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The PC Buying Advice Thread mk II

Post here if you're looking advice on buying a new laptop or desktop for friendly, impartial advice from the Technology and Computers community :smile:

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Reply 1

Iqbal007

Sooo soon, can't believe a great error has ended :cry2:

Also laptops? I thought we had the laptop section for that and its own thread :s-smilie:

It can get confusing when speaking about the components as they are different.

It is a great brand, very well known for reliability............... in terms of price its pretty much on spot, battery life is good on it.........the main thing about Lenovo is that they tend to weigh a bit more than their rivals.

The cheapest, reliable maker of a laptop is Asus http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/ASUS_K55A-SX376H_red_1337331.html
Though with 4gb of ram, half the space and lower battery life.

I remember a few months ago, you couldn't get a i5 around that £450 range unless you wanted to get a acer.

Also the tray fan isn't necessary, maybe consider getting some sort of thing to sit it on, with the middle being empty so the air can flow well.

Also the hd4000 is good enough to run the games you wanna play, possibly Assassins creed but on low settings.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 2

username612415

Original post by Iqbal007

Sooo soon, can't believe a great error has ended :cry2:

Also laptops? I thought we had the laptop section for that and its own thread :s-smilie:

It can get confusing when speaking about the components as they are different.

It does, and that's still the first port of call, but the last thread got used for laptop advice on occasion :yep:

Reply 3

Iqbal007

Well it depends, what your looking for, I can't say much about life, Lenovo has the better reliability and specs.
The new haswell chips are out on laptops in a few months, though will be much more costly.

Reply 4

SuperFantasticB

Is this pc (from DinoPC) good value for money? Will I be able to get a better deal elsewhere (or build it for significantly less)? Also, I long before I'll have to upgrade it?

CPU: Intel Core I5 4670K (Overclocked to 4.3 Ghz)
Cooling System: Xigmatek Dark Knight Nighthawk SD1283
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87-HD3
RAM: 8GB Corsair 1600 MHz Vengeance
Hard Drive: 1TB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s
Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB
PSU: 550W Corsair VS
Case: Zalman Z11 Plus
Operating System: Windows 8 (64-bit)

Price: £748.00 Including VAT

Reply 5

Iqbal007

It should be, new chips tend to take time before they reach the laptop market.

Original post by SuperFantasticB

Is this pc (from DinoPC) good value for money? Will I be able to get a better deal elsewhere (or build it for significantly less)? Also, I long before I'll have to upgrade it?

CPU: Intel Core I5 4670K (Overclocked to 4.3 Ghz) £193
Cooling System: Xigmatek Dark Knight Nighthawk SD1283 £30
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87-HD3 £100
RAM: 8GB Corsair 1600 MHz Vengeance £53
Hard Drive: 1TB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s £52
Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA £13
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB £162
PSU: 550W Corsair VS it seems like a US psu, so cx range maybe around £50
Case: Zalman Z11 Plus £50
Operating System: Windows 8 (64-bit) £70 oem version

Price: £748.00 Including VAT

Well my total is adding up over the price, so yeah it seems like a pretty good deal..............dinopc tend to be the cheapest but usually because they offer less customisation if you want something different.

Reply 6

username1129244

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 7

Iqbal007

Original post by NedStark

Price: £672.89 (From DinoPC)

I'm looking for a PC for gaming, not high end games but I do want to run games like Shogun 2, Company of Heroes, Rome 2 Total War (when it comes out) on high-ultra settings. Will this PC do? Any suggestions for improvements would be appreciated, my budget was £600-£700 but I can push it to £750 if need be.

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570 remember it cant be overclocked, and also new haswell chips are out
Operating System: Windows 8 (64-bit)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77-HD3 z77 is pointless as they are overclocking mobo's given you have a cpu which allows such a thing and also you wont be able to upgrade in the future without replacing the entire mobo as they changed sockets with the next range of cpus from intel
Memory: 8GB DDR3 1333mhz (2x4GB) more than enough, could go a bit faster
Hard Drive: 500GB S-ATAIII 6.0Gb/s should be enough, but do encourage 1tb just in case
Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB very very good, about 40.2 fps on a full hd screen on ultra, beware shogun has frame drop issues when you zoom into battles :s-smilie:

Should be fine with Rome 2 total war as it should be a lot more graphics and cpu heavy
Sound card: Onboard 7.1 Audio
Accessories: Internal Card Reader
Case: EZCool Mesh ATX (the cheapest case they had) personally dont recommend cheap cases, due to space, looks, adding in extra fans, etc
PSU: 550W Corsair VS

The only major thing you can improve on is to wait a while for the gtx760, prices should drop for the gtx660 or bring the gtx760 price in line with the gtx660.

Reply 8

username1129244

Original post by Iqbal007

The only major thing you can improve on is to wait a while for the gtx760, prices should drop for the gtx660 or bring the gtx760 price in line with the gtx660.

Thanks for the comments.

