Build or prebuilt ~£650ish

ThomBassmonkey

ThomBassmonkey

ThomBassmonkey

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871
Hi, i'm new to the forum so sorry for my first post asking for help but I found this forum by trying to find advice and thought since I'm in a bit of a unique situation I could benefit from some more specific advice.

Basically I've had a run in with "the purple shirt people" after my PC broke down and without going into too much detail I'm getting vouchers from them to replace my PC rather than a repaired PC back. So the majority of anything I buy needs to be bought at with them which is sadly unavoidable.

With that in mind I'm expecting about £450 in vouchers and am prepared to put in some extra cash (which obviously wont be tied to a specific shop).

The kind of prebuilt PC I'd be looking at would basically be trying to find the best one I can for around £450 then getting a decent GPU, that kind of money can get me an i5 with 1TB HDD, something like the Advent DT1308 which said shop does for £399 with a radeon 6850 or a geforce gtx460. I know nothing about motherboards though and would the PSU be enough to run a decent GPU?

The other option is building myself, but I have no idea what I'd need to make everything compatable, I have a fair idea of my way around a computer but it's been a while since I took an interest in the internal workings so the models have moved on a lot.

So, bearing in mind that a large portion of the money will have to be spent at the one shop, does anyone have any advice that could help please?

Thanks very much in advance!

Thom
 
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you might want to be a bit more subtle about naming the competitors. your not allowed to mention them on these forums, no matter how overpriced their products are. however, since you kind of have to mention them just call them the purple shirt people or something and im sure the mods wont mind

my first bit of advice would be to build it yourself from scratch. the purple shirt people charge an extortionate amount for building yourself. when i built my PC for £450 from here a few months ago i worked out that to get the equivalent prebuild from PC world would have cost over £1000 :eek:

i'm not so sure if their prices are competitive on other PC parts, but since you have £450 to spend there i'll see which parts they are most competitive on price wise and recommend them for you

*edit*
holy **** their RAM prices are ridiculous. they are charging £75 for something you can get from here for £27 :eek:
 
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Sorry, I should've thought of that. I've edited the shop name to your suggestion. :)

Thanks for taking a look. I tried to have a look to see how much it'd be to build that advent (just for reference to see the equivalent price difference) but without knowing what PSU or mobo it uses, I'm out of my depth since I'm clueless on what would work.
 
ive just taken a good look round and the only bits i would even consider getting from the purple shirt place are:
mechanical hard drive, DVD Drive, case, power supply
however, that wont come close to the £450 your after, so it might be worth looking to see if theres anything else you'd want from their overpriced store

they dont even sell the new sandybridge processors or motherboards, which is ridiculous as they are the ones you want right now. they blow older intels and all AMDs out of the water

as for the prebuild, you can guarantee they have used a really bad PSU and mobo in them. pretty much all the PSU's in the prebuilds of the purple shirt place are the type i wouldnt trust to power a fan, let alone a £600 PC
 
That's pretty much what I was expecting sadly and the only real reason a prebuilt is an option. That and I've not had a PC for 7 weeks so I could really use one ASAP (I'm on an iPad now and it's sadly lacking for gaming).

The PC they dropped and are in the process of writing off was a prebuilt and had the PSU replaced and wouldn't accept a geforce 8800 because of the motherboard, so I know all too well about the cheap components used so they can out in components that have the stats people look for when buying.

This is why I'm in such a pickle about the whole thing, prebuilt vs own build seems to be rock vs hard place when looking at the components they have in and the prices they cost.
 
wait wait wait, so your saying theyre going to give you £450 to spend on anything in their shop instead of repairing your broken PC?

EDIT ** if thats the case, i would use as much as i could have the £450, get monitors and the things Reaper mentioned (PSU,HDD, Optical Drive) since they gave it to you for free.

EDIT 2 ** since you cant spend that £450 anywhere else, might aswell spend it there, this is if theyre giving it to you for free. (im still confused :D)
 
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the only way your getting anything even vaguely decent from PC world is by going the AM3+ route since they dont offer anything for sandybridge. however, they have the grand total of one motherboard thats AM3+ compatable and its very expensive.

its this one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-398-AS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=1782

but you can add £41.87 to the price if you want to get it from the purple shirt people.

are you sure theres nothing else you want that you could get from the purple shirt place with that voucher (printers, ink cartriges, blank DVD's, anything) because they are stupidly overpriced for PC parts

*edit*
ooh, thats a thought, they might be alright with

*2nd edit*
they seem to be ok on SOME monitors, so if you choose carefully i would get the monitor from there too
 
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I don't want to go into it too much because the whole situation is absurd, but basically it stopped working and it took them a month to replace the PSU (replacing my upgraded one for a standard one without even warning me) [edit] and they replaced the stock mobo too, then managed to drop it between the repair shop and the store where I was due to pick it up 2 weeks ago and apparently it's either damaged so badly it can't be repaired or they managed to break a component that they can't get a replacement for so I'm getting vouchers.

I have no idea what's going on, they won't even tell me for definite how much I'm getting in vouchers (and I'll be going for compensation after, of course) but I'll be finding out Monday and want to be prepared so I can get sorted with a new PC ASAP.

