£500-£850 Gaming PC?

dbtor

I'm tempted to go for http://www.hotukdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105359 - It's about 40 mins away so I could pick it up and seems fairly cheap to me - I could spend the spare £ to upgrade, but what would need upgrading? Tell me what you think :j

Psychofly

It's a good spec but personally speaking I wouldn't go for it. Mainly because if I was buying off a forum like that I'd expect a fairly hefty price benefit for taking the risk.

I would be more comfortable buying from an online store. However the price is good and with a 22" monitor attached to it would be an excellent gaming PC. The only thing I would suggest is at some point sticking in a bigger hard drive but I wouldn't do it straight away. 320GB will keep you going for quite a while.

dbtor

I already have a semi-decent monitor I could stick on it. I've arranged to go and have a look at it tonight, talk about how the warranty transfer works and see how it performs etc What questions do you think I should ask? Why are you selling it so cheap? Have there be any problems etc?

The 320GB hdd should keep me going, I can just stick my current HDD into it as a slave if I need extra space.

Psychofly

I wouldn't actually say it's massively cheap which is part of my problem with it. It's a good price and a good spec but to buy second hand off someone on a forum I'd expect a sizeable discount to cover the risk.

Maybe ask why he's selling it. How much use has it had. Why he didn't sell it on ebay rather than on a forum.

Remember that with an 8800 768MB unless you have a 24"+ monitor you're never going to benefit from the card. It'll be wasted performance and therefore wasted money. Is it worth the risk when for the same price you can buy new, with confidence and include a nice shiny new monitor which will really bring out the graphics in the games ? That's a decision you'd need to make yourself though.

It's not a BAD buy, I just think it's perhaps not right for what you want.

PistonBroke_2

This would be a nice system if your not thinking of Overclocking ! i still put the ATI 2900 pro in Because even though you will have to over clock it the Pro is just a down clocked 2900XT & that will more than perform with the 8800GTS series & in fact if you so desired it will actually push a bit further too i know a lot of people slate the 2900 but all the problems they had they fixed with the release of a new driver and these cards are now being quite highly regarded + they also have a new Card coming out soon too

But if you can't be fussed just stick the 8800 in you'll not be disappointed with either card but the 640 would be the better option

I also keep sticking the Antec Gaming case in which although is overkill it provides Excellent Cooling & looks stunning & if your Gaming in the Summer trust me you'll want Excellent cooling as theres nothing worse than being in Mid match & your Pc Rebooting for Over heat

I'm sure you can find those parts cheaper elsewhere i just like the site i get them from as they have an extensive forum to assist people with New builds and OC

On the Pre build your looking at on first looks that looks like a nice system make sure the case is well ventilated though as 8800's produce some heat & will cause shut-downs Etc. I just prefer to build my own that's all then at least i know what all the parts are and what they should/shouldn't be doing


OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99) MSI K9A Platinum Crossfire (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.99
(£76.36) £64.99
(£76.36) AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+ 3.00GHz (Socket AM2) - OEM £76.99
(£90.46) £76.99
(£90.46) Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (21119-00-40R) £137.99
(£162.14) £137.99
(£162.14) OcUK Huntkey 550W PSU £34.99
(£41.11) £34.99
(£41.11) Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKS) £55.99
(£65.79) £55.99
(£65.79) Samsung SH-S203BEBN 20x20 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£19.96) £16.99
(£19.96) Arctic Ceramique Thermal Compound (2.7g) £2.50
(£2.94) £2.50
(£2.94) Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case £61.99
(£72.84) £61.99
(£72.84)

Sub Total : £492.42
Shipping : £12.95
VAT : £88.44
Total : £593.81

dbtor

He was going to put it on ebay tonight, I don't mind taking risks if I get to save some money. I'll deffinately be carefull and find out whatever I can.

I guess i'll just have to get a 24"+ monitor then, I think it's time for a monitor upgrade anyway! :P Would monitor do you recommend? (~£100?)

Psychofly

If you're comfortable with the risk then yes it's a good buy. Good luck with it.

As for your monitor you're not going to get a 24" (or a 22") monitor for around £100. You can get 22" for about £150 from www.scan.co.uk. Go for one with DVI socket (and preferably with VGA too). The difference between VGA and DVI connections is quite noticeable. I got the 22" Cibox widescreen from Scan and I love it. I was at a LAN party at the weekend and random people kept stopping and commenting on how much they liked my monitor - I was like "it's only £150... it's a cheapie one. What you talking about ?!".

Cheapest 24" I've seen is about £260 again from Scan.

dbtor

Thanks for all your help guys, especially Psychofly - I really appreciate it =]

I'll let you know how the deal goes.

Cerro

I would check that the warranty transfers to you when you buy it - usually they don't. Dell can be very picky when it comes to this sort of thing, so i'd double check it!

Personally I don't like buying dell for gaming stuff as they tend to use their own versions of things, which happen to only fit in dell cases. That and you are never too sure, exactly what you have got or how good it is. It would be interesting to know what kind of chipset is being used. Personally I would stay away from Nvidia's chipsets, I have one of the 680i's and I can safely say it is the worse chipset I have ever experienced, Intel all the way for me. P35 motherboard would be ideal, Gigabyte DQ6 for overclocking, MSI's P35 Platnium is an excellent all round board and is also good if you want to overclock (but even if you don't its still a good board).

I hate my Asus Striker 680i board so much, im about to replace it with a P35 board. Cost me £200 and its been awful - excellent overclocking but its just a bad board with poor memory compatibility.

Ideal graphics card for you though. Especially at higher resolutions (above 1280x1024), thats where the memory and performance of the card really shine!

Psychofly

Ideal graphics card for you though. Especially at higher resolutions (above 1280x1024), thats where the memory and performance of the card really shine!

An 8800 768MB graphics card is NOT needed over 1280x1024. Unless you're running a 24"+ monitor even then most people could get away with the 640MB version. I hate to keep arguing with people that say this but it's a lot of money to spend on a card that's beyond what you need - particularly for DX9 gaming.

If you want proof search for benchmarks for the 8800 series of cards or for any articles from PC magazines. I've got a 320MB version running at 1680x1050 with all graphics up full on all my games and I've never yet hit a problem. Even new releases like the CoD4 and UT3 demos run like a dream. I know people with the 768MB (in fact 1 guy runs them in SLI) and he gets no better performance than I do because at that resolution the games don't overload the graphics card and don't run out of graphics memory so the benefit isn't really realised.


*EDIT*

Read this http://www.custompc.co.uk/labs/120851/nvidia-geforce-8800-series.html

As the 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra run at such high frequencies and have more RAM than the cheaper 8800-series cards, they're much better performers. However, you'll only see the benefit of an 8800 GTX or 8800 Ultra when gaming at 1,920 x 1,200 or higher, as the 320MB 8800 GTS and 640MB 8800 GTS are more than capable of playing any current game at lower resolutions.