£500 Range PC Help!

Hi everyone,
Merry Christmass! I have spent some time reading some forums and have found this one to be especially helpfull, however I have found nothing up to date on a good £500 PC. I don't really feel confortable with building a PC from scratch as I do not know if all the components will work together, whats value for money and what suppliers are trusted, plus with a trusted suppliers pre-build I can feel much more secure components wont fail.

To give you an insight on what I want, I am really looking for a PC around £500 that includes an operating system (probably Vista but not sure on whether 32bit/64bit help appriciated on that matter). I do not need a monitor, keyboards/mice or speakers.

In terms of processor I was looking at an AMD Phenom but saying that I dont know for what I need if that is neccessary.

It really needs to last a few years playing the latest games to reasonable quality. I am looking to play games such as fallout 3, spore, football manager and some new releases.

I was looking at this mesh without the monitor and added crap... What do you think/ new ideas. Sorry, wont let me post link - its the £599 ready to ship... It comes to around £505

Much appriciated
Matt Davies

This PC from YOYOtech is pretty decent value although it comes to 580 quid with an OS though:

http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/pc_system....=16&pcSysId=96

Alternatively you could get a quad core Dell PC for around 400 quid and replace the existing card with an ATI HD4830 for 90 quid or an ATI HD4850 for around 110 to 120 quid:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr..._530_d015004~~

You can also get 4% cashback from Quidco (excluding VAT and minus the 5 pound yearly fee) on Dell computers:

http://www.quidco.com/dell/

thanks CAT-THE-FIFTH, That Dell option does seem very good value for money for what I need it for... Also a bit off topic, but would you go for 64bit or 32bit windows?

Appriciate the help,
Matt

Only go for a 64 bit OS if you intend to go above a total of 4gb installed system memory. The system memory includes the RAM your graphics card has. So if you have a 1gb graphics card for example the OS will only recognise 3gb of system RAM. With a 64 bit OS you will not have this issue.

Regarding the graphics card I would not go for any card higher than a HD4830,HD4850 or 9800GT as the power consumption will be too high for the faster cards. You may also need a molex to PCI-E adaptor as most cards need an additional power from the PSU. I think that the quad core Dell I linked to has a PCI-E power connector but you can get the adaptor for a few quid anyway:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Perip...roductId=17133

Any future upgrades of the graphics card should be kept to cards which have similar or lower power requirements. http://www.techpowerup.com/ reviews give an indication of graphics card power consumption when compared to other cards.

Even though the HD4830 is 10% to 15% slower than the HD4850 it retails for nearly 30 quid less currently and has lower power consumption too. Since the HD4830 costs 25% less it is a better buy IMHO. It would be better to put the money towards a graphics card update in 2010.

A HD4830 costs around 90 quid with the free Ebuyer Supersaver postage:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151393

The 90 quid HD4830 does have a noisy fan though according to reviews:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_4830/

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/pc4830/

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...724&cid=3&pg=1

If you are lucky you could also get hold of an 8800GT from PCWorld for 80 quid:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...&category_oid=

The 8800GT should be similar in speed to the HD4830. If you have a PCWorld nearby it maybe worth checking it out in person.

I think the prebuilt system is not your choice co it's more expensive and usually has more neck bottle points. e.g. some system uses 1333mhz men. with E5800 which fsb is only 800mhz only.