Seeing as you guys seem to know more about technobabble than i do im considering buying a desktop instead of a laptop and my local Aldi are flogging these off reasonably cheap:-

http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_9228.htm

Any idea is the price is about right for the spec?

Im pretty much after something to do very little other than deal with large volumes of photos following the demise of my laptop and try and get some of my photography business back off the ground.

I might be forced to play some FPS as well if the pc is capable. But it’s predominantly for photo editing.

Ta brothers.

It is eiher overpriced or underspec’d. For that kinda money you can get Quad core, with similar setup so a much faster cpu. So either you can spend this and get quad core or save money and get something of this spec for cheaper elsewhere

Any recommendations? Im looking to spend this sort of money or less preferably. Lets say £500 as upper limit (ex monitor).

best bet would be http://www.hotukdeals.com and check for their dell deals, my friend just brought a comp from dell in a deal that was chaper than anything he could get off ebay. certainly cheaper than self building

Are pre built machine really that much cheaper than self builds these days, times have changed – having said that the last pc i built was in about 2000…

Not much Dell Wise on Hotdeal website.

Anyone got any other suggestions as i really need to get this sorted.

Well if you search Ebay for a Q8200 which is about the best processor bang per buck without overclocking, then you can simply decide on hdd space and graphics options and prices go from 300 until 450 depending on the mix, tho obviously might need an operating system but like i say given the processor has a retail of £150ish its hard to build a system to match them nevermind beat them!

Cheers thats very helpful, i looked for a new machine a few months ago and was looking at the Q6600 chip and the Q8200 was the one that has been catching my eye today while looking.

The Q6600 is a better chip i believe as it has the better multiplyer and so will give faster possible clock speeds but given the stock speeds of these things it is unlikely most people will go clocking them…

Whats ebay like for prebuilt PC’s? Its not something i have considered before? Assuming you buy from say a power seller with 5K+ sales?

well they don’t tend to provide keyboards, mice, operating systems, so if you are upgrading then not an issue as such, most of them are proper shops as self building can’t compete so you should be able to find a decent outlet with a physical store to pick up from. My friend only didn’t buy there as he needed vista and given the price of it was cheaper with one of dells deals.
The graphics cards including in those bundles aren’t brill so if you just wana play occasional game then ok but personally i would get the cheapest grpahics (integrated) and then maybe buy a nice card secondhand with the saved money. Obviously ebay people save money on things like psu’s which people won’t think about when they give so much advertising on the cpu and memory but they should be fine for joe public. Like i say, try and match the spec on one and you will struggle!

Yeah i wondered about PSU’s and heatsink / cpu coolers etc.

The one i was looking at in particular was:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/QUAD-CORE-Q6600-500GB-4-GB-DDR2-ATI-1GB-2400HDGFX_W0QQitemZ250361515713QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_DesktopPCs?hash=item250361515713&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1308|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

Seems fairly well spec’d for the money however im about 9 years out of date.

See it is ok, is relatively cheap due to the Q6600 being replaced by the 8200 (tho as said the 6600 is held as a better chip by some) The sata drive is 16mb cache instead of 32mb, the memory is ddr2 667mhz instead of ddr2 800mhz or even the new ddr3 1333mhz the graphics are standard, it is a good basic machine and would be a match for the aldi machine you originally posted i say. A good standard machine.

Ok in that case i shall have a look at spending slightly more, i dont really want to have to be upgrading any time soon. Seeing as i will be doing a fair amount of photo and possibly some video editing im probably best spending a little more to get a better GPU and 800hz memory.

go to the Dell site, always cracking deals.

Im pretty much after something to do very little other than deal with large volumes of photos following the demise of my laptop and try and get some of my photography business back off the ground.

Ah upgradeitis. I’ve been down this road a few times, think to myself I need a new PC for this and that (which adds up to a small fraction of the processing power of any modern PC) and then get sucked doen the route of latest Chipsets, faster memory, cooling, quieter power supplies. Just get something spangly from Dell, it’ll do everything you need.

Are Dell’s actually worth buying these days. Back in my Uni days – admittedly half a decade ago now the were a thing of universal derision – mostly due to the fact that they wernt very upgrade friendly and have a lot of proprietary stuff included.

I dont need something all singing all dancing – but a) i dont want it to be obsolete in 18months (more than it will be with pc progress) and i dont want to be in the position where i can upgrade it.

486-DX2-66.
Thats all you need.
And don’t bother with the Win3.11 upgrade either.

😉

The scary thing is the first PC i owned was more powerful than that, and in turn the first smart phone i owned was more powerful than the first PC i owned.

Technology. Crazy.