Anyway, without wanting to seem rude, I know I've been screwed by them and it's slowly being resolved, I'm just here for advice on a new PC. I'd rather focus on that than dwell on the stress the purple shirted people have caused me. :)
 
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ok, after a bit of thinking i'd recommend you get something similar to this from OcUK:


YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card - Bare OEM £94.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £94.99
1 x MSI H67MA-E35 Intel H67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Micro-ATX Motherboard - (Sandybridge) **B3 REVISION** £64.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £47.99
Total : £314.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).

and use your vouchers to get something similar to this from the purple shirt place:


YOUR BASKET
1 x XFX Pro 750W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £84.98
1 x Antec 600 Six Hundred V2 Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £74.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £30.98
1 x LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
Total : £222.05 (includes shipping : £11.75).

i'm really struggling to come up with any more products that are priced resonably at the purple shirt place
 
I'm not looking for a stopgap, I need a main PC. I have an iPad for mobility and want a relatively capable gaming machine (or as good as I can afford). I'm not working with a strict budget, which is half the problem. I may be able to raise more funds in cash and I don't know how much vouchers I'm getting yet either so I'm open to suggestions that might seem out of my budget, I'd like to allocate about that £450 to the one shop though.

Thanks for the suggestion though. :)

Reaper, which HDD etc would you recommend? With the optical drive, if I'm struggling to make up the £450, I might as well go for blu-ray. I'd need to get an OS too (I only have an upgrade from vista to win7). I can always spend the vouchers on software if I've got loads left over, I'd rather do that and get a bit better value and spend more cash elsewhere than be left with sub-standard components.
 
sell the vouchers for £400 on gumtree or buy an ipad2 and flog it on? should get most if not all your cash back.

then spend the cash you get elsewhere, extremely limited choice of overpriced hardware i'm afraid
 
ThomBassmonkey said:
I'm not looking for a stopgap, I need a main PC. I have an iPad for mobility and want a relatively capable gaming machine (or as good as I can afford). I'm not working with a strict budget, which is half the problem. I may be able to raise more funds in cash and I don't know how much vouchers I'm getting yet either so I'm open to suggestions that might seem out of my budget, I'd like to allocate about that £450 to the one shop though.

Thanks for the suggestion though. :)

Reaper, which HDD etc would you recommend? With the optical drive, if I'm struggling to make up the £450, I might as well go for blu-ray. I'd need to get an OS too (I only have an upgrade from vista to win7). I can always spend the vouchers on software if I've got loads left over, I'd rather do that and get a bit better value and spend more cash elsewhere than be left with sub-standard components.
Click to expand...
the ones i put in my build are the ones i'd recommend (or the closest to the ones from the purple shirt place that i could find.

getting win7 and other software from there is a very good idea, and if you want a blu ray then go for that too :)

heres the new purple shirt basket:
YOUR BASKET
1 x XFX Pro 750W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £84.98
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £79.99
1 x Antec 600 Six Hundred V2 Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £74.99
1 x LG CH10LS20 10x BluRay-ROM / 16x DVD±RW Drive - Black (Retail) £49.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500413AS) £30.98
Total : £335.03 (includes shipping : £11.75).

i hope you can use those vouchers online, because a lot of these decent prices i'm seeing are "web exclusive"

also, if your happy to spend the money on the software i'd consider getting a case from OcUK because the purple shirt places' case selection isnt exactly the prettiest
 
Foxtrot26 said:
sell the vouchers for £400 on gumtree or buy an ipad2 and flog it on? should get most if not all your cash back.

then spend the cash you get elsewhere, extremely limited choice of overpriced hardware i'm afraid
Click to expand...
now theres a thought, selling the vouchers for slightly under their value at the purple shirt place. i'd be surprised if you couldnt get £425 for them, and you'd easily make that money up with the savings from OcUK.

i'm sure theres someone on the internet who would think the vouchers would make a great present for someone, so you might be able to sell them pretty close to the vouchers £450 value
 
The problem with selling them on is like I say, I've been without a proper PC for almost 7 weeks, it's left me pretty stuck for pretty much everything. It'd be a great solution if I had an alternative, but spending much more time without a PC will probably drive me nuts so would only be a last resort and it's not gone that far yet thankfully. Hehe. Ideally i'd get all the parts on one day, but I can wait for something via mail order if needed.

I'm sure the vouchers will be usable online or in-store, they do match their Internet prices in-store though iirc.

I really appreciate all the help by the way, definitely food for thought. I'll check out your suggestions Reaper, using those I'm sure I'll be able to bump it up using smaller bits by another £100 or so. :) I'll have to see how much cash I can get together for the other components though.
 
I would search the store for the product that would lose the least value if you were to go and sell it brand new on an auction. Spend that £450 on an ipad 2 or something, then sell it for £30/£40 less and put it towards buying components (or even a proper prebuild) from a site like this. You will lose £30 or £40 this way, but its better than wasting £££'s on every component you buy from their store, or buying a vastly overpriced prebuild off them.

At least consider this option, as someone said above that they are charging £75 for RAM that you can buy here for £27.
 
Well I've just spoken to my dad who's thinking of buying a DSLR camera and there's a small chance I might be able to work something out with him since one he's looking at is for sale at that shop. That could be good news, I'll probably still have some vouchers to spend but it might be significantly less, giving me more options. I guess I'm gonna have to wait until Monday anyway to see how things pan out.

Thanks again for the help, you'll have to excuse me if I can work out something with my dad and come back asking for advice on what to buy without being limited on shops to buy from.
 
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