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Thread: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

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    Red face Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Hello everyone, someone recommended these forums to me, nice to meet you all :-)

    My computer is on its last legs and have consequently decided I'd like a new computer. I have someone willing to build it for me but they're not sure which components are 'good' or not - it's been a while! If anyone could recommend a few bits and bobs to suit my needs I would be incredibly grateful.

    Budget: up to £700 (although the cheaper the better, obviously!);
    Would like to use it for: some gaming; general internet browsing and word processing; music; possibly movies too. A bit of an all-rounder, I suppose.

    I already have a monitor but would like a new case for the computer and a new cd/dvd drive. I'd like Windows 7 too, so I guess I need to take that into account when buying bits and pieces. I might be able to salvage my PSU as it is quite new anyway, but I'm not sure how things work as far as compatibility and stuff goes. I've had a look on Ebuyer to see what they have but to be honest the vast amount of components available is incredibly confusing and I have no idea what I should be looking at!

    Oh, and I'm not fussed about it looking 'pretty' - the computer will be under the table anyway...!

    I would appreciate any advice you may have :-)

    Thank you!
    Last edited by ally5172; 19-10-2009 at 10:34 PM.

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Do you know any of the details on your current bits?

    esp that PSU (make and model)
    Monitor, size/type/resolution

    When you say games what games? that's the one biggest factor on what you'd want.

    And welcome to HEXUS

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Some gaming, what kind of "some" will you be playing, give us a list of what games you'll be looking at.

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Not sure about the PSU - I'd have to have a look later. Monitor however is 17" Hanns G widescreen. LCD, erm, resolution... 1280 x 1024 :-) Games... well I'm not really the gamer- I'd be more than happy with Sims 3, but the other people in my house want to be able to play games such as COD, GTA and other games along those lines.

    Current bits... Running XP on a measly 256mb of RAM, processor is 2.16ghz. Not sure what kind of graphics card (other than NVIDIA) but I'd say it was pretty rubbish because I have problems with everything lol (though I suppose the RAM is probably to blame, too).

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    Pork & Beans Powerup Phage's Avatar
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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Given the needs above, and your budget. I'm sure others will have far more detail, but I'd be looking at soemthing like,

    i5 750 - £151
    4Gb Gskill Ripjaw RAM - £73
    Gigabyte Mainboard UD3 - £115
    Samsung 1Tb F3 - £58
    Ati 5850 GPU - £203
    Antec 300 -£44
    Samsung T220 monitor - £130
    DVD drive of your choice - £15
    Corsair/BeQuiet PSU 650w - £72

    Hmmmm - blew the budget. Looks like Cat's AMD build is a better fit even if I change the GPU to a 5770 @ £125, it's still £786, and there's no OS !
    Last edited by Phage; 20-10-2009 at 12:12 PM. Reason: Blew the budget !
    Society's to blame,
    Or possibly Atari.

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    It sounds as if the original computer was a budgetr machine, so it is unlikely that any of the parts will be re-useable, apart from the monitor, keyboard and mouse! And the monitor is pretty small by today's standards, and have dropped dramatically in price in the last 2 years or so.

    Phage has given pretty decent spec above, and pretty much any generic case will do. Buy one without a PSU - the ones that come with low end cases tend to be poor quality, Phage as included a pretty good one in the spec.
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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    I would look at something like this:

    AMD Phenom II X4 945 95w ~ £128

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-P...MHz-95W-Retail

    Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P ~ £68

    http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

    4gb PC2-8500 DDR3 RAM ~ £80

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(...ered-CAS-9-DHX

    Run this at 1333mhz using lower latencies.

    1GB Asus HD5770 ~ £125

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=1096945

    Corsair HX450W modular PSU ~ £52

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/450W-...-year-Warranty

    SATA DVD rewriter ~ £16

    http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

    Coolermaster Elite 330 ~ £28

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coole...Scan-Exclusive

    Windows 7 Home Premium ~ £67

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Micro...lease-22-10-09

    Make sure that you install the 64bit version of the OS so you can make full use of the 4GB of RAM.

    Samsung F3 500gb ~ £36

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500Gb...-Cache-8ms-OEM

    Hanns-G HI221DP ~ £111

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173911

    This build is slightly over budget at £711 excluding postage but should do the job nicely.

    If you want to save some money then go for an X3 720 and an HD4870 512mb instead:

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159071

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169206

    This should drop the entire build cost to around £640 excluding postage. For you requirements this build was also do the job well.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 20-10-2009 at 11:45 AM.

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Quote Originally Posted by peterb View Post
    It sounds as if the original computer was a budgetr machine, so it is unlikely that any of the parts will be re-useable, apart from the monitor, keyboard and mouse! And the monitor is pretty small by today's standards, and have dropped dramatically in price in the last 2 years or so.

    Phage has given pretty decent spec above, and pretty much any generic case will do. Buy one without a PSU - the ones that come with low end cases tend to be poor quality, Phage as included a pretty good one in the spec.
    Yes, it probably was :-) It's had a couple of 'upgrades' since we got it (not the RAM, clearly) but still pretty much on the way out now. The monitor is the perfect size for me really, I am not a fan of huge screens but who knows, I might change my mind in the future and buy a new one, haha!

    Thanks Phage and Cat, those links are really helpful and both of the recommendations sound good. I'm going to have a little nosey through them all and if I need any other advice I will be sure to come back!

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Quote Originally Posted by ally5172 View Post
    Yes, it probably was :-) It's had a couple of 'upgrades' since we got it (not the RAM, clearly) but still pretty much on the way out now. The monitor is the perfect size for me really, I am not a fan of huge screens but who knows, I might change my mind in the future and buy a new one, haha!

