Deal or a steal?

[Dawg13]

Hi guys, I am a bit of a PC novice so I am looking for advice is this a good deal:

It’s a remanufactured Compaq for about £450

Form Tower PC
Condition Remanufactured, 1 year warranty
Processor Intel® Pentium® 4 - 2.93GHz
533Mhz bus speed
Memory
512MB DDR SDRAM
4 DIMM sockets

Storage devices 160GB Serial ATA
Personal Media Drive NOT INCLUDED
9 in 1 universal memory card reader

CD-ROM / DVD Drive HP DVD Writer (+R/+RW) 8x Double Layer

Connectivity 56K high speed modem
10/100 Ethernet LAN

Cache 1024KB L2 cache
Video memory 128MB dedicated memory
Graphics ATI® RadeonTM X300SE, 128MB RAM (PCI-Express)
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR TV and FM radio tuner

Audio Creative SoundBlaster® Audigy® 2 ZS
Diskette drive Not Supplied
Accessories HP Media Centre Keyboard
HP Media Centre remote control (batteries not included)
HP mouse

Available expansion bays Four drive bays (one Personal Media Drive bay - free)
Expansion slots Three PCI slots, none free
One PCI Express 16x
Back I/O interfaces Four USB 2.0 ports
One IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port
Serial connector
Parallel port
Phone jack- RJ-11
Network connector- RJ-45
VGA monitor port
TV-Out (cable not supplied)

Front facing I/O interfaces Front audio
Front Video-In
One IEEE 1394 Firewire port
9 in 1 universal memory card reader

Pre-installed software Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Centre Edition 2005

Monitor / display Not included
Personal Media Hard Drive Not included



If so cool, if not could some of you guys advise the best system i can get/build for about £350 (I know its cheap).

I am not a big PC gamer, I will mostly use it for music & video downloading as well as some office stuff, the more upgradeable the better as I don’t mind getting a system that works that I can add to as I get more into gamming/bigger applications.

I don’t need a monitor or software but I do want a DVD recorder.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated cheers guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. can we try and make it look good.

 

[bodhi]

Go get yourself a custom built PC instead of a compaq!!!!

 

[Dawg13]

Where would be the best place to start looking?

 

[psd99]

id say dell
dell are good

 

[Dawg13]

When you say custom i take it you mean build my own. If so where is a good place to start?

I have been looking about and the best looking case i have found so far is the Thermaltake VM3000BNA Tsunami for about £75

I know i was aiming at about £350 total, but i might not include the case in that price.

 

[Ian]

For £350 you should be able to build yourself a decent system. If you aren't a gamer you can save yourself alot of money by getting a cheaper graphics card.

I'd aim for a 3Ghz CPU and 512 Ram as a minimum, and if you are a using it for music and video, go for a 250GB drive (they are fairly cheap now!).

 

[Dawg13]

Thanx man!

What would you advise processor wise then?

I know that AMD are cheaper, but how can you compare them to Intel processors. What AMD would be equiv to a 3Gig Pentium 4?

 

[Ian]

The Athlon 64 3000+ is just under £100 and is a very powerful CPU indeed, the normal Athlon XP 3000+ is about £70 and is roughly equal to a normal Intel P4 3.0Ghz.

I'm not an AMD expert, as I've had Intel machines for quite a while now - but I would suggest AMD if you are working to a budget (they are very good CPUs, no doubt about that!).

 

[Alf]

Amd are pretty good for gaming and cheaper to boot!

 

[Me__2001]

if you want to keep the cost down an AMD system is the way to go, a 2800 or 3000 athlon XP is powerful enough for a general PC

 

[Dawg13]

I’m feelin quite privileged getting advice from the Editor-in-Chief! ; )

Whats the main differences with motherboards I have had a look at ones compatible with the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 64 bit OEM.

There seems to be quite a price difference between them (AMD 64 ones) but I don’t really understand what PC improvements I would see, if I got top of the range or bottom.

 

[GONNA-GET-U]

ive used this site a few times and know others that have used it

great if u want a custom pc without biuldin it urself

http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/systemlist.aspx?cat=1

 

[bodhi]

Dawg, you seem to be looking at quite expensive components (£75 case, AMD 64 bit) for a PC you are aiming to get for £350. I built my mate as system which was really good for £500. But you might wanna try Dell to be honest. They seem to be selling cheap machines now.

Bottom line is you get what you pay for. Can you not save some more wonga and splash out?