£1000 Gaming PC wanted

[Oi_Oi_Savaloy]

In your opinions; what's the best configured PC for £1000 you think you'd go for today?

Oh and it needs a printer for the wife to er, print things.

My P III 450 coughed and died last week after 5 and a bit years excellent use but it was struggling to play the latest games (I had a 64 meg Radeon DDR and 512 ram for what it;s worth).

Thinking caps on please!

[chris watton]

The best thing to do is to but a few PC magazines, as they usually do 'group tests' of the best value/performance new PCs. Also the PCs in the mags are cheaper than in the shops, so you get more for your money. I have said it before that Evesham Technology computers always seem to fare well, offering very good PCs, and they can be tailored to suit your needs (gaming)
try PC Pro and computer shopper from your local newsagents, so you at least have a good idea of what you should expect to pay.

Chris

[docevi1]

IMO:

Asus A7N8X (£88) (onboard sounds, lan, usb2.0, firewire)
AMD 2500+ Barton (£75)
CoolerMaster Aero (£30)
512 PC3200 Ram (£88)
Chieftec BX... (£56)
ThermalTake Xsaser Silent 480W PSU (£68)
Maxtor 80GB SATA HDD (£69)
LiteOn DVD (£28)
LiteOn CDRW (£33)
Gainward 750 Golden Sample (£75) - this is a GF4Ti4800SE but overclocked and garunteed. I have the 700 which is the 4400 and have had no problems. For this price you cannot complain.

Complete cost of base = £522.

Floppy from old PC
Monitor from old PC?

Then for printers, take a cheap Epson (cheapest cartridges).

All these prices were taken from www.overclock.co.uk which tends to work out the cheapest to build systems from (cheaper on one product, more expensive on another but works out cheaper overall).

[206xsi]

PC Format had a great article this month about a £1000 gaming machine.

Essentially you want minimum half-Gb memory and a GeForce4 128Mb graphics card.

I play on a 1200MHz AMD, 768Mb Memory with the aforementioned graphics card...and it's fine

I'll post details on the PCFormat issue later

>> Edited by 206xsi on Friday 5th September 10:56

[big_treacle]

docevi1 said:

IMO: Asus A7N8X (£88) (onboard sounds, lan, usb2.0, firewire) AMD 2500+ Barton (£75) CoolerMaster Aero (£30) 512 PC3200 Ram (£88) Chieftec BX... (£56) ThermalTake Xsaser Silent 480W PSU (£68) Maxtor 80GB SATA HDD (£69) LiteOn DVD (£28) LiteOn CDRW (£33) Gainward 750 Golden Sample (£75) - this is a GF4Ti4800SE but overclocked and garunteed. I have the 700 which is the 4400 and have had no problems. For this price you cannot complain. Complete cost of base = £522. Floppy from old PC Monitor from old PC? Then for printers, take a cheap Epson (cheapest cartridges). All these prices were taken from www.overclock.co.uk which tends to work out the cheapest to build systems from (cheaper on one product, more expensive on another but works out cheaper overall).

This is almost exactly what i did about 3 months ago. Wanted to make my PC play new games so i looked around first at packages - for 1000 you couldn't really get a decent game playing PC. So I just replaced the motherboard (Asus A7N8X), processor(Athlon 2300 i think...), memory(512MB 3200), harddisk(120GB) and gfx card(golden sample 750 thing) for around 500 ish quid.
It's surprisingly simple to build a PC so long as you read up a little bit beforehand - no more in volume than you would for researching packages tho - you know, ensure you buy a suitable fan for your processor etc... I don't think I'll ever buy a package again even if I'm being very very lazy (which i am usually).

> edited to add: also, when you look to get geforce4 cards, make sure you go for a TX chipset. I made the mistake of not looking into these things and just grabbed the first geforce4 card i saw. It had an MX chipset and was rubbish in comparison.

--- edited to change 'can't get £1000 pc' to 'couldn't get..'

