Desktop pc cheap as chips?

rodenal

Both those machines look a pretty good buy, best I could manage without going second hand and by building the machine yourself (or someone you know to do it) was this (not helped by the current crazy prices of hard drives or cpus):

Colors IT 2017B Black/Silver Mid Tower Value Case w/o PSU £15.35

AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition, Callisto Core, S AM3, 3.3GHz, 7MB Cache, HT 4000MHz, 80W, Retail £70.27

MSI 760GM-P33, AMD 760G, AM3, PCI-E (x16), DDR3 1600(OC), SATA 3Gb/s, SATA RAID, mATX, On Board VGA £35.71
500GB Seagate ST500DM002 Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5ms, NCQ £65.98

Samsung WriteMaster SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±R, 12x DVD±R, DVD+RW x8/-RW x6, SATA, Black, OEM £13.91

450W PSU, Coolermaster RS450-ACAAD3-UK, 85% Eff', 80 PLUS Bronze, EPS 12V, Quiet Fan, ATX v2.31 £29.99

4GB Corsair DDR3 XMS3, PC3-10666 (1333), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.50V £16.96


Total £264ish with delivery - Some of this shows as preoder but you'd get equivalent kit elsewhere for the same or less - If you bought a used 500gb hard drive for say £30 and sub the cpu for an athlon 2 x2 250 for £46 (I just stuck to the one site hence why it's not) you'll knock £59 quid off.

Would it be better than those already linked to....not really no, the intel sandybridge would be a better processor, but with the above you'll get a quality psu and likely better ram, plus still a perfectly capable cpu for what you want to do and should you wish in the future it could be upgraded to a faster phenom 2 (unlikely you'll need to) - you're making a trade off one way or another.

Mumstheword

gonzo127 wrote: »

Well this is where it can get a little confusing as this is not necessarily true.

so I will try and keep this simple

Thank you, I guess like cars - it's not just the engine, or just the power, or just the....anything. It all needs to be considered as a whole. Which is where I value so highly the advice on here.

TakeThis wrote: »

It's not bad luck. Once it was posted and recommended here, it was just a matter of time.

I'm surprised they lasted that long.

With hindsight I should have just ordered online there and then. But I didnt know it was as good a deal as it was, and thought it better to go to the shop and speak to the people there, check out the 'refurb' etc. I regret not acting sooner now, but today was the first time I could have got there. Cant believe it was available to purchase last night and gone first thing this morning!

TakeThis wrote: »

The problem here I suspect is not the CPU benchmark, but the considerably higher prices for what appears to be lesser machines. At £230, that would be £50 more than my initial recommendation.

Yes I begrudge paying extra for less.... but that was my loss.

There are a couple of other HP machines in the same shop, which dont look to be as good but as TT says, are £230. Or theres still the ebuyer zoomstorm machine despite it's noisiness. If anyone has any views on either I'd be grateful to hear them.

Thanks again for all your help!

Mumstheword

Thanks rodenal! There is someone who could build it, which would mean some charge, but he couldnt do it soon, he's always quite busy, so I may have to pass that option by. Thank you for getting all of those prices for comparison purposes tho. If I cant get anything before xmas and have to wait anyway, I may go down that option so will save those details.

TakeThis

Similar spec, but just more expensive. ACER M3400 Prolly slower too, as it will have a fair amount of 'consumer' carp pre-installed(of course you can un-install/disable).
The business machine would have been leaner.

Mumstheword

Thanks TT, that looks better (to an amateur anyway!) than the ones for £230 left on the other site. And it has a 12 month argos warranty (i've never had a problem returning goods to argos). And its got keyboard mouse and speakers, which altho not expensive items, still ease the sting of spending extra?!

Mumstheword

Ordered! Thank you!

TakeThis

I wasn't especially recommending the ACER, rather just showing you what something of similar spec to the HP would cost.
Either way, you have up to seven working days to evaluate the ACER. If it is not to your liking, just inform Argos Outlet that it is not the one for you. They'll give you a full refund.
Not sure if they'll make you return it at your cost, but you can organise a courier through P4D or similar for less than £10 if they do.

Mumstheword

Thanks for all your help everyone, as I said ^^ up there, I bought the Acer from the Argos outlet. However....I'm back!!

It was supposed to come with Windows 7, but wouldnt boot up - it said something like try to reboot or insert boot disc.

The company who deal with the Argos refub pcs have told me that on this model the wires to the hard drive often work loose and may have done so in transit. I assumed they'd just forgotten to load on windows and would send a disc for me to add it, and drivers, the old fashioned way. But no, the machine has to go back to them so is being collected tmrw.

At this stage I have a choice. I can have a repair or refund. What do you think?

I looked at the site where I missed out on the HP machine and cant see anything bargainous, altho I dont really know what to look out for as you know. I could let them repair it and keep that one (altho the lady said it could work loose again in transit back to me and seemed keen to refund). OR - with your help, I could abandon that one and get something else.

Any advice is, as usual, very gratefully accepted!!

Thanks!

fwor

The problem with refurb operations is that many of them know that it's far cheaper to pay someone minimum wage to take a PC off the pile, brush the dust off, say "There, it's refurbished" and put it in a box to be shipped than it is to employ someone who knows something about computers.

Depending on the quality of the kit they are "refurbishing", some customers will be lucky and some won't. The really unlucky ones will get one with an intermittent problem - you can be certain that if it entered the process with such a problem, it will still have it when shipped out.

SATA hard disk connectors are usually too tight a fit to come out in transit - I'd go for a refund.

I'm not going to recommend a specific desktop, but to repeat what others have said above, if you avoid the "latest and greatest" Intel i3, i5 and i7 processors which still attract a premium price, and stick to the older Intel Core2Duo and equivalent AMD Athlon/Phenom processors you'll find something that will do all you need it to.

Mumstheword

Thanks fwor