    Thanks Phage and Cat, those links are really helpful and both of the recommendations sound good. I'm going to have a little nosey through them all and if I need any other advice I will be sure to come back!
    Since you don't need a monitor the HD5770 should do fine at the native resolution of your monitor methinks for a while!!

    This means the build will cost around £600 then!! This will give you around £100 to play with.

    Do you want a smaller sized build BTW??

    Something like an Antec mini P180,Silverstone SG02 or TJ08 for example:

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=SG02

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=mini+p180

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140996

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Silve...silver-w-o-PSU

    You would need to get an mATX motherboard though:

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-M4A785TD-M-EVO

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Good afternoon Ally, and welcome to the mot helpful and uninintentionally complex forum in the whle world

    These guys are clever... but they DO have their own thoughts on everything, so the selection will be hard as nails, as there will be no RIGHT answer,,,just a series of close to perfect ones!

    The critical part in EVERY PC build is QUALITY items.

    Don't buy a cheap PSU, because when a PSU fails, it takes many items along with it.

    We'd all suggest good ram, something branded by the likes of Corsair, over and above stuff with generic/ no label stuff.
    Hard drives should be from Western Digital, because almost everyone here agrees they're the best, or not shy of it. Some people prefer Samsung, but trust Western Digital, some people love Hitachi (me) but still totally trust Western Digital. Some ove seagate, but lots don't and they all like Western Digital. Get the picture?
    If you KEEP that monitor that you've got, you'll only need the most basic of graphics card sin todays market to fill it with lovely games pixels... but we'd all sugest , I think, a bigger newer one.
    But do decide on the amount of desk space you want.... they're shalllow but WIDE!
    Last edited by Zak33; 20-10-2009 at 02:53 PM. Reason: extra thoughts

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Quote Originally Posted by Zak33 View Post
    Hard drives should be from Western Digital, because almost everyone here agrees they're the best, or not shy of it. Some people prefer Samsung, but trust Western Digital, some people love Hitachi (me) but still totally trust Western Digital. Some ove seagate, but lots don't and they all like Western Digital. Get the picture?
    So what you're saying is... buy from Maxtor?
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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Quote Originally Posted by nightkhaos View Post
    So what you're saying is... buy from Maxtor?
    I genuinely snorted coffee at that point....
    Society's to blame,
    Or possibly Atari.

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    The Samsung F3 is probably the best 500gb out there IMHO as the 1TB version is currently the fastest available AFAIK. The only Samsung hard disks which did have some issues were some very early F1s which were incompatible with some chipsets IIRC but I have been using Samsung IDE and SATA disks fo years and they have been quite reliable and very quiet too. However Western Digital also are very good and they are the other company I would choose too for hard disks.

    AFAIK,the 17" widescreen has a resolution of 1440X900 and the HD5770 would be ideal at that resolution IMHO. It also has DX11 so it should have slightly longer legs than a DX10 card too.Also it has very low idle and peak power consumption too which is good as there is no point in the graphics card sucking loads of power when doing nothing.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 20-10-2009 at 03:15 PM.

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Quote Originally Posted by Zak33 View Post
    Good afternoon Ally, and welcome to the mot helpful and uninintentionally complex forum in the whle world

    These guys are clever... but they DO have their own thoughts on everything, so the selection will be hard as nails, as there will be no RIGHT answer,,,just a series of close to perfect ones!

    The critical part in EVERY PC build is QUALITY items.

    Don't buy a cheap PSU, because when a PSU fails, it takes many items along with it.

    We'd all suggest good ram, something branded by the likes of Corsair, over and above stuff with generic/ no label stuff.
    Hard drives should be from Western Digital, because almost everyone here agrees they're the best, or not shy of it. Some people prefer Samsung, but trust Western Digital, some people love Hitachi (me) but still totally trust Western Digital. Some ove seagate, but lots don't and they all like Western Digital. Get the picture?
    If you KEEP that monitor that you've got, you'll only need the most basic of graphics card sin todays market to fill it with lovely games pixels... but we'd all sugest , I think, a bigger newer one.
    But do decide on the amount of desk space you want.... they're shalllow but WIDE!
    Thanks Zak! :-) The only confusion I'm probably going to have is with choosing bits and then probably finding out stuff isn't compatible or something! What is the best way to make sure they are all compatible with each other? I am a little clueless when it comes to computer parts

    Quote Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH View Post
    (wouldn't let me repost the whole thing, hmph!)
    Is there any real difference other than size? I am not too bothered if it's big/ugly/etc... Current one is definitely not much of a looker!!

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Quote Originally Posted by ally5172 View Post
    Thanks Zak! :-) Is there any real difference other than size? I am not too bothered if it's big/ugly/etc... Current one is definitely not much of a looker!!
    Screen or case ?
    Society's to blame,
    Or possibly Atari.

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    Re: Confused lady needs help with choosing components for new PC :-)

    Quote Originally Posted by Phage View Post
    Screen or case ?
    CAT's post was refering to Screens, so from that I can infeer that it's Screens.

    Ally, no, size is not important, but rather pixels per square inch, or DPI. You want a screen with comfortable DPI that also has enough pixels to handle your day to day tasks. If you're finding than your current screen is to small for some things, you may need more screen area, but don't make the mistake of buying a similar sized moniter with the more pixels if you're already straining your eyes to read the smaller fonts on your current panel.

    A really good panel can cost around £440 for 24", or £230 for 22", a half decent panel that you will be happy with most of the time is usually around half that. It depends on frequency of usage, and application to decide what moniter you want.

    So to help with that, apart from office work, the occasion games, etc, do you do anything else on your computer, i.e. Photoshop, watching DVDs, etc? This will help us decide on a suitable moniter, which will hopefully be a reasonable price.
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