I’m looking to spend about £500 to £600 on a new computer, preferably one that will be able to play some decent games, not top end but decent.

I already have a new 23″ wide screen HD monitor and I also have a 15% discount voucher for ebay, only problem is I have no idea what I should buy and could do with some advice.

For the kind of money I wnt to spend can anyone give me any advice on what I should go for.

Better get back to work, hope everyone reading this has a good weekend,

K.

Are you OK with the idea of building your own PC ? If you are, do you have an old PC to rob for bits ( optical drives, case, psu, keyboard, hard drive? ) ?

If yes to the above you can save a fair bit of cash which can then be put towards getting a better graphics card and CPU.

Have to say that I am not up to date with CPUs/what’s hot in terms of graphics cards, but someone with current knowledge will be along in a moment or two…

Short answer as I’m on my iPhone and in a hurry. You want…

Core i5 SandyBridge processor (preferably a 2500k) or Core i7 (2600k if poss)
4GB RAM minimum
Dunno what games you want to play but half decent GFX card such as GTX460

If you’re confident building yourself, this will be the best bet, you’ll be able to source the parts on eBay no doubt to utilise your discount. If not, maybe check out one of the custom computer makers. Or see if there’s any prebuilt machines on eBay that match the spec you want.

Scan do some good deals.

http://www.scan.co.uk/value-systems

i5 Sandybridge 2500k is a must. High performance and not too expensive. 2500k means unlocked, which means you can overclock the processor, the max i’ve seen is to 4.8ghz from 3.3.

Here – Have a look at this website. I’m about to buy a pc from them. There’s lots of spec options so you can really customise the pc.

PC Pro magazine said that the Ati Radeon 6950HD 2GB was pretty good but it is expensive.

HTH

What about This and this in an existing case ?

PC Pro magazine said that the Ati Radeon 6950HD 2GB was pretty good but it is expensive.

Massive overkill for an occasional gamer though but will be great for Battlefield 3.