O/T Building a PC…..

[oneboot]

Has anyone built their own pc? I built both my mums and my one. The best money I spent was on a 17” TFT monitor. After putting up with a 15” CRT one for years it was blooming marvellous…
If you built yours where did you get the parts?

I get my stuff from….

http://www.overclockers.co.uk
http://www.dabs.com/uk
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk
http://specialreserve.com

 

[US Seagull]

I built mine, would touch an off the shelf computer from someone like Dell. I like to know exactly what I have in my machine (but then I'm a huge Geek).
I have had a 17" monitor at home for ages but I have a 19" flatpanel display on my computer at work (a Dell no less ) and now my home display just isn't good enough anymore.

 

[oneboot]

I'm no geek but work with pc's etc... I just fancied putting the thing together myself. I soon found out about Zalman and quieting the pc down. Case fans, northbridge cooler etc......

 

[Raphael Meade]

dabs.com are the bollox.

last thing i got from them was another hard disk.

ordered on the website 8.30pm. arrived by parcelforce at 10am the next day!!! i was amazed...

 

[Beach Hut]

dabs.com are the bollox.

last thing i got from them was another hard disk.

ordered on the website 8.30pm. arrived by parcelforce at 10am the next day!!! i was amazed...

That's a quality service to say the least.

 

[oneboot]

dabs are fine if the item is in stock but I never trust there ‘1-3 days’ expected stock rubbish..... It never works out to be remotely correct. a part from that they get top marks…

 

[Eddie the Seagull]

I built mine, which is a beast.

I did encounter several compatibility issues, (mainly 'bottlenecks'), which I'd recommend people look into before building their own.

One piece of advice i'd give to people is make sure your hardware can handle being upgraded. (From the case/Motherboard upwards).

Incidently I got most of my hardware from: Electronics Online

Free delivery, excellent & quick support, and a no-quibble returns policy.

 

[oneboot]

I built mine, which is a beast.

I did encounter several compatibility issues, (mainly 'bottlenecks'), which I'd recommend people look into before building their own.

care to elaborate any further? My builds went rather swimmingly apart from www.savastore.com sending me the wrong motherboard.

www.savastore.com are very poor in my experience. I was on hold for over an hour to sort out a return. It took me 2 mins to get through to sales as an experiment. they are quite happy taking your money but not too interested in sorting out after sales.

 

[Bad Ash]

My parents currently want a new computer and I'm trying to persuade them to let me build it rather than get it from Dell/Tiny. I usually get everything from http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ because they are as cheap as chips and only a 10 minute walk away from me (in Manchester...). I've never bought anything from them online so couldn't realy comment about that side of it, but take a look at the prices, very impressive.

Here's the machine I'm thinking about:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 64 bit Retail inc.fan 2000MHz 754pin £222.075
MSI MPN - K8T NEO-FIS2R £108.1
1024MB DDR400 - 2 X 512MB DDR400 PC3200 RAM £88.12
160 GB Maxtor Serial ATA 7200rpm 8MB cache HDD £85.77
NEC ND-2500 8x DVD +/- R/RW Black oem £99.87
Powercolor ATI Radeon 9200 256MB DDR 8xAGP + TV-out + DVI Retail £65.8
17" Iiyama ProLite E430S Silver TFT £305.5
With keyboard, case, mouse and speakers = £1063.37

Only thing not from Microdirect was the MB because they don't stock it.

I am thinking the above might be overkill and perhaps getting:
AMD Athlon XP 3000 [333MHz]Retail inc. fan Barton core £150
MSI K7N2G-ILSR nForce2 (on board graphics) £102
Which comes to £918

All prices include VAT btw (though may well have changed by the time you read this).

Anyone got any thoughts/comments on the above systems and prices? I'd say its a pretty of a top of the range machine and probably OTT for my parents but at least they shouldn't have to upgrade for a while.

If I was building one for myself I'd definately be looking into quiet fans (my machine is in my bedroom and makes a right racket), splash out a little more on the graphics and get another HD so I could use RAID. But other than that I can't see what I'd improve.

 

[oneboot]

bad ash.


Looks very nice. Puts my one of a year ago to shame! I recommend www.quietpc.com

 

[Turkey]

Do you know what monitor I should buy? I want it to be VGA compatible. My 17" Dell should be but swent into save mode when plugged into PS2. Also wouldnt mind a monitor which works as a TV too.

 

[Minghawk]

i build/upgrade pc's regularly.

dabs have a shite customer service should you need to return anything.

www.overclockers.co.uk are good as are

www.aria.co.uk

if you want something special such as water cooling,
try
www.over-clock.co.uk

 

[Raphael Meade]

i was gonna build my last one but happened to be on pc world and haggled on a last one of the line for this..

pentium 4, 3.07ghz
1024ram
160gb hard disk
dvd writer,
256 graphics card

paid 900 nicker for it which i though was not a bad deal...

(that was in the summer btw)

 

[oneboot]

Do you know what monitor I should buy? I want it to be VGA compatible. My 17" Dell should be but swent into save mode when plugged into PS2. Also wouldnt mind a monitor which works as a TV too.

Toms Hardware Guide is an excellent place to get reviews of hardware..

Here is the link to the display section

http://www.tomshardware.com/display/index.html

 

[Dover]

Quick question for you all. Will an XP2400 processor fit directly into my motherboard? At present it has a Duron 900 installed.

 

[marvin]

My parents currently want a new computer and I'm trying to persuade them to let me build it rather than get it from Dell/Tiny.

Tiny went bust 12 - 18 months ago.

Tiny's assets were bought out by time and time have now rebranded themselves the computer store.