PC Review

[Maibs]

Hey guys,
New to the forum and not 100% sure that im posting in the right place, but anyway here goes.

i want to buy a gaming PC but have a rather restricted budget of
£700.00 ($1,200) as you can tell im from the UK.

ive been looking at a couple of systems on ebay that have caught my eye but im not advanced with whats good for gaming etc

here are the systems:

System 1 : £340.00 ($596)
AMD ATHLON XP 3200 CPU
ASUS A7S8X-MX Motherboard
1024 MB PC3200 DDR RAM
ATI RADEON 9600XT 256MB DDR AGP 8x 3D Graphics Card
160GB 7200RPM HARD DISK
16 X Dual Layer DVD +/- RW - DVD Rewriter, CD Rewriter & DVD Rom all in one
5.1 Channel Sound
10/100 Mbps Network Card Onboard
4 USB 2.0 rear ports plus front USB and sound ports


System 2: £599 ($1.051)
Blazing Fast AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual Core CPU
1024MB Dual Channel DDR RAM
16 x Dual Format Dual Layer DVD±RW
Maxtor 200GB S-ATA2 Hard Drive
1.44mb Floppy drive
Powerful GeForce 6200 TC 256MB PCI Express Graphics
6 X USB 2 (2 x front 4 x rear)
10/100 Lan
7.1 Surround 3D 8 channel surround audio

Those are the two that caught my eye and the first system being fairly cheap maybe i could update anything that it lacked and upgrade it myself.

If none of those system's would be any good, where should i look to get a nice gaming rig that could play most high-spec games.

Cheers for the help guys been reading the forums and theres a lot of intresting stuff here good work

 

[weringo]

Ok, neither of those systems are going to be any good for gaming as they both come with dirt cheap graphics cards. I would recommend ordering the parts seprately as this will save you some money. www.overclockers.co.uk is great for this.

MSI K8N Neo4-F nForce4 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-053-MS)
Price: £59.95 (£70.44 Including VAT at 17.5%)

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM)
Price: £204.95 (£240.82 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Leadtek GeForce 7800GT Extreme Edition 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-073-LT)
Price: £209.95 (£246.69 Including VAT at 17.5%)

GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)
Price: £49.95 (£58.69 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 160GB 1600JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-047-WD)
Price: £53.95 (£63.39 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Sony DWQ30AB 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Beige) - OEM (CD-045-SO)
Price: £24.50 (£28.79 Including VAT at 17.5%)

OcUK Value Floppy Drive - White (HD-000-OK)
Price: £5.50 (£6.46 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Total: £714

Still need power supply and case though

 

[Maibs]

Is there any pre-built PC's that would be good for gaming and somewhat in my limit (can probably stretch to £800-850) i dont really want to build my computer from scratch as i have little/no experience building, it would probably be easier/cheaper to build but i dont really wanna take that chance.

Do you have any links to decent gaming machines website?

Cheers for the help btw

 

[shenlingstyle]

It's not that difficult to build it yourself, a little read up and consulting the motherboard manual will get you through it. The first time it's really fun and will take a while but it's worth every little bit.

It usually can be cheaper as well.

I don't know of any pre-built PC companies but from the two systems you posted, the first one is definitely too old. The second one is quite nice but you need to be able to get a better graphics card. Your budget is plenty and you should be able to afford a 6800 GS, 6800GT, or even a 7800GT.

Graphics is very essential for gaming, so make sure you get a good one.

 

[Maibs]

So if i brought system 2:
Blazing Fast AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual Core CPU
1024MB Dual Channel DDR RAM
16 x Dual Format Dual Layer DVD±RW
Maxtor 200GB S-ATA2 Hard Drive
1.44mb Floppy drive
Powerful GeForce 6200 TC 256MB PCI Express Graphics
6 X USB 2 (2 x front 4 x rear)
10/100 Lan
7.1 Surround 3D 8 channel surround audio

And Brought a:
NVIDIA GEFORCE 6800GT AGP GRAPHICS CARD DDR3 256MB
would that work? and be a decent machine? and would it be easy to change.

 

[shenlingstyle]

For future purposes, find out what motherboard that system has. Would be good if it had a pci-express rather than agp slot.

You should also find out the brand of that ram, and also the brand of the psu, if possible.

If all's good, then yes just replacing the 6200 with a 6800GT is reasonable.

 

[Maibs]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-AMD-ATHLO...733907664QQcategoryZ52475QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Thats the second system i think it has all the info about what type of motherboard/RAM etc,

can you think of any thing i can add/update including the grapics card. like what would you do with that system

btw cheers for the help

EDIT: link doesnt seem to work, its 8733907664 in ebay search bar.

 

[shenlingstyle]

Hmm, I have heard of Asrock but I don't know how good they are. I also didn't know there were motherboards with both pci express and agp slots, but that's just my ignorance.

I'm even more unsure on the RAM, I can't tell what brand that is. But dual channel is good.

All in all, I still recommend you build your own computer. I mean with 1000 dollars you can get a really good system. There's lots of people here with experience that can guide you through it.

Anyways, if you really want to go through with this, the graphics card may not be the only thing you need to replace. The RAM is quite questionable, but if you're not overclocking then it shouldn't really be a problem. Despite the 500W, the power supply looks like a standard one that came with the case, which is again questionable. Power supplies can cause all kinds of problems for your pc, a quality one is highly recommended.

 

[Maibs]

Building a PC is now a option im thinking about, read a couple guides and it doesnt seem as complicated as i thought it would be, some of the stuff i have already done when upgrading a couple things on my old PC.

the other option would be the basic alienware system area-51 3500 for around £800-850 but the specs dont seem that great:

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 630 w/ HT Technology 3.0GHz 2MB Cache
Alienware® 480 Watt Power Supply
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB
128MB PCI-Express x16 NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6600 GT
80 GB Serial ATA 7,200 rpm w/ 8MB Cache
16/48x IDE DVD-ROM Drive - Black - w/Software MPEG-2 Decoder

Intel Pentium 4 Processors
PCI-Express Technology
Low-Latency Memory
Near Silent Operation

nForce 4 SLI AMD Motherboard
PCI-Express Technology
-------------------------------------------------
Will start to look around for parts at guides and decide if im going to build or not, unless anyone on here can lend there expert eye and give me a list of what ill need and links to them (lol sorry trying to get everyone else to do all the work)

Cheers for the help, also how good is the alienware in reflection to the price. and how well would it perform.

also the system that i want will be regualry upgraded so even if the alienware will do for now till i can upgrade.

 

[shenlingstyle]

1) AMD's outperform Intel's in gaming.

2) You need a good motherboard if you plan to upgrade in the future. PCI-express is pretty much mandatory, while SLI features are not. Good brands recommended around here are MSI, Gigabyte, and DFI.

3) The 6600GT is a nice average card, it will probably run the average game today on medium settings, most likely not highest. However, the 6800GS is really cheap for its performance and you can definitely afford it.

4) I don't know anything about Alienware so I can't comment

5) I'm guessing you are living in the UK. If that's the case you will need to do some research about which companies over there sell quality and cheap parts. I'm sure there was a thread around here that had some UK sites in it.

6) Hopefully someone will post some sites that guide you through computer parts and what to look for when buying them