Is this a good deal?

MoneySavingGenius_2

Hi, guys. Basically Ive decided to scrap my old pc in favour of a new one, and have been looking around for a good deal. I don't really need a monitor or Win XP, or any other bits an' bobs really. Just the pc base. I dont really want to put it together myself, as the last time I tried messing about inside my PC I bust the onboard sound on the MB.
I found Komplett to be quite cheap on components and their configurator prices aren't too bad: here is what I've come up with.

Komplett AMD Athlon 64 PCI Express
Article number: 307307
Stock status: 1 pcs 1972-02-21 (unconfirmed)
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHz Socket 939,
MSI K8N SLI Platinum, nForce4 SLI, ATX
TwinMOS PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB Dual Pack
Thermaltake Purepower Butterfly 480W
Cooler Master Centurion Case Black
Club3D Radeon X300SE 128MB DDR, 64bit
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB SATA
Pioneer DVDRW Dual Layer DVR-109/B Black
Sony Floppy Drive, 3,5" 1,44MB Black
PC with no operating system
Norman Internet Control, 1 year license
SoftThinks Installation/Recovery
PC box

Total: 674.38 + £6 delivery

What do you think? Can i get a similar pc cheaper?

Quonous

Looks good unless you want to game, as the X300SE, well, sucks. As for value, seems to me pretty good. Komplett are very competitive on price and they can't charge *that* much to put a system together. I mean, I takes like 20 minutes. I'd want a better graphics card, but that's just me.

wolfman

Hmmm, looks ok initially, but it's obvious where they've cut corners, or if not that, selected components which aren't quite the best.

AMD64 and the MSI mobo, a top choice, very good performance. Hard drive too, very nice. However...

The graphics card is quite cheap compared with the average card on the market. I'm also not a fan of thermaltake components, I'm sure you'll find a lot of people agree. Coolermaster, while they make great cases, the one mentioned is the bottom of the line model.

You mention not wanting to build it yourself. I can understand this, it can be quite daunting, and a little scary incase anything goes wrong. Kind of difficult as my initial advice would be to build it yourself. I can't really suggest any others though, so all I can give are my thoughts...

It is, for the price, a reasonable deal. The only changes I would make would be:

CPU Cooler - It doesn't mention one, so I assume it's the stock cooler. I just find it a little noisy. The Thermalright XP-90 (or 120) is the best on the market combined with a Panaflo (or similar) fan.

Power Supply - A decent power supply is important. The Thermaltake would be ok, but ideally I'd go for a Tagan or Enermax.

Case - You'd easily get away with a 380W PSU (power supply) so the Antec Sonata (380W PSU included) is a perfect case, being silent and looking rather cool.

Graphics Card - Ok, you're probably not too bothered but I'd at least spend £70-100 on the Graphics card than the (roughly) £45 card that's mentioned, just to balance the system out a little.

Also, the DVD Writer, I don't really know much about the Pioneer, but the NEC is generally the best around and very cheap.

Plus, I don't know if you use one, but I never use floppy drives any more so don't find them neccessary.

Just my thoughts.

Curry_Queen

wolfman wrote:

Plus, I don't know if you use one, but I never use floppy drives any more so don't find them neccessary.

I thought that too so didn't bother installing one when I built my son's PC, until I needed to make a set of boot disks that is :rolleyes: ... luckily I had a couple knocking about from old systems so just connected one up temporarily to do the job

BTW, that system seems a bit on the pricey side to me considering I built a reasonable gaming machine about 6 mths ago for roughly £400

wolfman

...bootable CD's

Curry_Queen

wolfman wrote:

...bootable CD's

:doh::doh::doh::doh::doh::doh:

Tell me more!!! Is it really as simple as just writing to CD instead of floppy? It can't be can it :wall: ... please tell me it's a really, really complicated process which is why I never thought of it or attempted it before :rotfl:



Preferably in words of one syllabul until I've had my intake of :coffee:

wolfman

It's not too hard. It's not much harder than making a bootable floppy. You may need to check the BIOS, to see if the computer has been set to boot off the CD ROM.

This is the best guide I know of:
http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/

It's not really a "beginners" guide, but is easy to follow if you understand the jargon. If you simply want to create a single DOS boot disc though you can do so in most cd creating applications such as Nero (try the trial version), CDR Win etc...

Another great thing you'll find regarding cd booting, is that you can get versions of Linux already installed on cd. One example is Knoppix. It boots and runs off the cd, and doesn't affect your hard drive or Windows installation, so is a great way of trying out Linux, but without having to install anything. It's also handy if something happens to your Windows Installation (corruption etc...), as you just pop the Knoppix cd in, it boots up Linux, and you can backup any important files from your hard drive.

Along with Norton Ghost (or similar) I'd say it's one of the most essential things to have as you've got an operating system on a disc.

Curry_Queen

Thanks, I've bookmarked the link to read through properly later. I guessed there'd be more to it than simply writing to CD which is probably why I avoided doing it previously. I've been wanting to try Linux for some time now, and did actually partition my current HDD with the intention of installing something like Mandrake and having a dual boot system, but never got round to it. Knoppix sounds like something I wouldn't mind taking a look at sometime though.

I did set the BIOS to check the CD drive for bootable media, although a quick look at that link seems to go a bit more indepth than what I did, so I'll check it out later when my brain is in gear

I need to spend less time on MSE and more time sorting out stuff on the PC's