So what motherboard do you recommend I get? I'm not looking to upgrade any time soon (if ever), if I do it'll be in 5 years. These are the possible choices from that website:

Intel H61
Gigabyte H61MA-D2V
Asus P8H61-MX USB3
Intel B75
Gigabyte B75M-D2V
Asus P8B75-M LX
Intel Z77
Gigabyte Z77-HD3
Asus P8Z77-V LX2
Gigabyte Z77-D3H
Gigabyte Z77X-D3H

Also, is overclocking worth it because I'm not an expert and I don't think I'll need it. Would 3.40GHZ be enough?

Reply 9

Iqbal007

Original post by NedStark

Well by the time you upgrade, expect to get buy a new motherboard and cpu and gpu next time, as things will have significantly have changed.

Also ideally check the motherboard individually on something like ebuyer, like the specs.......the pci slots, the number of usb's, usb 3.0 support, sata ports(used for hdd, ssd and dvd players), etc

Well it is enough for the time being, maybe for future use like if anything in the future requires more power, but by then you'd upgrade.
To overclock you need the k version cpu's and a z77 motherboard, you could learn to overclock, though better to save the money for the future........

Reply 10

username310124

I have about £500-£600 to get a new PC (laptop died :colonhash:

) that will be able to play Rome 2. I dont want to be building one if I can help it either so im basically looking for the best high street deal.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 11

Iqbal007

Original post by CB91

I have about £500-£600 to get a new PC (laptop died :colonhash:

) that will be able to play Rome 2. I dont want to be building one if I can help it either so im basically looking for the best high street deal.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Well if you're looking for the best deal, you can forget high street :rofl:

I'm guessing you need a new screen, etc the link below is good, however you got to change the graphics card in the customisation screen, to something like a gt650 or 7770hd or higher ideally...........and any other things you want, like double the HDD for £13 extra, a better nicer looking case.
http://www.dinopc.com/shop/pc/Fabro-i5-3470-Package-93p1571.htm

Reply 12

username310124

Original post by Iqbal007

Well if you're looking for the best deal, you can forget high street :rofl:

I didnt really mean the highstreet, just didnt know how to word it. :colondollar:

Im just basically looking for an already built tower that wont be too hard to get hold of.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 13

Iqbal007

Original post by CB91

I didnt really mean the highstreet, just didnt know how to word it. :colondollar:

Im just basically looking for an already built tower that wont be too hard to get hold of.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Well check out the link............they build it and send it to you.

Reply 14

Appeal to reason

I'm going to need a computer for uni, I'd like to go for a self built PC so I can use it for gaming - not overly enthusiastic about this generation of consoles (for the price I may as well go for a PC which will be upgradable), but I don't particularly like the idea of lugging a desktop to and from uni every holiday, especially if I end up needing to get the train - a laptop would be much better for this sort of thing.
However, laptops aren't really great for gaming, so I'd probably have to go for a console. A console and a laptop would still be much easier to transport than a PC and monitor.

So laptop + console (I'll hang onto my 360 for now, maybe get a PS4 when release), or a gaming PC? Difficult decision to make.

Unsure about budget right now, looks like it will be around £600, but I may be getting a prize which would allow me to increase that by a few hundred more.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 15

ShutUpLegs

I was originally looking to buy a laptop but I decided that there wasn't an awful lot of point at my budget. I'm after a desktop PC for around the £300 mark for general browsing, watching videos online, word processing etc. but I'd also like to be able to run Photoshop and Illustrator smoothly so I was thinking of going for quad core and probably 8GB of RAM. I'd like a fair amount of space so there's room for a Linux partition and I can store all my lossless music and hi-res photos so probably looking at 1TB HDD. I won't need a soundcard as I'll be using a DAC (which reminds me it'll need at least one USB2.0 as opposed to 3.0) but I don't know if a graphics card will be necessary.

I am happy to build my own but it's a bit overwhelming trying to decide on every single component. Otherwise I've been looking at some on ebay which look like they may be good but I'm no expert, links follow here, here and here

Do those look decent or would I get better value for money if I built my own?

Reply 16

Iqbal007

Original post by SamHedges

Your budget is extremely low :/..................also none of those pc's look like they come with Windows.
Everything on those links are basically amd quadcores, with everything else being the cheapest components they can find.

Reply 17

ShutUpLegs

Original post by Iqbal007

I've just been picking my own on ebuyer, could you look over this and see if it looks any better please? Bare in mind that I already have an Asus GT630 graphics card to use. I'm not bothered about Windows, I'll run Linux on it until I feel I really need it and then I'll get another HDD or potentially an SDD for all the system files. I have all the peripherals I need knocking around and I might even put off buying the monitor for a while. Thanks for the feedback.

Reply 18

Iqbal007

Original post by SamHedges

I've just been picking my own on ebuyer, could you look over and see if it looks any better please? Bare in mind that I already have an Asus GT630 graphics card to use. I'm not bothered about Windows, I'll run Linux on it until I feel I really need it and then I'll get another HDD or potentially an SDD for all the system files. I have all the peripherals I need knocking around and I might even put off buying the monitor for a while. Thanks for the feedback.