Can anyone recommend a PC?

AuntyJean

Hiya, my old Dell Dimension 5150 (purchased Dec 2005) has died and I need a replacement. I will be using it for everything, editing photos, Excel, Word, storing and playing music, gaming........ Want to know what the highest spec I can get for circa £600. Obviously want to take advantage of sales, vat at current rate so need to make a quick decision. Any idea please?

BTW am hoping they will be able to recover my old files (Excel and Word) that I have worked on for last month or so as I failed to back up lately on my external hard drive. Was using MS Office 2000 professional. Did try 2007 but my pivot tables kept crashing so am really hoping MSO 2010 is more stable with conversions. Would like two separate disc drives DVD/RW

bengalknights

If your not needing a monitor, keyboard and mouse then £600 would get you a 6 core amd pc like this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-035-OP&groupid=43&catid=1444&subcat=

although as you also do editing you would want to also have a more current graphics card like the 5850/6850 or higher installed

Its a bit rare to see 2 dvdrw drives on one pc but if you take the custom route you can request it or additionally £25 will buy you an external dvd rw.

If you havent backed up your pc then ideally what you could do is create an image of it using Norton ghost etc and then recreate that image on your new pc so you dont notice any difference other than the extra power (although you would have to have the drive partition set to size of your current pc to restore then resize it)

mulldoonuk

bengalknights wrote: »

If your not needing a monitor, keyboard and mouse then £600 would get you a 6 core amd pc like this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-035-OP&groupid=43&catid=1444&subcat=

although as you also do editing you would want to also have a more current graphics card like the 5850/6850 or higher installed

Its a bit rare to see 2 dvdrw drives on one pc but if you take the custom route you can request it or additionally £25 will buy you an external dvd rw.

If you havent backed up your pc then ideally what you could do is create an image of it using Norton ghost etc and then recreate that image on your new pc so you dont notice any difference other than the extra power (although you would have to have the drive partition set to size of your current pc to restore then resize it)

£576.98 ....

Then add....
Graphics Card
Hard Drive
Operating System
CPU Cooler

i like this....

http://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Gaming+Range/Titan/Gladiator+Shadow+GTS+Gaming+PC+?productId=42935

still under £600 even with Win 7 OEM added.

closed

How has it died, power supply?

£600 is OTT unless you play heavy games

bengalknights

mulldoonuk wrote: »

£576.98 ....

Then add....
Graphics Card
Hard Drive
Operating System
CPU Cooler

i like this....

http://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Gaming+Range/Titan/Gladiator+Shadow+GTS+Gaming+PC+?productId=42935

still under £600 even with Win 7 OEM added.

It already has a graphics card, hard drive and cpu cooler! the options are for upgraded ones!!

The equivalent to your recomendation from overclockers is

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-210-OK&groupid=43&catid=1444&subcat=1713

but its nearly £80 less or if the graphics is upgraded to gtx450 then actually £30 less

DCFC79

Id look at why it died, it coucl cost as much or as little as £80, entirely your choice though

AuntyJean

Thanks everyone.

Have always gone for Intel in the past as AMD had a reputation of not being very stable.?

http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=93&idproduct=976

This has almost everything I need but not sure of them as a supplyer.

One other thing is if I go for MS Office, which package would I need if I want to share documents and spreadsheets with my laptop? I need Outlook, Excel and Word at least and would like Access but not essential?

Derivative

'Stability' has not been a problem for over ten years. AMD previously ran hotter but now it's not really relevant. Go for whatever's cheapest.

£600 is far too much for your needs IMO, I have a £250 laptop that can do all you need and more. What you need to worry about is not specs but build quality and how good the warranty is.

While tech is still moving quickly, the average user hasn't really needed that power for a long time now.

I've never bought a desktop prebuilt so couldn't make any recommendation. Anything over £400 on a computer nowadays is unneeded unless you want to either edit HD video (and frequently) or play the latest games. Excel etc still have the same needs they did 5 years ago.

The previous posters are on the money for £600, but I'd be more inclined to go for a cheap dual core (core 2 or i3 if you want Intel), 4gb ram, small hard drive (300gb is more than enough for me and I'd call myself a power user, I just don't have tons of BluRay movies sat on my PC). Graphics card is basically irrelevant for your needs. Get a seperate card and not an integrated solution if you can help it, that's about it.

mulldoonuk

AuntyJean wrote: »

Thanks everyone.

Have always gone for Intel in the past as AMD had a reputation of not being very stable.?

http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=93&idproduct=976

This has almost everything I need but not sure of them as a supplyer.

One other thing is if I go for MS Office, which package would I need if I want to share documents and spreadsheets with my laptop? I need Outlook, Excel and Word at least and would like Access but not essential?

That's £135 over your stated budget.

ddoris

From a P4 to I5-760 !! cpu score about 500 to nearly 5000 !
How have you coped ?