Advice on buying a desktop pc please

cosimoraffi

Hi, I am 13 years old, and my mum has just bought my twin bro a pc from Aldi for £429.99 - my mum says she will buy me a desktop for similar cost (I already have a screen) so I'm looking for one with a similar spec except it needs better graphics. (I tried my brother's new pc and it won't play 3D match mode in FIFA Manager 2010). Hopefully it will last through my school years (I'm just starting year 9).

I hope you can help me to find a good computer, thanks Dan. :T

Here is the Aldi PC my brother has:
AMD Athlon™ II X4 620 quad core processor 2.60GHz, 2MB L2 Cache
ATI Radeon™ HD 4200 graphics
3GB (3,072MB) DDR3 SDRAM
Multiformat DVD/CD burner
Wireless LAN
1TB hard disk
Network controller Ethernet LAN
Integrated flash memory card reader,
HDMI
Windows® 7 Home Premium
3 yr warranty

I can't post a link to the Aldi one because this is my first post

Knarf44

It's difficult to match the Aldi PC from other suppliers. But here's my suggestion priced at £420:

HP Pavilion Slimline s5102uk

Windows Vista Home Premium
Pentium E6300 cpu
3GB DDR3 RAM (expandable)
320GB SATA Hard disk
ATI Radeon 4350 512Mb dedicated graphics memory
TV Tuner card
Bluetooth Connectivity
Integrated Card Reader
Lightscribe DVDRW
Wireless Keyboard and Optical mouse included
1 year pick and return, parts and labour warranty

A really good spec for the price quoted. You can upgrade from Vista to Win 7 Professional by purchasing an Upgrade disc. As a Secondary School student you (well your Mum) can buy an upgrade disk from this site for £38.95

JamesY_2

cosimoraffi wrote: »

Hi, I am 13 years old, and my mum has just bought my twin bro a pc from Aldi for £429.99 - my mum says she will buy me a desktop for similar cost (I already have a screen) so I'm looking for one with a similar spec except it needs better graphics. (I tried my brother's new pc and it won't play 3D match mode in FIFA Manager 2010). Hopefully it will last through my school years (I'm just starting year 9).

I hope you can help me to find a good computer, thanks Dan. :T

Here is the Aldi PC my brother has:
AMD Athlon™ II X4 620 quad core processor 2.60GHz, 2MB L2 Cache
ATI Radeon™ HD 4200 graphics
3GB (3,072MB) DDR3 SDRAM
Multiformat DVD/CD burner
Wireless LAN
1TB hard disk
Network controller Ethernet LAN
Integrated flash memory card reader,
HDMI
Windows® 7 Home Premium
3 yr warranty

I can't post a link to the Aldi one because this is my first post

Get the same one, save up £60 on your own and hawk a 4670/5670 from ebay.
Check the case size to see if you need a low profile gpu.
Slot the new gpu in, game away.

Edit, the previous poster's pc has pathetically weak graphics but coupled with a huge decrease in cpu ability from your bro's

JasX

I'd caution against going the 'slimline' desktop route as it can severly limit your upgrade options due to physical space and for gaming heaping high powered components in a small space which you're pushing on the performance side anyway is askign for heat issues which even at their mildest will reduce the life of yoour components or at worse will cause crashing or even kill the PC.

A good route i've seen others do on here is go the 'barebones' PC route for the core system then toss in a graphics card and other system bits you need (can bring the cost down further if you have an old PC somewhere to re-use the DVD drive floppy drive etc from as they've not changed in years)

Here is a good starting place:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/barebones.html

your brothers processor is the £254 bundle, you could consider the £284 bundle for the Q8300 which is about 15% faster and comes with a better PSU, both come with 4GB ram. Don't get the £290 i3 as its slower than the £250 one your brother has.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

to that you'll need to add (in order of criticality)

£70 Operating system (buy a windows 7 home edition UPGRADE disk - £70 - follow these instructions for a clean install http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp )

£50 Hard disk - buy a samsung 1TB F3 specifically (Model# HD103SJ, not the crappy 'ecogreen' one with a different number), Fastest conventional drive on the market before you spend £££ for an SSD drive, very good for a gaming machine.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804

£20 CD / DVD drive - (or £0 if you can re-use one from an old PC)

£20 keyboard and mouse - (again £0 if you can't reuse one or get for 'free' somewhere)

£8 wireless PCI card (or £0 if you can use a cable / reuse a card form an old PC)

£60-120 basically whatever you have left on the best graphics card you can afford, use this site to compare:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

you might be able to save a bit by getting the student edition of windows7, I don't know much about those versions or if you can celan install when you're not 'upgrading' but worth checking out.

If you can 'recycle' some basic components from an old PC you can easily put toogether a better machine than your brothers for the same money... if not you might start pushing towards £450/£480 but should still get there.

JasX

JamesY wrote: »

Edit, the previous poster's pc has pathetically weak graphics but coupled with a huge decrease in cpu ability from your bro's

I agree, the E6300 is a good 30% drop in CPU power, graphics card is not up to gaming and they seem to have spent their money adding alot of fluff like TV tuner cards and bluetooth connectivity... if you mainly want a gaming machine get the best core system CPU+Grapics you can get for your money and worry about addding in extra cards later as/when you need them or have the money

gonzo127

maybe something like this

http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/configurePrd.asp?idproduct=902

gives a bit of room for playing with, the included nvidia 250 GTS is not a bad card and should cope with most games yes it would be worth while if you can afford the upgrade to the ATI 5770, although shouldnt be a deal breaker if you cant afford it

cosimoraffi

When I got home from school today I was very plzed to find so many helpful replies, thnku. I went through the options with my mum and we thought that all the suggestions had something good about them. In the end we decided to see if they have the same pc left at Aldi and replace the graphics card (this would be simpler and still get Aldi guarantee). If they've sold out, we think we might dare to go for the barebones option. Thanks again :j

spud17

JasX

£70 Operating system (buy a windows 7 home edition UPGRADE disk - £70 - follow these instructions for a clean install http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/cle...rade_media.asp )

To save a few more pennies, as a 13yo, get your upgrade OS disk from http://www.software4students.co.uk/Windows_7-software.aspx, for under £40, then follow JasXs link.