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New PC for Home

Mr E

Mr E

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I thought I'd ask the sages on here....

My main machine at home has died and so I'm thinking of replacing it. I've recently upgraded the sound and video cards on it so could swap those into a new desktop.

I'm not that confident nowadays about building one for myself, but pointers as to reasonable machines or guides to self building would be appreciated.

It's generally used for playing Flight Sim by Master E, plus general surfing and office-type work. I also do a bit of mixing via Cubase (for convenience at home), but no recording or mastering. So nothing too dramatic on the performance front, just as long as I don't get whinging about cockpit displays freezing.

Any pointers, guidance, etc, would be most appreciated.

Thanks :thumb:
 
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I went with a dell Studio XPS (i7) from Dell's UK Outlet - £523 delivered with 12 months warranty (6GB RAM/640GB disk and 512MB graphics plus Vista64 included but no monitor). most outlet machines are cancelled orders or where a customer changes their mind on spec and is told to refuse delivery.

I'm a big user of DXO and Photoshop CS4 for photography and still can't stop smiling at the new level of performance in both apps. CS4 filters etc are now always instant and DXO processes 4 RAW images in parallel at about 11 secs each set of 4.

The self build option allows i7 to be overclocked for the gamers (Dell's BIOS prevents it) but you can't buy the components plus OS to make your own for £523!
 
No, you can't, but you can choose exactly what you want, end up with better quality components for less than pre-assembled price & are in a position to upgrqade easily (you know how to change bits if you put it together yourself).

I ended up with 2.15 Tb of fast HDD, 6Gb of 1600Mhz Ram, 1Gb ATI 4870 GPU, a high performance cooler(all set for overclocking), Firewire 800 (fab for downloading pictures & significantly faster than USB2 & perfect for all essential backups) plus all branded, high quality components (which also all have 12mths warranty; some longer)...

Overclocking is very easy these days and is encouraged by the processor designers, rather than being frowned upon as in the past. It is also not just for gamers(which I am not)- it will speed up video processing too.

The GPU is increasingly important for running software such as Photoshop as the software designers are starting to utilise them for some of the processing
 
Check out www.Aria.co.uk for component prices.
I've build 2 in the last year using their components & advice from helpfull people here!
 
As soon as you mentioned the flight SIM requirements you're into a different ballgame than your normal off the shelf PC from say Dell or something. .

That said, a high end GPU that cost upwards of £300 only a matter of monnths ago can be bought now for £50 and be perfectly adequate for the task in hand.

A gaming PC can be built for under £300 with some research and a bit of shopping around.
 
What's wrong with Dell? I use and supply their machines almost exclusively for the companies I work for and find they're pretty good these days. Very little (if any) crapware preinstalled, decent build quality and my account manager in Ireland is a great chap!

When I need to build a PC from components, it's usually from www.ebuyer.co.uk.
 
Dell. AAGGHHH. Never again.

It is on my black list together with Peugeot and Hotpoint as three companies products I will never ever buy again. In the case of Dell the reason is that the PC was deliberately designed and wired up to prevent the user replacing individual components with standard assemblies - and the Dell spare parts prices were so astronomic that it made more sense to throw the machine away (after a minor problem) and buy another...but this time a self build using std components. The way to go imho.
 
I recently bought a Toshiba laptop for £400-ish plus £50 for MS.

Good spec, works well. Worth looking at.
 
I'm on my 5th & 6th Dell laptops......

1st went wrong after 3 years... repaired and given to daughter

2nd had a fault after a year... repaired, now in use as a Bingo machine (!)

3rd stopped working after spilling 7-up into it... repaired and given to wife

4th has died (hard drive?) awaiting repair

5th now in daily use

6th is in a box tucked under my desk for use when the 5th breaks.....

7th is a mini one for travel.

Now... buying 7 Dells either means they're good, or they keep breaking. Don't know which. :doh:
 
75% of the Dell kit in our office (desktops/laptops) are broken, no joke.
 
Gareth said:
75% of the Dell kit in our office (desktops/laptops) are broken, no joke.
Click to expand...

I'd be looking at the office environment and people then.

We still have some 9 year old servers and Inspiron 7500 laptop that linger about because ..... they still work. Most of the Dell kit we've retired in the last few years has been working and if not it's usually because it's been cannibalised to double up storage in the systems being kept.

Dell are quite OK. I'm not particularly keen on their laptops - but that's a personal "just don't like them" thing.
 
We have 3 family Dells, all "refurbs" from the outlet.

Inspiron 17 lappie in its 4th year now passed to daughter 2 (no issues) - HDD and memory upgraded by me over the years. Dell supply a PDF showing how to take it apart and all the spares are freely available.

XPS lappie with daughter 1 on Architecture course tonking away on 3d work (came with 3 year onsite next day warranty included in case it dies on campus - not needed yet).

Studio XPS i7 for me - no faults yet. Looking inside this one, apart from the motherboard (which is standard size but runs Dells "no-overclocking" BIOS), all the bits are totally standard and able to be swapped if needed (including the PSU).

My wife's Sony VAIO lappie is different. So far paint has fallen off the media keys twice and we are on the 3rd keyboard - it also creaks and the screen wobbles - its a crock!

Sony's "after the 12 months warranty" care consists of an 09xx number where you pay to be told you must pay to send the machine to them and will then receive a quote. If you don't like the quote you pay to have the machine returned. They don't sell parts. (Never, ever again!).

At work we have a roughly 50/50 Dell and Lenovo estate (just under 300 in total all used "in the field" and on ocks in the offices) - the repair rate is about even between the two and miles lower than when we used Toshiba.

The free-fall-sensor drives spec'd in have proven worthwhile as we get very few disk failures now.
 
w124coupe said:
Sony's "after the 12 months warranty" care consists of an 09xx number where you pay to be told you must pay to send the machine to them and will then receive a quote. If you don't like the quote you pay to have the machine returned. They don't sell parts. (Never, ever again!).
Click to expand...

The worst service experience I have had in the last two decades involved a Vaio warranty repair. Premium product. Shoddy (very very shoddy) service backup IME. Took three months and a lot of effort to resolve.
 
Whichever brand or make you go with - you would be advised to stick with their BUSINESS range of machines. They may not look as pretty, but they will certainly last longer.

Sony don't make any business range of machines...
 
Dryce said:
We still have some 9 year old servers and Inspiron 7500 laptop that linger about because ..... they still work.
Click to expand...

Fate duly tempted apparently.

I have been informed one of the '9 year old servers' has had a disk go down. It will probably be retired for spares.
 
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