Building my own PC

custardy

amonra wrote: »

Another little "saver"...
Do you have a brother/sister/friend who is in full time education ? As long as they have an email address with the uni or college, then they qualify. Then you could persuade them to buy a student's copy of Windows and give it to you as a present.

which is against the licensing agreement.
why dont you just download an illegal copy?
its the same thing

andy2004

well personally i would look at the PC aldi sell for £499 and slightly lower which come with the OS for that price and they are QUAD CORE AMD
when they got them.

also take a look at https://www.novatech.com for their prebuilt systems.

moocoo

As long as it is used by the student within the household it is within the licensing agreement. We have a student licensed copy of office and its use is not limited to the student - we all use the software at some time or other.

Maverick1984_2

Building computers aren't that difficult. I did it myself for the first time in 2004, and thiking i would blow everything up sky high. The Machine miraculously booted and was a joy to put together. The way the boards are designed now, it's almost impossible to fit anything in the wrong slot, so you can rest assure that you won't be left confused as to where everything goes. As long as you consult the instruction booklet, you'll be good to go.

birkee

Not mentioned yet, but of some importance.
If you do the 'parts' route, then you can make a deal if you buy them all from the same souce. You won't do as well buying all over the place.

Personally, as others have mentioned, a 'ready built' can be almost as competative these days, and plenty of sites will allow you to spec the components on-line.
Buy a copy of PC Advisor that has a section that road tests computers in the 'below £500' / £750 - £1000 / £1000 plus. You are not interested in some of them of course, but DO REMEMBER, that most of these prices are with a monitor, which you exclude, and MS Windows.
What you will get however, is the online addresses of the computer suppliers, which you can log onto, and specify the components you DO want, and you can limit it to just the base unit (& Operating system for discount I would suggest.)

DON'T buy a branded PC, with a recovery disc or recovery partition on the hard drive (Dell, HP, etc)......you need the Windows disc!

I can build a computer, but haven't with the last two, by the way.
Personally (again) I would prefer TWO hard drives, and use one for back-up's, and stuff you don't want to lose if you need to reinstall Windows from scratch.
Unless you are doing loads of video's, you would be hard pressed to challenge a couple of 500Gb hard drives. And don't forget, if to want to defrag your 'c' drive or do a virus search, or many other drive searches, then the larger the drive, the longer it will all take. I'd have nightmares about a single 1Tb size going pear shaped.

As a guide, analyze your current PC.......how much hard drive space is actually occupied? What will you be doing that's new, will add to this? Will you keep the additional material on your hard drive, or will it be transcribed to DVD's as it's generated. Keep two copies on disc if it's important, and remove it from the hard drive.....it can always be put back on the hard drive from a disc, if needed.
Keep it lean, and keep it mean, for best performance!

birkee

birkee wrote: »

Not mentioned yet, but of some importance.
If you do the 'parts' route, then you can make a deal if you buy them all from the same souce. You won't do as well buying all over the place.

There must have been another 30 posts by the time I added this, so I'm MILES behind!

rmg1

gonzo127 wrote: »

Gigabyte GA-H67M-D2 H67 Socket 1155 GB LAN 8 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard 247120 9 in stock £76.47

Hi guys

I bought the motherboard as recommended by Gonzo way back when this first started, but it's a for desktop and I have a tower case.
I can't see anything along the same lines for a tower case, so anyone have any suggestions?
I already have the Intel rest of the items from the original post so it needs to be compatible with that lot.

custardy

rmg1 wrote: »

Hi guys

I bought the motherboard as recommended by Gonzo way back when this first started, but it's a for desktop and I have a tower case.
I can't see anything along the same lines for a tower case, so anyone have any suggestions?
I already have the Intel rest of the items from the original post so it needs to be compatible with that lot.

Im not quite sure i get you?
do you mean you dont have a full size ATX case,so its a few inches too big?
how small is it,if it cant take a mATX mobo?

rmg1

Ignore me, I think I'm going senile.


Just realised the motherboard comes with a metal adaptor plate so everything pokes through the back of the case as normal.

custardy

ah yeah,the I/O plate
every mobo has ones as theres loads of different configurations