I am indeed a student (now the budget is starting to make sense eh?) - is there anywhere I can enter that info on PCspecialist, or you mean forego getting it from them, and get it elsewhere? What's the difference between windows 7 home/professional/ultimate - from a gamer's viewpoint?
For gaming, that PC from PCSpecialist will be awful - Siberdine's build would probably be over twice as good as the graphics card is the most important component for a gaming PC. I'd suggest you take Siberdine's build (which is absolutely awesome value) then get Windows 7 from here: http://www.software4students.co.uk/...fessional_64_bit_Upgrade_Edition-details.aspx (you'll need to install XP first & then upgrade it). You can then spend the rest of your budget on a decent monitor. You could also think about maybe getting an i3 530 and Gigabyte H55M-UD2H if you want a little bit of extra CPU speed.
You're able to do a clean install of 7 with upgrade media. You also can't upgrade between x86 and x64, nor can you do an in-place install over XP to 7. Linky will give you all the info you need.
ineed the PC specialist build is rubbish for gaming. a rubbish PSU, hard drive and graphics card. our builds have come in cheaper and much much better
Siberdine's build looks like the best you can hope to get for your budget. If you try to downgrade any of his components you will seriously castrate performance for very small savings. If you really can't afford it I would rather wait a couple months and save myself a trip to the pub a couple times rather than buy a machine which is crippled because you couldn't spend the 50 £. As for the OS, I am running a Win7 Pro upgrade bought from software4students and I made an install on a new machine. You just make a clean instal without putting in the activation key and then instal again over the non-active copy. Windows will treat it as an upgrade even though you are using the same disk and the activation key will activate 100 %. Best part is that officialy Microsoft has no problem with you doing that. Also a friend doing a masters at UCL got his Win7 copy for a few quid and an Office 2010 for 7 £. Your uni might offer something similar.
Allright, so the consensus seems to be that my attempt was not so good! Of course I would prefer Siberdine's latest build in terms of price; at £500 (including monitor from previous post) it looks great, no OS but with that added it would come to the about the same as the PCspecialist one - or even cheaper - especially with this student thing, hopefully. I just thought 'hey a 1GB graphics card, and it's cheaper', but yes I've done a little research and of course there is more to it than that! I just thought i'd come across a great deal. I just didn't like the sound of the AMD processor...I've only ever used Intel, and I hear it's better...or is this just like a brand-name thing that's got to me, and really they're on par? Also, I was over at PC world, and yeah, everything is real expensive, even I know that it isn't worth it... Interestingly, I did see some of those...what are they called? Like integrated computers - it's like a giant LCD which houses the CPU/etc behind it - expensive and not worth it i'm sure - just snazzy though. So: Siberdine's build appeal to everyone? It includes everything apart from the OS, right? Or is there something else missing - in case I missed it myself! Not ignoring other builds btw, so keep posting - this one just seems to have approval of others too!
That does look pretty awesome. What exactly is the difference I would see with the i3 over the AMD dual recommended earlier then?
The i3 has a lower frequency than the Athlon X2 250, but it makes up due to the fact that it uses the 32nm manufacturing process (less heat, better overclocking), and having 4 threads. It'll overclock better, be more power efficient, and it'll multi-task better.
^ Basicly what he said. You can compare the two here. The i3 530 performs a significantly better but also remember that the i3 will overclock much better as well - I currently have my i3 530 stable at 4.2GHz (45% increase) and it only reaches around the mid-50s at full prime load using the Titan Fenrir cooler.
Slightly off-topic and a possibly silly question, but I notice the hard disk is RAID, i've never used that before, admittedly, so is there anything special required in setting it up? Either in installation, or software-wise?
