What computer to buy.

[[FGS]Chees]

Ok so it's time I got a new system as my current got infected. Got it going again but all data I manged to save was corrupt. And lets face it a Gforce MX440 graphics card is shocking in this day and age I have never had a new computer so what are your suggestions? Laptop or desktop, graphics card which, processor and so on. My budget is set at £1000. please post opinions on whats hot and whats not. Also I know this has nothing to do with Deus Ex so forgive me for posting virus topic and this topic but it's simply a means to an end and get me active again in Dx.

[chin.democ.]

I would advise against getting a laptop as most of their gfx cards are shockingly bad!

[[FGS]Chees]

Noted thanks chin. I did notice that my laptop graphics was shocking last night on dx. Integrated gcards I will stay away from.

[SPAZ ROFELZ]

You can actually buy pretty decent builds from Dixons.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/asus-cm66 ... 0-pdt.html

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/asus-cm17 ... 4-pdt.html

[Kaiden]

What are you looking to play. Are you looking to play BF3 on Max for example, or are you just wanting to manage games on medium-high.

You can get a very good computer for £500 now a days, if you're looking to build it yourself. Even if you're not consider just buying the parts and either learn or get someone you know who can do it, you'll save enough money to justify it.

Let's bear in mind my GTS 250 I bought like 2 years ago which is now £60 still runs Skyrim, Crysis and the like on High, granted it's getting a little dated, but £1000 is a very high budget overall unless again, you're looking for really top of the range.

I'd say look at getting a motherboard which supports DDR3 RAM considering how cheap it is atm (and how much faster it is at that), and avoid Solid-State drives until they come down in price as atm they're inflated.

If you're not looking to build it yourself, then look at something like this

http://www.ebuyer.com/339477-zoostorm-desktop-7873-1055

(A very good price I might add) You're already operating loads of RAM and a great CPU (granted the cache is low) without any upgrades, grab a £100 graphics card, maybe a cheapy terabyte HD as 250gb is restrictive and you're mostly there for basically £300-£350. Granted you're gonna need a desk, screen, mouse, keyboard and headset/speakers, but you can budget that as needed. Just need to shove a cracked Windows 7 on there too.

I'd advise against a laptop unless you're planning on moving around a lot and want something portable ish. You generally need to pay quite a bit more to get a laptop that'll handle the same kind of thing a computer would for several hundred pounds cheaper.

That site Ebuyer is what I use for basically everything computer related, but http://www.aria.co.uk/ is another good one.

PC World/Currys I've always found both overpriced and their after-purchase care is awful, but make of that what you like!

To break it down,

Computer
Monitor
Mouse, Keyboard
Graphics Card
Headset

£443, and the card is very future proof. You'd just need a desk. I only made a brief scan and you can probably do even better if you look around, but again to reiterate, £500 will get you a very good, future proof computer, £1000 is excessive unless you're planning to play everything coming out in the next 3 years on Ultra. The stuff I listed all fall under the medium range quality except the card, (although it'll handle High+ on most games) so yeah again, if you're really looking to spend that extra £500 then go ahead and you can do a lot better.

[chin.democ.]

Nice find Kaiden, I'd be very tempted by that if I had the space.

[Kaiden]

Oh it is Micro ATX so /shrug, it's alright but upgrading in the future could be a pain as you need more specific parts than general but not that big a deal.

But yeah just look through Link and filter as you like, you'll find something you'll like I'm pretty sure. Also if you look to buy a HP, which there's plenty of just be prepared to format it upon getting it, the amount of freeware they put on there is ridiculous.

[[FGS]Kalman]

Never buy barebone pc, only the parts
How much money have u got for a configuration?

[~DJ~]

Not sure, I had Dell Optiplex 755 SFF, with a Dell Monitor (E178WFP) and a Dell USB Keyboard and Mouse.
It can fit Low-Profile videocards, which are cheaper as you know.

I've made this topic a long ago, some decent replies I guess:
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-group ... 14509.aspx

However I don't have this anymore as I sold it.

[ShadowRunner]

Buy a desktop. Don't buy a laptop. Have 2 internal hard drives, keeping the OS drive as free as possible.
Repair guys will build a machine for the price or less in PCWorld, without all the trouble. Spend £30-70 on a spare desktop too.
Councils chuck P4's out for £35 in some areas or simply u can even pick up dualcores for less than £100 in lots of places.

In my case I bought a year old not-very-used PC and had a repair shop fiddle with it, total less than £200, because I already had a vista licence. Just needs a new card to play DXHR. I also got a laptop for £200 when I rented a phone contract.

If I spend stupid amounts of money on black and shiny things, it would be a Hassleblad digital camera system.

[Kaiden]

Never buy barebone pc, only the parts
How much money have u got for a configuration?

Why? Outside of building it entirely yourself being cheaper I don't see a problem with buying i.e. the computer I linked and finishing it off.

[~DJ~]

well, the desktop I have is fully customized, I selected the case too, its more cheaper as Kaiden said.

[[FGS]Kalman]

Most of barebone PCs came with lame power supply (Codegen and others), and costs more money
I prefer to buy every parts and assemble it myself

[Alessi]

For brand I'm not sure what you should buy..I have an HP and it's alright..some people say Apple products really are worth the fuss people make over them..I wouldn't know..furthermore depends on whether you want it for gaming or not

[SPAZ ROFELZ]

You can buy a barebones PC for now and upgrade it, you just need to be careful what manufacturer you're purchasing. People like ASUS and Sony will put high quality components in their machines (faster running RAM etc) buy an acer or some metabolic end product like that and you'll fall victim to bottlenecking.

For the record, I game on a laptop, have done for the last 4-5 years. Granted I'm not a cheap ass jew and pay good money for a new machine every 2 years. At the moment I'm rocking:
i7
8GB ddr3
1GB GT540
BD-R drive