Right I've had the same PC since I left uni, which was 2002

Its so painfully slow, and I'm having to back things up to CD just to make space on my HD.

I've totally lost touch with PC componants over the years, I have no idea whats what now.

I want it to be a decent spec game machine, with plenty of space for all my tunes.

Don't mind building it myself.

Whats a good spec, and whats it going to cost me?

Ideally I want to keep my current HD, but not use it as a boot drive.

 

How much you looking to spend mate? i cant really do any suggesting until i know roughly what figure you have

Edit if you dont know whats what and what you want then you wont know how much to say will ya id say if you want a good gaming pc with decent parts then you will be looking at about 600 ish thats before you add a LCD and speakers etc, unless you dont need those?

 

as above.. are you gaming allot? editing videos pictures? or just surf, wright emails and listen to music?

 

First of all a hard disk dating back from 2002 would be PATA (IDE) and as such would be a performance restriction in a new pc when compared to the new generation high speed (SATA) drive with a decent amount of cache.

The only reason to build your own PC is if you want something specific, I generally do this for either high end pc's where performance is the consideration rather than costs or for a SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing)
Otherwise you would be better buying and saving the money

 

Your probably best buying from Dell tbh. Building machines isn't anywhere near as cost effective as it once was.

 

Cheers guys, didn't know prices have fallen that much!

Also didn't realise my HD wasn't compatible

Don't need a monitor or any speakers. Suppose buying a PC would be a good option as I'd get software etc...

Basically I use my PC for music and surfing. No video editing, or major picture work which requires loads of memory. Would like it to be able handle the lastest games without any problems.

What spec should I be looking to buy then?

Cheers again!

 

Core 2 Duo if you can, preferably a 7000 series one as they;ve got 4mb level 2 cache so will fly with a decent amount of RAM. I'd recommend 1gb minimum.


Check out Dell's outlet store if your only after a base unit, mouse keyboard etc with no screen/printer.scanner/dishwasher/shit bundled software

Some cracking deals pop up on there. Also check out the small business section of the store, you might be surprised as they seem to be practically giving away their PC and TFT bundles at the moment, plus usually double memory+ free delivery

 

I would go for a Intel mother board with Core 2 duo possessor. if you game a little, i would go for 1gb.. as a minimum, but 2 gb is not bad either remember to buy DDR2 ram=)
HD you should go for a SATA2 disk, it is quicker that the old IDE disk, and could transfer up to 3gb/s
Graphic card: it is 2 base models Nvidia and ATI. in gaming I would go for Nvidia, ati is not bad, but, have had ATI for a long time, and have now changed to NVidia and is happy with that.
as a good all around card, that you could play all the games on max I would go for Nvidia 9700 series. happy hunting for a new computer

 

double post

 

Core 2 duo E6600 is a cracking processor if you can afford it, that will plough through anything and for new games you will want 2gigs of ram to run new games smoothly, trust me im an avid gamer

 

Build your own purely if you want your own specification. With the bundle prices today from the likes of dell, in the long run it's better to buy one of them, and fix it yourself when it goes wrong.

My new spec machine will probably set me back near on 1k

 

You can get motherboards that support both IDE drives and SATA drives as I have one myself

I'm using my old 20gig IDE to store important files and then a SATA drive for a boot disk/games/apps etc

 

I've got 6 ide's and 1 sata in mine at the mo, SATA wasn't the thing when I built my machine a few years back, but the new one will probably have mainly SATA drives on it, and 2 external's for backup's

 

Cheers for the advice guys!

I looked at Dell yesterday, but not the small business section

Nice one!

 

Dan you and your damn HDD's

Whats this 1k machine your getting? dont tell me your buying prebuilt? is that just how much all the parts add up to?

 

my did cost 1200£ with a lot of discount

have 3x sata diskes now
but have a lot of IDE to in my old computer

 

1200 uk pounds?

 

Actually it is about 1130£ with the value of pounds today (looked at the bank here at the airport just.

But not so expensive though

 

Oh right cool

 

so do you play b2? or only bf2142?

or any other games

 

Only one i play online is 2142(and northern strike expansion) one of my fav games
Other game ive just bought is Far cry, its an old-ish game now but still fun to play with great graphics