The HDD can support raid, which requires at least 2 hard drives. Since you only have one hard drive (and I'm guessing you aren't going to RAID anytime in the near future), you don't need to worry about anything, just plug in the SATA cable
Mid and high-range intel processors are better in almost every way, but at the budget end of the market AMD has some decent CPUs when it comes to gaming machines. The i3 offers better performance at stock speeds, when OC'd it destroys the equivalent AMD CPUs. Though if you are not doing anything CPU intensive (most games will be bottlenecked by the GPU way sooner than the CPU) then I would say it is better to either go for the cheaper option and save some money or spend said money on a faster GPU. Also, remember mobos listed by others are good budget performers, but they do not support SLI so I would probably go for a 1GB 460 (say the Gigabyte one) instead of the 768MB version. It should last you that little bit longer before you have to replace the card. Or just save the money. People using their PCs for web browsing, multimedia, office work and gaming don't need that much CPU oomph. Overall, Intel offer better processors (and at high end AMD does not even compete), but they do offer good price/performance for budget markets.
Allright guys, sorry to keep bumping this up, but I shall, if everything goes as planned, be ordering my PC today. Arg, just been getting my basket together, and well it's more expensive than before; i guess the offers must have ended on a couple items...and also, the graphics card is out of stock (says pre-order)! https://secure.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Shop/Basket.aspx That sucks. Any good deals that are on today I could benefit from? Like I said, almost certainly ordering later tonight, hopefully some responses can get in in that time. Maybe someone can now vouch for the AMD processor again and persuade me it's good, and not just a 'budget choice' as some have been saying... I really cannot afford much more than this current cost, if i'm going to be buying an LCD, which I will, at minimum of about £90 it seems. I'm going to go and shop a few more potential baskets, but i'll post this now in the hope someone can perhaps find me a good deal, not to mention the problem of the graphics card
Don't order now; the 6ks are out in three days. They should shake up the GPU segemnt you're looking to buy in. The tricore athlons though do look like a good buy still.
This is probably stupid of me, but did you mean to say CPU, rather than GPU in your post? Only thing I can think otherwise is that you mean the 6-cores will cause price-changes in the GPUs somehow? I'm sure I'm missing something here, so excuse that. Edit: Ok, nm, I understand now after looking it up.
Don't mean to add any confusion. 20 posts nets you free postage with scan on orders over £20. CCL are doing it as well and they have some bargains too. Your basket was empty; you couldn't post what you've decided on?
Thanks for the reminder about 20 posts, that'll save some money...I'm not too far off - let the spamming commence! (kidding!) Here's a pic, I guess this is why others were doing the same; it must require some particular local cookies to show you the basket I had or something is my guess: Funny thing is, I just refreshed this basket, and now the GTX 460 IS available again?...Guess they just had a delivery... I'm going to go create other baskets like I said, let's see how much I can save going for the AMD dual-core. I don't know if I will wait for the price drop, just how much can it go down anyways?
Woah, just a note that there's no need to get the Wi-Fi card, fan controller & sata cable. They were only in my build as they came free with Scan's Today Only offers, none of them are really necessary except maybe the wifi card if you don't already have a way of accessing the internet (most people just use a USB dongle). You could check out Scan's Today Only page here just in case: http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx?_s_icmp=AkaIX3H4
Yeah, I was about to post on all that - noticing the amount of 'extra' items that seemed to be there compared to Siberdine's post - either he had omitted or you had added . Here's the thing with my OS hunt too - this link from MS says I can get windows 7 for £30: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/education/studentoffer/ Reading the FAQ, it seems I need xp and then will be able to apply this digital download. I have a couple of questions, and am posting just in case someone knows off-hand and can give me a quick reply; otherwise of course this is not the place, and I'll go look for it myself elswhere: Firstly, I don't have any windows xp lying around that is not in use/registered, so will that do? I mean, will xp let me just install it, not register, and then I can immediately apply the windows 7 i'll have downloaded in advance, and that will have its own registration key that will overwrite the xp one (I think you can keep xp installed and unregistered for 30 days? That's what I'm going by to say I think I can install it first and then apply win 7). Secondly, I assume they will send me my registration key that I can keep - or is it a case of I need my xp key (which I do not have spare as mentioned) and that will be used/upgraded? Off the OS topic: Is there a cut-off time for when I have to place my order by today with scan.co.uk, to recieve the parts tomorrow? Can't seem to see this info on their delivery page.