>> Edited by big_treacle on Friday 5th September 10:28

>> Edited by big_treacle on Friday 5th September 10:31

[206xsi]

Building is certainly fun and p!ss-easy, and you get the spec you want.

Just be aware that some components might not match well.

These days big manufacturers do give out great deals - so you may not save money DIY

[big_treacle]

I think that if you want an entirely new pc then packages are probably a very good thing to look at as manufacturers can do some good deals. If you're happy with say, your current monitor, keyboard, speakers and stuff then you could look at just replacing some of the internals. Either way of course, in 6 months you'll have to go through it all again as your PC will be rubbish again!

[docevi1]

Not true treacle. I'm a CS student and am still using a PC which is 2years old, I play games occasionaly and it still runs like a dream (albeit it seeming to be breaking due to excessive power requirements now). A good, top of the range PC can last you ages!

Building PC's is really easy, and the scare stories you hear are simply not true! Having said that, your common sense head MUST be on (i.e. don't put the mobo down on carpet)... other than that it is great fun, and an easy way to learn a bit about your computer.

As for packages, for some people they are the best way offering legal software upgrades, cheap printers, cheap monitors, terrible motherboards and overall bad perfomance but do have a warranty. Dell make decent enough machines, but if you want to check, head to www.sysopt.com/forum and post the specs of a potential PC there. There's a wealth of computery people about and this is my preferred place. www.techimo.com is another one if you'd prefer.

>> Edited by docevi1 on Friday 5th September 10:57

[206xsi]

Great fun apart from I put my back out building my last PC

[Oi_Oi_Savaloy]

Guys - brilliant responses. Sid work I'm going out to buy a couple of magazines and get researching. Old PC is a Gateway thing and I'm not sure I like any of the components on it now (except for the harddisks? But everything is so old that I'm really not sure it;s going to be of much use.

Buidling my own sounds like alot of fun and far more cost effective.

[Oi_Oi_Savaloy]

That overclock site is excellent.

[206xsi]

Try www.Scan.co.uk - they have a "today" section that often has unbeatable deals.

I got a case, motherboard (with free memory), AMD chip and HDD all reduced on the same day.....

[Liszt]

If you know the components then www.pcindex.co.uk does the shopping around for you

[-DeaDLocK-]

I've only just ordered the bits for my new PC. Everything was ordered from ebuyer.com. Should be arriving tommorow.

Specs:

MSI K7N2-Delta-L Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton core)
CoolerMaster Aero 7+ Lite HeatSink/Fan
1GB PC3200 Crucial RAM (yep - 1GB!)
120GB Seagate HDD
128MB ATI Radeon 9600
Canon Printer
Canon Scanner
Decent Mouse/Keyboard
All the other stuff...

and, the piece de resistance isss...

19" LCD Monitor!!!

Entire Cost of the whole lot??? Just under £1100.

Awesome!!!

D

[stc_bennett]

Just got a compy of Custom PC new magazine out, have a read through in wh smiths they have got some decent games PC but for around 1200 with a 18" LCD and a 128 Radeon card cant remember what else

STeve

[chris watton]

I just bought Custom PC mag too,, what a great magazine!! have just ordered a P4 3.2 GHz CPU, 256MB 9800 Pro, a GB of Corsair CAS 2 3200 ram, the latest Asus canterwood mobo,, well,, about 2Ks worth,, I must be mad!!!! lol

[gopher]

206xsi said:

Try www.Scan.co.uk - they have a "today" section that often has unbeatable deals.

Personally I could not recommend them at all - customer service is, in my experience, non existant and I also found them technically challenged, IMO go elsewhere.

[FunkyNige]

Oi_Oi_Savaloy said:

That overclock site is excellent.

And the MD drives a radical

[Liszt]

gopher said:

206xsi said: Try www.Scan.co.uk - they have a "today" section that often has unbeatable deals. Personally I could not recommend them at all - customer service is, in my experience, non existant and I also found them technically challenged, IMO go elsewhere.

I on the other hand have never had a problem and have used them quite a bit.

Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes not I guess