sorry, i’m just not up to speed with IT stuff. please can someone tell me what’s a decent spec for a reasonable home PC.

current machine is amd athlon 64 3200+ with 1.5mb ram and 160gb hd. its about 4 years old now, looking to replace it with something a bit quicker.

general home use, plus a bit of photoshop and graphic design. little bit of home video editing on the cards.

suggestions please.

This is where I’m up to with a shopping list for something that’ll be capable of handling editing 1080 videos. Need to add a graphics card to that yet.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/252535 (237.91) (processor)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173791 (65.82) (os)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/200490 (68.99) (psu)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804 (38.99) (hd)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/267772 (150.81) (mobo)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/248767 (40) (ram)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127584 (28.84) (case)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/245376 (26.72) (cpu fan)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/233152 (8.99) (keyboard)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/270850 (14.99) (dvd writer)

Depends on yer budget and the quality of the videos you’re looking to edit.

How much do you want to spend? Are you planning of reusing any exisiting bits, monitor , case etc.

just after a base unit, 350 at the most. prefer less.

350 for just a base unit… Including an OS or excluding?

Given you want to use Photoshop and do home video editing, 2 applications that processor power really makes a difference, 350 quid for the box won’t net you anything serious I’m afraid. Granted, it will be a fair whack quicker than what you’ve got already, but spend more and get more power would be my advice if you’re at all serious about it’s performance.

If it’s all just casual use, and you just want something a bit quicker than before, (I’m assuming you don’t want to build yourself?), take a look at the following…

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/271630

That would be a good start, under budget. Maybe spend £40 on a GFX card to go inside it to help with HD videos etc (I’m assuming you’re not gonna play games on it)…

If you can stretch the budget though, have a look at the following…

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/264251

Over budget yeah (and still no separate GFX card), but that’s the kind of processing power that’s gonna last you a good few years at least for photo and video editing and the like.

Or build your own!

Scan today only have an i5 system only just over budget – only snag is having to put it together (just make sure you touch the case and a radiator before any components…)

Scan today only

plus I have heard of Scan…

I know you dislike AMD mboy but an AMD Phenom 955 would be a lot better than that cheaper one surely? There are a number of options on Ebay from dealers for around that price depending on spec.

I know you dislike AMD mboy but an AMD Phenom 955 would be a lot better than that cheaper one surely?

Maybe. If i was building myself for that kind of price though, I’d use a core i3-2105 probably, which although only a dual core, benchmarks higher than the Phenom you suggest.

In fact, scratch that, I’d spend another £30 again on a bottom end i5-2300, it may not be able to overclock like it’s bigger brothers, but out of the box speed it would annihilate the Phenom for only a few quid more…

This looks ok to me if you want prebuilt and an OS.
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/acer-aspire-m3910-2-black-08647605-pdt.html

£350 laptop?