Ow I have a bit more room I might get a desktop to replace my aging laptop, other than pc world and amazon anyone know some good deals out there?
Thanks

ebay
ebuyer
novatech

There are countless places

Buy parts from ebuyer and build your own, really cheap, really easy and great fun 🙂

CCL are well regarded.

But as Clubber says; open question is open.

Yeah sorry a bit of a how long is a piece of string question! More thought needed.

+1 ebuyer

I would build your own. It’s a piece of cake technicaly, and you end up knowing that there are no donkey crappy bits of hardware stashed away in there. Plus you can also buy a full retail version of Windows which gives you more flexibility later on should you decide to be geeky about it.

My sister once bought a whole off the shelf PC and it was slower than my laptop despite having the same amount of memory and a much higher speed cpu. It should have been much quicker. Why wasn’t it? Who knows, but it could have been rubbish ram, motherboard, hard disk..

+1 self build
Loads of guides and advice here (esp. the articles in the sidebar): http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc

Once you’ve got the spec sorted it’s just like putting lego together…

Oh, and if you install your own Windows you don’t get all the stupid unneccessary bloatware junk that manufacturers put on.

Ebuyer, Novatech, Aria

Novatech do some good barebone systems etc.

Ebuyer are cheap, have a go at building your own, its not that difficult. 🙂

Overclockers too

Yeah good point, I would recommend someone like Overclockers as they are unlikely to fob you off with rubbish. From memory they do tell you what’s in their systems in detail, although I’ve never used them for a system myself.

Self build – Overclockers and Scan.

Have been doing so for 10-12 years. Second PC purchase, circa 2000, was utter shite – motherboard and video card didn’t like each other, performance was poor and kept having lines across the display. Tech support tried to fix it, even came out to install another crappy m/b.

In the end I told them to bog off and rebuilt the system around the m/b and cpu that I wanted.

Can be nerve wracking at times. I normally have an old HD in the machine – mostly used for storage, but with a second bootable OS. at least I have a way back in if the system falls over.

I like Scan, but would hesitate to recommend them. My experience is that their counter service is excellent and their mail order service is bobbins (unless they’ve improved lately). They’re not too far from me, so it’s usually my first port of call for components.

+1 on the self build. It’s 10 times easier than you might think, you know exactly what components are in the machine and that (hopefully) you’ve got the correct spec for your needs, and you learn a bit more about them as you do it. Takes maybe an hour to build a machine, certainly it’s a whole lot less time than then installing and configuring the OS.

Plenty of YouTube tutorials on how to build one out there too, that are well worth watching.

I like Scan, but would hesitate to recommend them. My experience is that their counter service is excellent and their mail order service is bobbins (unless they’ve improved lately). They’re not too far from me, so it’s usually my first port of call for components.

Scan’s mail order is top notch. They used to use City-Link for the delivery but have changed. You have to pay for it, though (but this never stops me). I’ve never had a problem with their returns either, even when it was clearly my fault. Ebuyer gives me a RyanAir vibe.

What will you use the PC for and how much is your budget?

I have to say though that installing the OS is pretty easy. I just installed Windows 8 (it’s fab, btw) and it took about 5 mins. No configuration was required either!

molgrips – was that a clean install or over a previous OS

I’d also go down the self build route using sites already listed. What I want to know is when self building laptops is going to become easily accessible? I’d love to be able to build my own laptop without it being too much hassle for me to even consider!

Scan’s mail order is top notch. They used to use City-Link for the delivery but have changed.

Ah, fair enough then. I shall revise my standpoint to “used to be bobbins” then. Ta.

It was clean, onto a VM. Windows installations seem to be getting better and better with each version.

See http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/pc-advice-please for some recommendations and youtube videos that I’ve been given over the past week, have just ordered all my parts ready to be built, hopefully next weekend. Shall let you know how easy/difficult it is

Gaz

Nice one Gaz

Like I said before, be sure to let us all know how you’ve got on, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. The machine you specced up will be a powerful beast, probably about as good as it’ll get VFM wise too.

I used to build my own but jacked that in. I found you could get as good a deal with something like a Dell (especially from their outlet).

Might be different if you are into high-end gaming or the likes….

Aye.

Time was, BYO saved you a fortune. These days, it’s more expensive.

Build it yourself, finished mine yesterday and it really is easy. Took about 3 hours, including installing windows and I took my time ensuring I had everything correct before continuing. It’s a bit like lego!!

+1 for scan – their build you own bundles are generally really good, the scansure policy costs a bit more – but is probably worth it if it’s your first build.

Don’t forget to factor in the cost of an operating system though.

Thats how I ended up with a hackintosh…