Seeing as the old one will barely run Firefox for 10 minutes, it's time for a new one.

So the first question is, off-the-shelf or self built? I'm more asking if there's any point making one myself or if it would end up being more expensive just to have a nicer looking chassis? She mostly uses it for browsing but it does have to be quick.

If self-built what parts to reccomend?

whats you budget and how high a spec. do you want ?

if its just a cheap machine for office work / internet then you can normally find a good deal off the shelf

for the higher end specs I think its often cheaper to build it yourself

IMO, unless you're into mega gaming, a laptop is the best bet, for £4-500 you can get a really good machine, and save a ton of space......

Well I'd like a high spec but mainly so it'll last a few years. My laptop was middle of the road 2 years ago and it's pants slow now.

Budget is f-all really I'll be getting it in bits until August.

It is mostly for browsing and simple games but there is the odd cpu-heavy application running.

It depends just how cpu heavy the tasks you will be loading it with are. Also depends on the types of games.

Self building is fun (if you like that sort of thing) and if you are looking for high end, it is cheaper.

If you are going to buy in stages then I wouldn't reccomend you either don't, or if you must, then buy things like case, power supply, monitor first. Things like cpu's, motherboard and graphics cards change price a lot. DDR3 and DDR2 are quite often swapping places with being the cheapest often as well.

So I would save what you need, then re-asess the price of what you need when you have the money.

More specifics on what your intended is would make it much easier to make reccomendations.

Will you use it for music? watching films? video editing? etc etc

Mostly browsing, a good chunk of playing games (nothing power hungry like Red Alert 3)

Yeah a bit of video, picture and sound editing but it's not the primary use. I'm more after a higher spec as the one she has now (which has barely hit 5 years old) won't run any new game. Mind you neither will my 2 year old laptop.

Oh yeah and it currently houses about 85gb of music and video, but I can transfer that drive

So really you need something mid range at most.

A quad core will put you in good stead for later applications being optimised for more cores. 4gb of meoery isn't too expensive and a terrabyte hard drive isn't much either.

If building is the way you want to go I can advise you on what to get etc. Might even be able to sort you out a legit educational version of windows 7. I am a student

Oh yes I remember that offer, available to anyone with a .ac.uk email. I shall have to pick that one up

i keep getting excited about this one!!

http://www.medion.com/ms/aldi/md8850/uk/

think it goes on sale at aldi tomorrow, but'll probably all be gone by 10.05am

dunno if its actually any good though!

Martin

I know what you mean about building something with enough power to last - but in practice I find mine only last 2-3 years between rebuilds/major upgrades


last time round I built myself a decent spec one with a i7 (920 - the entry level LGA1366 chip) and a good ASUS board (same one alienware machines used on there first i7's)
that cost me ~£400 on it own

then £100 for some new good quality RAM (DDR3) and £125 for a good 1kW PSU and £99 for a retail copy of win7 pro (32 & 64 bit versions)
and another £80 for a 1TB disk and another £70 for a sound card

I already had a spare case, DVD-RW etc... and I'd bought the new graphiccs card a few months before to flog the last out of my old machine (GTX285)

add that lot up and its not cheap (those prices are mostly 6 months old now)

[Edited on 29/5/2010 by mcerd1]

If you don't have a lot of cash then try something like this and add a hard drive- a few companies do bundles. Stick with your case/mouse/keyboard and screen until you can afford to upgrade them. I wouldn't bother with a sound card as onboard sound is good these days. Use the onboard graphics until you get bored with the quality then add a card.

A quality machine need not cost a fortune!!
oh, and if you can build a car then a computer is nothing

Steve

[Edited on 29/5/10 by gottabedone]

These guys are spot on
Novatech

Ive bought my last desktop and laptop second hand through forums from people casting off old gear. Works well for me.

Maybe try and pick up a SFF microatx box?


Daniel

End of line, ex-demo and ex-lease boxes from Morgan computers are what we use -- good company to deal with been buying from them for near 25 years never had any problems. One client had a dodgy monitor from them but it was replaced within 24hrs.

http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/products2.asp?CategoryID=407

I've not built a car yet but I have done a comp before, it's burnt out now (overclocking is bad without great cooling boys and girls!) but some parts of it live on in the missus's dying one.

Yeah I could get away without hard drives (got 2 big ones here, both over 400Gb iirc) and the cd drives (have several now) but I would need a new case otherwise I'll be all "Happy birthday!" and she'd be "What? You put windows 7 on it? It barely runs XP!"

All looks good now, just gonna have to stash some money away now