best Base unit for upto £800

[mt50]

hi, my cousin has asked me to find him the best base unit i can for upto £700-£800. he allready has a 19inch TFT so just the base unit is needed.

he wants it to last a good few years(his last one has lasted 5 years now, 800mhz,128ram ect)

he wants it for his kids to play some games on, internet and homework.

i was looking at dell but the cheaper ones you have to have a monitor with and you don't get a very good graphics card.

i was thinking a and 64biit CPU, 1gig of ram, 160gig+ HD, dvd-rw, something like a 9800 or 6600 graphics card(allthough i'm not sure they would need something that good)

so can anyone say what places are good to look?

thanks

[paddlegod]

Hi,

I run a small business that does custom SFF systems with chassis from Hoojum and Shuttle. Take a look at www.fast-n-small.co.uk at whats available.

Regards, Tom
Fast and Small Computers

[S1fter]

Best bet for PC components and complete systems is to search e -bay..

[mt50]

thanks for the posts guys, i told him go look at mesh, so he's now looking at a system from mesh, dell and net high street.

[loki]

If he wants it to last playing games for 5 years then he will want a card that is good now becuase graphics cards get very poor very quickly.

I assume from what you have said above that him building teh system is not an option?

If so (although i have no experience with it) you could try places like aria that will build you a custom system for around 50 pounds. Would allow you to be more customized than dell or the likes.

[mt50]

If he wants it to last playing games for 5 years then he will want a card that is good now becuase graphics cards get very poor very quickly.

I assume from what you have said above that him building teh system is not an option?

If so (although i have no experience with it) you could try places like aria that will build you a custom system for around 50 pounds. Would allow you to be more customized than dell or the likes.

yeah he doesn't want a self built system or i would have built him one,

and when i say games i don't mean things like doom 3 ect. as his kids have got consoles to play the latest games on they just play things like champ manager, rollercoster tycoon ect, so a 6600 or 9800 will be plenty for this, even a 9600 would do. just told him to stay away from things like the X300 ect that dell like to include.

[GarethG]

maybe if he wants to play latest games in the future an SLI system could be used.

Buy a decent motherboard capable of SLI and buy one decent SLI capable gfx card, a geforce 6800 could be used. And when the time comes when the card starts to perform badly get another of the same card probably half the price of its origional and bang, your sorted for a while longer.

There is also the option of the newer dual gpu graphics cards.