[Dmon1Unlimited]

I really want to replace my old desktop, with a new one. ideally i would most likely use it for uni work (obviously), watching a lot of HD movies (also hope to get into creating my own), and casual gaming (which included a fair number of newly released games).

While i really want to make my own computer, im afraid ill have to reschedule that till later on due to circumstances.

Im not a fan of buying crap often so it would be nice to get something future proofed (no not impervious to becoming redundant just prolonging it) so i would assume that it would need to be high end to achieve this. I have a budget of about £1000 (technically £700). Ideally it would be good if it was a lot faster than my current pc which takes years to install programs.

Any suggestions/advice on any recommended desktops on the market right now? If it matters, i spend quite a lot of time on my current pc with many things open so perhaps factors may need to be taken into consideration e.g. heating, build quality?

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dmon1Unlimited)
I really want to replace my old desktop, with a new one. ideally i would most likely use it for uni work (obviously), watching a lot of HD movies (also hope to get into creating my own), and casual gaming (which included a fair number of newly released games).

While i really want to make my own computer, im afraid ill have to reschedule that till later on due to circumstances.

Im not a fan of buying crap often so it would be nice to get something future proofed (no not impervious to becoming redundant just prolonging it) so i would assume that it would need to be high end to achieve this. I have a budget of about £1000 (technically £700). Ideally it would be good if it was a lot faster than my current pc which takes years to install programs.

Any suggestions/advice on any recommended desktops on the market right now?

If your not planning on building one, than stay away from any of the known brands such as HP, Packard Bell and the like...............as well as PCworld, Comet, Currys, etc

You'll understand why when you compare pre-built machines and ther price equivalent from the high street shops, there's a big difference.

For £700 you can get a lot:
http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/La...3rdGeneration/

or try

http://www.dinopc.com

Then configure it to a better graphics card, or whatever you like..........but too tell us for some advice.

Obviously if you built it yourself you would get so much more

[Dmon1Unlimited]

though i suppose i can try and learn to build one now while i have the chance despite not liking being stuck within a timeframe

despite being american (dollars), ive been looking at this http://www.squidoo.com/building-gaming-pc

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dmon1Unlimited)
though i suppose i can try and learn to build one now while i have the chance despite not liking being stuck within a timeframe

Well it depends, takes about an hour or so to learn from youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIXAtNGGCw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls

You can than ask for advice here, it'll take a week or so to arrive and within a day should be up and running fully.

[Dmon1Unlimited]

(Original post by Iqbal007)
Well it depends, takes about an hour or so to learn from youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIXAtNGGCw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_56kyib-Ls

You can than ask for advice here, it'll take a week or so to arrive and within a day should be up and running fully.

thanks, ive heard people mention newegg before, ill be watching them now

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dmon1Unlimited)
thanks, ive heard people mention newegg before, ill be watching them now

Yeah, the first video is about parts and second is the actually building of it

Under £700 you can build a very good desktop and play anything on top settings for a good while.

[Mequa]

For HD movies, most modern desktops will be able to handle them. 1080p video needs a beefier system than 720p.

If you want to play Blu-Ray movies with a suitable drive, you'll need to make sure the hardware (video card in particular) supports the HDCP copy protection used, and you have suitable software.

For playing HD movies from a hard drive, you'll need plenty of disk space - you can get an external USB 2TB drive for around £100 if you run out of space. Note that downloading movies is usually illegal and you could get into trouble doing so - ISPs and copyright holders can track downloads. Of course I cannot recommend piracy at all on TSR.

For high-end gaming, you'll want a fast Core i5 or i7 CPU (or equivalent from AMD), and recent high-end video card from ATI or nVidia.

Basically, make sure you research the hardware closely before building your own. Also note that it will go out of date rapidly, so you may want to focus on expandability - such as being able to fit a new video card when they come out, if you want to play the latest games on it in years to come. (Note that the successors to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 may be out in a year or two, which are likely to redefine the standards for gaming then.)
As well as playing PC games, you could try emulators for other systems, such as Dolphin for Wii games (which will render them in true high-definition). This needs a high-spec PC.

Windows 7 is good for uni work, if you have 4GB of RAM or more (recommended) you'll want the 64-bit version.
You could also try dual-booting a Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint (these are free), which would give you the option of booting into either Windows or Linux. There are also virtual machines (e.g. VirtualBox) if you want to run Linux on top of Windows.

Windows 8 is out later this year, but in my opinion not really worth upgrading to on a desktop, unless you love the Windows Phone-style Metro interface (I'm not a fan) which completely replaces the Start Menu.

For office software (word processing etc.), you could either go with the paid-for Microsoft Office or try a free alternative such a LibreOffice (or both, of course). There is quite a bit of high-quality free software out there, if you want to save money.

[Iqbal007]

(Original post by Dmon1Unlimited)
thanks, ive heard people mention newegg before, ill be watching them now

Oh yeah, if your actually wanting to build, give the parts on here so we can check it over or find a better deal