The last time I bought a new computer was a very long time ago and I didn't do anything, a mate built it for me and I have been upgrading it over the years. At the moment I have this:

Intel P4 2.8GHz
1GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce FX 5200
Windows Vista

The system runs Vista quite well and can do everything I need, except gaming of course. I just feel the time is right to move on and jump up the ladder, see how the other side lives.

From advice I have been given, I should stay away from Dell and I would find it cheaper if I built it myself. I wouldn't call myself an expert but I could manage that. Anyway, I was recommended to see Morgan Computers and went over and talked to the pretty nice chaps and found that they have some pretty good deals, or so they seem good to me. Looking at their website I was offered the following:

http://www.morgancomputers.co. ... detail.asp?ProductID=4108
http://www.morgancomputers.co. ... detail.asp?ProductID=4132

My budget is around £500 and I do not need a monitor, printer etc.

I am pretty new to this, so any recommendations you may have would be very much appreciated.

Cheers!

Edit - Scratch that, this looks quite good:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/barebones.html

All of those have utterly terrible GFX cards.

Heres a quick £400 build that would kick them into next tuesday:


Add a better PSU, and some nice Barracuda HDD's and you've got a nice PC.

Will you want to overclock? Is noise a major concern etc?

Wow, thats looks great. Noise is not a major concern for me, the computer is located in my own little isolated area. Overclocking is not that important either but if possible, would be a great extra.

I am just looking for something that could give me the most value for my money, if need be, budget could be pushed up to £600.

You may also like to check my thread upgrading from a similar system with a similar budget, Jakg came up with an identical system for me I've also asked a few silly questions so you may find the answers you're looking for there.

I had a quick look at pre-built PCs, Dell seemed to be the best value with decent components, although they still worked out at £100 more than a self build.

Cheers, looking at suggestions made I have come up with this:

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/5395/pcspecsns9.png

Including VAT and delivery, it comes to just under £500. Any comaptibility issues there? Through my research, everything should work togethor, just wondering if the PSU is a bit too much.

Why buy two 160gb drives when you could have one 320gb one for £20 less and get a 16mb cache?

Damn, stuff is REAL cheap over there. Throwing together the same PC Jakg posted gets me into the thousands.
~Bryan~

Quote from ajp71 :

Why buy two 160gb drives when you could have one 320gb one for £20 less and get a 16mb cache?

I always thought it was better to have 2, just in case one passes onto hard drive heaven.

Quote from dropin_biking :

Damn, stuff is REAL cheap over there. Throwing together the same PC Jakg posted gets me into the thousands.
~Bryan~

I do hope your coverting Currencies? UK is in no way cheaper for 99.5% of stuff than Canada

PC Prices are in this order (lowest to highest):
Singapore/China etc (usually cheap knockoffs when it's that cheap though),
US,
Canada,
UK,
Rest of Europe (only marginally more expensive than the UK though),
Asia/Africa etc...

I really wish now that Newegg shipped to Canada. I could absolutely rape the poor US Exchange rate, and score everything for near-par to the US Dollar.

Edit: As of 12:42 AM (PST), the Canadian Dollar is actually worth 1.002 US Dollars. Suck on that USA, with your monopoly money

Quick update, ordered all of the parts except for the case, DVD drive and power supply. This was because I visited a local store today which is run by my mate's elder brother, he agreed to put the system togethor and throw in a case, drive and power supply he had at the store for only £50.

Plus they will test it, install all the drivers and OS and even polish it for me.

I will let you guys know how it goes. Cheers!