Is this the best base unit I'll find in the £250-300 range?

Ta.

Looks pretty decent. I bought a Shuttle PC a few years ago, maybe have a look at them too. Really good for the money.

Personally I'd steer clear of anything that comes in a tiny box as it limits its future upgrade potential.

Have a look at the following 2 items…

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176488
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176490

OK, neither of them comes with an OS, but Windows 7 Home Premium is around £70, so the first option will give you a significantly better base unit with the same OS for the same price. Of course if you've already got a copy of Windows lying about somewhere, then even better!

The 2nd option would be a wise move in the long run though probably, larger hard drive and quad core processor for only £70 more, are going to serve you well in time… Both options I've outlined are of course fully upgradable as they are in a more conventional mATX case as opposed to the mini ITX form. Means you can get a decent GFX card in either of them too!

Cheers – that looks really good value.

No probs

FWIW I'm running the model before the one ebuyer are selling now… Which was £219 when I bought it.

Specs almost identical except mine is a 2.6GHz Pentium Dual Core and not a 2.8…

Anyway, as PC's go (I love Mac's I'm afraid to say!) it's brilliant! It overclocks by 20% instantly (should you be into such things) through this nifty bit of software or through the BIOS if you know what you're doing.

I did a few benchmark tests on it a few months ago and it chucked out some results that wouldn't be shameful on a machine costing more than twice as much (base unit only again).

Only thing I will say is the standard CPU and case fans are a little noisy, but then they're set to 100% in the BIOS as a default. The Pentium Dual Core processor does not run very hot at all, even under full load, so you can afford to mess about with the fan settings in the BIOS (I've got mine set to very low, until the processor is under load when they speed up a bit) to quieten everything down though.

Put it this way, for a budget machine I'm amazed just how good it is and what you can do on it! I really should get a 64 bit OS just so I can utilise all 4GB of RAM to be fair…

Oh, should add don't know if the standard GFX are up to much cop as I put an NVIDIA 9500GT 1GB GFX card in mine from new, which was a bargain at only £40. Works nicely with my 23" HD Samsung screen with no delays for anything except gaming!

Thanks for that M-B. I like that thing on the Foxconn website! I just need to try and make a decision about whether or not I actually do want to go mail order or from somewhere local… Yep, I'm procrastinating.