHz, 4MB)
Memory: 4096MB Dual Channel DDR3 [4x1024] Memory
Hard Drive: 1TB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
Graphics: ATI Radeon™ HD 5450 1GB DDR3 graphics
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Monitor: DELL™ 20”W HD MONITOR ST2010 - BLACK - UK

(is it a good buy, or can i buy better somewhere else?)
Speed is a must for me, I hate slow technology!!

gonzo127

well depends on what you want to do with it and any of the other accessories

the CPU is good and is pretty easy to overclock to around 3.5ghz, and can be gotten to around 4ghz with a bit more effort, although you will need a good aftermarket cooler, reasonable RAM and decent case, however if you go down this route go for the i3 530 and save a bit of cash, they are basically the same chip just factory clocked to different speeds

graphics card isnt great if gaming is your concern however is good for HTPC, anyways i would personally be inclined to upgrade this slightly http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-460-radeon-hd-5570-gaming,2697-7.html is a good guide to how powerful a card is - do not worry about the amount of ram on a graphics card as it make very little difference to most people unless you are gaming at at very high res (24" monitors and above) and with high end graphics cards, so 512 is more than enough

4GB of ram is good however as stated above if you are thinking of overclocking you need to make sure it is good ram and not 'value' ram

1TB hard drive is reasonable, if you can be specific i personally like the samsung F series drives

closed

Are you wanting to play games on it? Do you have one already?

danthemoneysavingman

i hope you're not off to study maths!

I like Dell, but you may get better if you bought a custom-built one off ebay or somesuch (with usual health warning of course).

TwistedPsycho

If you are a member of the cashback site Quidco; head to ebuyer, novatech, misco; they are all more than competative with the likes of Dell.

I would also question the sense of 4X1GB sticks for RAM. I would suggest 2x2GB be better and easier to upgrade, especially if you are getting 4 slots.

fazza82

Thanks all for the advice, and yh just realised the mathematical mistake lol...
Been speaking to my girlfriend and the budget has risen to £800-£900!

Gaming wise, don't play too many games on the PC, got my Xbox and DS for that... Mind you, if its there I'd probably use it.

Sorry about the change of funding, how does this change things?
Where to go? What to get?

Was thinking of a Packard Bell oneTwo L 17623... Price: £850
Specifications:
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-540 Processor (3.06Ghz)
Memory: 4GB
Hard Drive: 1TB
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics (256MB shared)
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Monitor: 23" Multi-Touch

amcluesent

IMHO you'll want RAID1, the last thing you need is a hard-drive failure taking our your essays and course work.

BTW, I'd say you need a real rethink of what you need at Uni...

£900 for a PC is insane - have you considered the security (lack of) in halls and student houses?
A laptop is far more useful in the library and even taking into lecture now, esp. as most course material is sent out electronically. Look into a lecture theatre and everyone has a laptop.
A laptop means you can do essays while going back home on the train (and you will go back home quite a bit for the first 6 months!)
You'll be reading a lot, so an 28" external monitor that swivels to portrait format is good, resolution of 1980*1650 or better and you can read PDFs like a book. In landscape mode you can see your browser side-by-side with Word when 'researching'
If you get a laptop, get a 3G card with unlimited data plan, even if the Uni has wi-fi, you'll still hammer t'web a lot outside of wi-fi range
Use a decent online backup system like Mozy that automatically sync all your stuff.

>Speed is a must for me, I hate slow technology!!<

Replace a standard laptop's hard disk with an 128Gb SSD and you'll be amazed how quick they are!

fazza82

It's fine I'm staying at home while at university... I was really thinking, the higher end the PC the longer it will take to go 'out of date'...
And, for the pricey sum of £900, I was hoping this would be the case.

What can I get for £900? Honestly I want a fast running PC with a lot of memory... Gaming isn't a priority (although it would be great if it was there)...
Internet browsing and word processing is all it would be used for, maybe watching films, tv programmes.
Do desktops with built in freeview tend to be slower?

Lil306

Have you considered custom building?

Computers aren't that hard to build, and you can get the discounts buying from the retailers whilst getting the parts that you need and are relevant and not parts you don't need that are a waste of money

I agree with some statements made so far.

SSD Hard Drives wouldn't really benefit you in a desktop computer unless you play games, since their storage per £ isn't very high but their performance is. An SSD in a desktop would still be a nice perk to have in terms of opening applications because there would be less waiting time

Sorry, SSD do have perks, I forgot about things like video / music editing and CAD work.

RAID on hard drives.... to be honest if you buy a decent make (personally Seagate) then you don't need to worry about data loss anyway and as long as you have a good backup solution like mentioned above you shouldn't need to worry about RAID anyway.

If you want to make your PC future proof I'd look at the following

• Motherboard with SAS 6.0 / USB 3.0
• Multicore Processors (quad min, hexacore ideally) - cores more important than speed
• 4gb ram minimum (1066 / 1333mhz bus speed)
• Storage space (always plenty of it)
• Decent graphics card (so you can watch high def movies, gaming etc)

You would need to budget some money for an operating system aswell which is about £150

I'll slap together a build for you to have a look at

fazza82

Thanks for the advice Lil306.... But to be totally honest i'm not really a techie person so building a computer would not really be an option.
What sort of spec would i be looking at for a £900 budget (preferably already built lol)

What do you think of the Packard Bell oneTwo L X8022? (pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/5315375/art/packard-bell/onetwo-l-x8022-uk.html)
(Like i said before gaming is not essential, but wouldn't be dismissed if it could be an option)

lightisfading

fazza82 wrote: »

What do you think of the Packard Bell oneTwo L X8022? (pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/5315375/art/packard-bell/onetwo-l-x8022-uk.html)
(Like i said before gaming is not essential, but wouldn't be dismissed if it could be an option)

wouldn't touch pixmania with a bargepole, especially for that amount of money :eek: