Heres a challenge for you.

christophicus

Hey guys ,im wondering if you can help me out. My moms partner is thinking about getting a new PC.He is looking at a Dell with the following specs:

2.8 ghz P4 with HT
512 MB of ram
80GB HDD
Onboard graphics
onboard sound
17" flatpanel moniter.
Mouse and keyboard.

This all comes for just over €600. I want to try and make a good alternative to the Dell so that it can be easilly upgraded in the future. Obviously i wont be able to put together a simular package for a simular price so i am just going to concentrate on making the tower.I dont even know if this will be possible.

So basically i need the willing among you to help me pick cheap value for money parts. Now i know the first thing that springs to mind is to go the AMD route but im very much thinking of going for the intel pentium D 805 as it is supposed to be an extraordinary overclocker.

Now to give you an idea of what the machines primary functions will be.It will mainly be used for browsing the web,sending/recieving emails storing music and word processing.There will be little to no gaming done on this machine so a graphics card is not necisary.


Any and all help will be very much appreciated aswell as everyones oppinions.

Cheers
Chris

Anti

yeah the 805 is a good cpu and will go to 4ghz. not bad eh.komplett have some good prices onpc kits at the moment. but the monitor will be the hard part, as getting a 17" for under 200e isnt that easy

christophicus

Yeah i know thats why i said dont bother worrying about the moniter cause there is no way that i would be able to get it into the budget . Do you have some links to those PC kitts your talking about??

Rollo Tamasi

hey chris, check out WMS down on the Mall in Waterford for computer parts.
I haven't been in there for a while but i have made 3 pc's from parts they sell. A very rough guess at price would be
1gb Ram - E100
120gb HD - E120
Asus Mobo for about 80
standard graphics card 128mb for about 70

They rarely have any nice cases thou.

they do 17inch flat screens as well at just over E200 iirc.

christophicus

Cheers man, I had a look in there before and their prices didnt seem too competitve when compared to online sites,though that was a while ago,ill check in there soon.

requiem1

if thats literally all he's doing with it it's not a bad choice, if you're really worried about the future you might want to take the arrival of windows vista into a bit of consideration. From what i know vista is very graphic intensive as an operating system and none of intels onboard graphics to date offer support for it. From the running of the beta versions i've seen its incredibly memory intensive so the more the better and also the coding runs alot in parallel so HT is a good help but a duo-core processor does help even more but for the sake of what it sounds like he's going to be doing the rig seems fine, one thing though make sure that processor is a 6 series pentium 4 my friend got screwed out the other week by dell with a five series. best of luck:)

Static M.e.

You said all opinions welcome so...

I think he should go with the dell. For €600 euro its a good pc.

Whats not listed is (Puts on Dell Salesman Cap*)
The customer support you get with Dell.
If he has a serious HW issue he has a phone number he can call where he will get the problem resolved, repaired, replaced.
I stop shop to dl all the software he needs to fix his Dell.
If the pc goes tits up and your not around to support him thats going to cost him extra.
If the PC goes tits up, as far as he is concerned, you built the PC its your fault.
Other random stuff, a valid MS OS licence will have to taken into consideration, if for some reason you use a illegal copy and that copy runs into issue's down the road. You are going to have to explain to him why his PC is not working and then go through all the trouble of fixing it again.

Now dont get me wrong im all for building your own PC but when it comes to anyone else, including my parents, family, friends I send them all to Dell. Its quite simply not worth the hassle. I built PC's for friends for a long time and it always came back to bite me in the ass. They expect you to drop everything and fix it for them, the amount of retarded phone calls I use to recieve..

At least now when they have a problem and you fix it for them so are actually greatefull !! :eek:

I know its not what you were looking for in an answer and I can appreciate how you are trying to get a better pc for your Mums partner. But I still think you should consider it.

GL



*I Dont work for Dell

christophicus

Cheers static I did ask for your oppinions and i am very glad you gave it to me i will definatly take what you said into consideration. Requiem thanks for that too,although i still think i want to build a pc and not go with the dell seeing that the particular dell is using fairly old technology now.

Please give me more oppinions.

christophicus

So so far the general concensus is that he should get the dell?? I've heard mixed reports about wheather or not dells customer service is actually any good. Static i can see where you are coming from about teh hassle that can be associated with building a Pc dor someone else but I am willing to out up with that i think.

Im just after specing up the parts on Komplett to get a general idea of how much the system will cost.And using the cheapest parts I could actually spec a computer for around the same price as the dell,I couuldnt believe that!!!!

Ok so heres the way im thinking of heading with the allternative to the dell.

Pentium D 805
A 1 gig stick of corsair value select.
Samsung spinpoint p120s 250GB SATA2

Those are the components which i know are decent ,but feel free to suggest alternatives which might be better suted to this pc.

Ok as for a mobo I want one thats a very good overclocker, and it needs to have onboard graphics and sound (these dont need to be very good graphics or sound),it needs to have at least an X8 agp slot,but preferably a X16 PCI-E slot, and at least 1 SATA2 connection.

As for a PSU i am completely at a loss as to what to look for ,I reackon a 400 watt PSU should be ok??

I need suggestions for a case aswell and also a DVD rewriter.

Againn all help,suggestions,critcisms are appreciated.

cheers
chris

Anti

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

hey chris, check out WMS down on the Mall in Waterford for computer parts.
I haven't been in there for a while but i have made 3 pc's from parts they sell. A very rough guess at price would be
1gb Ram - E100
120gb HD - E120
Asus Mobo for about 80
standard graphics card 128mb for about 70

They rarely have any nice cases thou.

they do 17inch flat screens as well at just over E200 iirc.

stay the **** away from WMS their **** and way over priced, and most of they stock is from pc world

www.komplett.ie is where you will find all the parts you want, if you want true overclocking get a amd opteron 144 or 146, when overlcocked their faster then the pentiumd and fx60, but it means watercooling it, so everything you need is there. ill post a example:


case + 350 psu http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=302683
cpu http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=317093
mobo http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=303314
ram http://www.shop4memory.com/products/ddr-ram.asp
graphics card http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=306714
dvd rw dl http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=314091
hard drive http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=307913

its a basic pc that will play games fine. but if you want to overclock your gonna need to get better ram.

works out at about 600

christophicus

The Pentium D 805 overclocks to 4.1 ghz!!!!!,it is safe to say it is better then the opteron 144. Ill check out that PC you have specified now.

So does anyone know of any good cheap MOBO with integrated graphics aswell as sata2 and a PCI-E slot???

cheers
chris

uberpixie

christophicus wrote:

The Pentium D 805 overclocks to 4.1 ghz!!!!!,it is safe to say it is better then the opteron 144. Ill check out that PC you have specified now.

cheers
chris

In all honesty just by the dell.

If the pc ever goes titsup, it's dell that get the blame not you.

You are not going to build a full system cheaper than dell, with a very low budget full stop.

You only see the real savings of self building when you are re using spare parts or are spending about 1000 euro plus.

Sub 600 euro dell is the cheapest option for what your ma's fella needs.

Dell machines are also very quiet, prob a lot quieter than what you can build on a limited budget.

In all honesty all they guy reall needs is a cheap dell box: you wont be upgrading more than a bit of Ram, a new hard drive or a new CD rom drive.

You don't need the latest and greatest tech to look at the web and send some emails: a box from 5 years ago does that well.


Just save up and wait for the day you can make your own pc
(you seem very much geared towards building than buying and I think it's more because you want to play with parts!)

christophicus

Hmmmmm you seem to be increadibly perseptive , and increadibly right!!! I Think i will give him and idea of the kind of system i can make him,even if it costs a little bit more and then let him decide what he would prefer.

Cuddlesworth

You cant overclock on dell motherboards.

christophicus

Actually you can overclock some Dell pcs,take a look here if you are interessted http://forums.techpowerup.com/archive/index.php/t-2164.html
.Thanks anyway.

conzy

I agree with buying Dell for a basic PC

But I wouldnt even consider one for anything more than email/web/office ......

sixpack's little hat

christophicus wrote:

Now to give you an idea of what the machines primary functions will be.It will mainly be used for browsing the web,sending/recieving emails storing music and word processing.

Chris

Why would it need to be overclocked for surfing and sending mail ??

Diarmuid

Get the Dell. Less hassle and it's not your computer. Too much tinkering and messing the other option. And you are not going to need to overclock it :-)

Diarmuid

Get the Dell. Less hassle and it's not your computer. Too much tinkering and messing the other option. And you are not going to need to overclock it :-)

christophicus

No i was just thinking in terms of getting a good value for money prcessor that in the future when the computer begins to grind to a halt i could over clock it.

Cuddlesworth

christophicus wrote:

Actually you can overclock some Dell pcs,take a look here if you are interessted http://forums.techpowerup.com/archive/index.php/t-2164.html
.Thanks anyway.

Urghh, windows overclocking sux.

Rollo Tamasi

anti wrote:

stay the **** away from WMS their **** and way over priced, and most of they stock is from pc world

so they stock from pc world do they? that is a genius plan and i'm guessing they make big money on that. I know who they get their stock from, stop talking smack.

christophicus

i didn say there was much point in overclocking them i was just saying that it is possible.

SeanW

Komplett does assemble their own computers, you simply have the option of buying parts or buying a full PC.

If I were you I'd consider a custom build from Komplett itself.

Dells support is horrible. And they overcharge for anything you add on. I'd only reccommend them for a bulk order for a large organisation. Home users should avoid them like the plague.

christophicus

^^^Really?? This is interesteing you are the first person to advise me to go against DELL.Whats wrong with their support?,that would br the main reason that i would go with them over building a machine myself.

uberpixie

christophicus wrote:

^^^Really?? This is interesteing you are the first person to advise me to go against DELL.Whats wrong with their support?,that would br the main reason that i would go with them over building a machine myself.

Their tech suport aint the best.

It can be really good in that: mates family got a dell, monitor went gammy, rang up and got the monitor replaced by courrier the next day.

It can be really bad in that: friend of mine bought a dell: his PC didn't have half the stuff in it he ordered and he had to wait 6 months for an engineer to come out with the parts he was missing. The only good thing they did was put in a better gfx card in than what he ordered by mistake!:eek:

All in all though, several people I know who have dell's including my parents at home who have a PC for my brother's and my da has a dell laptop have never had any major problems with dell pc's, and have had dells happily chugging away in the corner for the last 2-4 years.

They make ok stuff at a very cheap price. Tis not fantastic but it's not terrible either.

Again a dell places all the blame on dell and not you if anything goes wrong.

If something goes wrong and you don't know why with a self build your ma and her fella won't be very chuffed with you and prob will be very happy if they are waiting over a month to rma a part!

Stick to the easy life :-) In a year or two when you are not living at home and they need the PC fixed you can always tell em to ring dell ;-)

christophicus

Yeah i suppose your right.Ill give him the option anyway though he will probably go for the dell. Thats fairly shocking with the support they gave your friend though!! My dad has a fairly old dell and they didnt give him the best of support ,when his pc kept having a heart attack and orane and blacl stipres appeared on teh screen and the computer would crash.

That Guy 901

Is it just me or am I the only one here that likes Dell? I have a D5000 w/ 1gb ram and 3ghz and upgraded 128mb 6600GT. And its on silent mode on the bio's. Anything that I try to do with it it handles perfectly. Playing FEAR with some music on and nearly highest gfx is a delight. I got all this for €900 and I would definately buy Dell again.

GrumPy

That Guy 901 wrote:

Is it just me or am I the only one here that likes Dell? I have a D5000 w/ 1gb ram and 3ghz and upgraded 128mb 6600GT. And its on silent mode on the bio's. Anything that I try to do with it it handles perfectly. Playing FEAR with some music on and nearly highest gfx is a delight. I got all this for €900 and I would definately buy Dell again.

For €900, you could custom build a SAVAGE pc, much more future prove than your dell machine.

christophicus

That Guy 901 wrote:

Is it just me or am I the only one here that likes Dell? I have a D5000 w/ 1gb ram and 3ghz and upgraded 128mb 6600GT. And its on silent mode on the bio's. Anything that I try to do with it it handles perfectly. Playing FEAR with some music on and nearly highest gfx is a delight. I got all this for €900 and I would definately buy Dell again.

Did you get a moniter with that?? Thats not a bad PC but as ireish grumpy said you would be able to buy amuch more future proof system for that price,although i dont theink it would be thaat much better when directly compared to the dell.

DemonOfTheFall

christophicus wrote:

The Pentium D 805 overclocks to 4.1 ghz!!!!!,it is safe to say it is better then the opteron 144. Ill check out that PC you have specified now.

So does anyone know of any good cheap MOBO with integrated graphics aswell as sata2 and a PCI-E slot???

cheers
chris

I think you're a little bit confused about overclocking mate, there's no such thing as a guaranteed overclock. Tom's hardware got 4.1 Ghz out of a single chip and suddenly half the people on the net think it's guaranteed.

What's the point overclocking a business PC that's only going to be running word/excel/wmp ? Business = Stability. Even if you get a super solid prime stable overclock for him, it's not as solid as a chip running at stock speeds.

By building it yourself you're costing him extra money, costing yourself a lot of time, putting his business at a bigger risk of long downtime (you dont have a warehouse of spares in your back garden do you?), and not really gaining him anything. By the time a 2.8Ghz processor can't do what he needs it to do the whole rest of the system will be worthless anyway and he'll be wanting a brand new one.

There's also the unspeakable risk of running a fake copy of XP on a business machine, I'm sure he'd be a whole lot less than happy with you if he got hammered with a fine from that. So be ready to add 200 bills onto your estimates for a legit copy of XP Pro.

It really just isn't viable to try and beat dell in the <€1000 market, they have it sewn up with their free flat panels and legit MS licenses.

TerrorFirmer

christophicus wrote:

No i was just thinking in terms of getting a good value for money prcessor that in the future when the computer begins to grind to a halt i could over clock it.

You already said it was for basic net use and office processing - a 500mhz machine won't "grind to a halt" doing that, even though that speed processor was king about eightyears ago - so I hardly think a 2.8 Dell is going to get out of date for office tasks in this or even the next decade.

I know people who still use 400mhz machines with win98 for web browsing and its perfectly fine.

Building it yourself, having to deal with any hassle that might arise and ultimately realising there is absolutely zero point in getting what you are talking about is not a good option.

Is it just me or am I the only one here that likes Dell? I have a D5000 w/ 1gb ram and 3ghz and upgraded 128mb 6600GT. And its on silent mode on the bio's. Anything that I try to do with it it handles perfectly. Playing FEAR with some music on and nearly highest gfx is a delight. I got all this for €900 and I would definately buy Dell again.

I have a 16 month old dell pc and with a few minor modifications I'm running Battlefield 2 and FEAR at 1280x1024 with options on no problems. I find that as long as you buy a top spec Dell pc at the time of purchase, it'll last - no point going mid range as its outdate way too fast though. I got a 3.4ghz p4 when I first got the pc, and even as it came, Christmas 2005, it was a 3.4ghz, 1gb Ram and a 128mb X800se card with 17 inch tft - for 1200.

That wasn't bad at all for back then and now its got 1.5gb of ram and a 256mb x800 and a new hd, which as above, is perfectly adequate for playing new games at a decent level and it only cost me 100 for the gfx and ram upgrade.

All I have to do is upgrade the card again in a few months time and it's still going to be a great gaming pc....I definately think Dell, if you get a good price, are viable for gamers, it worked for me!

christophicus

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

I think you're a little bit confused about overclocking mate, there's no such thing as a guaranteed overclock. Tom's hardware got 4.1 Ghz out of a single chip and suddenly half the people on the net think it's guaranteed.

What's the point overclocking a business PC that's only going to be running word/excel/wmp ? Business = Stability. Even if you get a super solid prime stable overclock for him, it's not as solid as a chip running at stock speeds.

By building it yourself you're costing him extra money, costing yourself a lot of time, putting his business at a bigger risk of long downtime (you dont have a warehouse of spares in your back garden do you?), and not really gaining him anything. By the time a 2.8Ghz processor can't do what he needs it to do the whole rest of the system will be worthless anyway and he'll be wanting a brand new one.

There's also the unspeakable risk of running a fake copy of XP on a business machine, I'm sure he'd be a whole lot less than happy with you if he got hammered with a fine from that. So be ready to add 200 bills onto your estimates for a legit copy of XP Pro.

It really just isn't viable to try and beat dell in the <€1000 market, they have it sewn up with their free flat panels and legit MS licenses.

I may not know all there is to know about overclocking but i was not confused in waht i said. I know there is no such thing as a garunteed overclock( apart from some companies which actually garentee their products to overclock to a certain level.lol) and i never said that there was ,i was just saying that they managed to overclock it that far without having to resort to drastic measures such a phase change cooling.

Although the pc will mainly be used for business related programs the pc is not actually going to be used in a business so you dont really have to factor in the risk of the computer going down or the risk of using an illegal copy of XP(which of coarse i would never do.lol)

But yes i do take your point that he may as well go for the dell,I was just thinking in terms of building a machine that has a good price/preformance.

DemonOfTheFall

christophicus wrote:

The Pentium D 805 overclocks to 4.1 ghz!!!!!,it is safe to say it is better then the opteron 144. Ill check out that PC you have specified now.

That would be where you implied a bit of a guaranteed overclock.

I'm sure theres a whole lot of pentium Ds out there that melt long before they can even see 4.1ghz on the horizon...

christophicus

I dont think that implied a garanteed overlclock.I was saying that it has been overclocked to 4.1ghz .I dont really see how you can extract me saying its garanteed out of that.

zilog_jones

You know there are other people besides Dell who make good PCs in that kind of price range!

HP and Fujitsu-Siemens also make decent basic home/business PCs, and unlike Dell they both sell AMD-based systems - so with them you can get a better processor for less, a quieter PC, and as most use ATI X200/X300-based chipsets - which have a much bigger chance of being able to run Vista than crappy Intel graphics.

christophicus

Hmmm that is a good point i will have to look into this.Do they actually build good quality products??

conzy

If I had to buy a OEM PC, I would go for a HP, they make some very nice AMD systems, some even have ASUS boards and can be overclocked with a BIOS update:)

christophicus

Cool.Stupid question coming up but waht does OEM stand for,it has never been properly explained to me.

zilog_jones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_equipment_manufacturer

Using OEM in conzymaher's reference isn't really correct though, as HP/Dell/Whoever design/manufacture the case themselves and other certain parts.

christophicus

Thats what i was thinking ,It caused me to get a little confused. Ok so what companies would do good cheap pc's so far i have dell,HP and fujitsu.

conzy

http://www.ankermann-pc.com/en/ have great cheap PCs

They have Dual core S939 systems with a Gig of Gskill and a 160gb hdd for €599:eek:

Buy the Dell, they are perfect for a home user and you will not beat them on price...

christophicus

Gskill is a company i have only recently heard of on these boards.are they good??

weeder

www.ankermann-pc.com