Atomic Systems

Retro wrote: A company build would give me a full warranty on the whole machine where as a home build would give me the warranty on the parts only. Coupled to that is an inability to find any meaningful information about these various companies. Scan is the nearest one to me but they are quite a bit more expensive than PC Specialist for building a machine for you.

i5-2500k in Asus Z68 mb, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, GTX560Ti 2GB, 650W PSU....£918 at PC Specialist
i5-2500k oc'd to 4.5GHZ, Asus Z68, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, GTX560Ti 1GB, 650W PSU...£1040 at Scan --- for the extra 100 quid or so you get the overclock, and the HDD has a bigger cache.
i5-2500K oc'd to 4.50GHz, Asus Z68, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, GTX560Ti 1GB, 650W PSU...£850 at Aria

Guess which I'd buy if I were opting for a shop built one.

My next mission, should I choose to accept it, is to see what it all adds up to going the self build route.....

No Idea
Thanks for checking those out and listing them for me. Your time and effort is much appreciated.
Kind regards James.

Rough pricing, but using quality components from Scan and Aria...

i5-2500k in Asus Z68 mb, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, GTX560Ti 1GB, 650W PSU, housed in the case you like----£690 at Scan, £620 at Aria. Those prices are actually a smidgen less than I imagined, so there's a significant saving to be had going the self build route.

If that whets your appetite I can go through it properly and send you a detailed list, and possibly suggest a few options to reduce the price but not the performance.

gptech wrote:My next mission, should I choose to accept it, is to see what it all adds up to going the self build route.....

I was up half the night last night trying to find a supplier for all the parts I wanted, just 4... much more taxing than building your first PC I have to admit, finally I ended up getting each part from a different supplier after spending ages comparing prices and delivery rates
Hope everything gets delivered on the same day.

I am acutely aware that even without the moderator tags and signature my name is still green when I post so I will be careful what I say. I have had 2 laptops and a desktop from PC Specialists and their service is second to none in my opinion.

I have built PCs in the past from components. It can work out cheaper if it all hangs together OK. My first one was fine. The second was a disaster and I ended up selling all the bits to one of our young graduates at work. Just could not get the PC stable enough to install Windows. It looks like it was a case cooling / PSU issue since he eventually got it all working. I have built other PCs since and had no issues. That episode may be why I prefer Intel over AMD - the only PC I really had issues with was an AMD motherboard / CPU bundle from Ebuyer that really would not behave but Ebuyer would not refund the money without doing a tortuous RMA process that could have ended up costing me an extra £100 inspection fee if they found everything was working.

I have also bought machines for friends and family from Dell, Scan, Dabs and Ebuyer with no great problems. The key thing is knowing what you want and the going price for it.

Kindest regards

John

Easilyconfused wrote:I have also bought machines for friends and family from Dell, Scan, Dabs and Ebuyer with no great problems

You can't beat a recommendation from someone who's used a company when deciding who to send your hard earned pennies to--a number of years ago I found a gret price for an Asrock motherboard on the 'net and duly ordered it. Very professional looking site, https for the credit card details, forwarded to 'Verified by Visa' to confirm things. Smug as a smug thing I was, getting the board I wanted at an unmissable price.
Unfortunately the site was a scam, smug turned to glum and I had to go through all the rigmarole of trying to get my money back--luckily I did but only after spending ages on the phone, sending e-mails, sending old fashioned written mails......

Moral of the story?....try to only use proven reputable dealers, pay by credit card if possible if you're buying on-line.

As for PC Specialists, I've never used them but do wish they wouldn't list hard drives as memory.....

I have *never* bought a pre-built PC. Macs yes, but PCs I have always built from scratch, except for a couple of occasions when I inherited an old machine for various reasons. (For example, the Thinkpad A20p that I just liberated from the office scrap pile. Just needs a new hard disk, and could do with more RAM if I can find some that is i440BX compatible. But that one definitely won't be running Railworks.)

Usually a machine can be transplanted into a new case, if clearance is the only real problem you face - and if the board is a standard form factor, which a few brands (eg. Dell) sometimes aren't. Most new cases take graphics card clearance quite seriously, at least if they are big enough to take a full ATX m/board. Such a transplant is then excellent, low-risk practice for building a new machine from scratch later.

I started building PCs at a time when CPUs were much more fragile than they are now. The Athlon Thunderbird was quite notorious for this - if you mounted the heatsink wrongly, you could quite easily ruin the CPU in a number of different ways. But by beinig sufficiently careful, I never did so. (I did identify someone else's problem as the crushed corner of his CPU die.) Modern CPUs have protective caps to avoid physical damage, and motherboards come with mounting frames which the standard heatsinks simply clip to, so the most common problems are neatly avoided for today's first-time builder.

So for building from scratch, the most important point is to get the right components together in the first place - and even that is mostly common sense, to be honest. Just check that everything will physically go together, and that the PSU has enough power to run it all.

Been away for a few days and just starting to catch up again.

Reading all the posts since mine last Sunday, there is a great deal of useful advice here.

If you are going for a completely new PC, rather than buying components piecemeal as you can afford them, it would be a lot better to save up until you can afford everything and then buy it. Apart from the warranty issues, technology is moving on all the time and something that is ideal and decent value today probably won't be in a few months time. Either you will be able to get an item cheaper, or something better will be the same price. There is never an ideal time to buy a PC, you just need to get the best at the time and accept that something better is not very far away. This is the biggest argument for not buying something which is cutting edge - you will pay a very large premium and the same spec will a LOT cheaper in a few months time. An example is a first generation i7 CPU a year ago against a second generation i5 today. The i5 is a lot cheaper and probably more powerful.

My approach to building has been to pay to have a basic PC built to my spec and then add extra bits myself as necessary. It is not that I couldn't build one, but things can and do go wrong and it can be a "h**l of a job finding out what is causing the problem and fixing it. I have always used CCL in Bradford (http://www.cclonline.com) and found their service to be excellent. You can specify exactly the components you want and they will build and test the machine for £60, which could easily be money well-spent if there are problems, or if you are not confident about what you are doing. They also offer CPU/motherboard/heatsink bundles assembled and tested if you want to go part way, as geting a good thermal bond between CPU and heatsink is crucial.

OEM hard drives don't come with SATA or power cables but you usually get a supply with the motherboard and cables are not expensive. Having just checked some sample prices, hard disks seem to have gone up a lot in the last couple of months, ostensibly as a result of the floods in Thailand. I bought a 2Tb Hitachi drive in August for £55.

I always used to specify an Asus motherboard but for my last two machines I switched to Gigabyte after reading some reviews. Both makes have been fine and I would recommend either. A Gibabyte board with a Z68 chipset can be had for around £85 including VAT. Before buying, read some reviews and check out the manufacturers websites. From your shortlist, you can download the manuals as PDFs from the manufacturuers websites and read them in detail to ensure all the facilites are what you want.

Mervyn

Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated. Sorry I am a little late getting back but I have had a bad spell of health yesterday and most of today. Just my ongoing complaint. Thanks for the recommendation of PC Specialist John and your recommendation Mervyn. It's always better to find happy customers whom you know that just take what is on the Web. I will give it all some thought and also see keep an eye on what is happening with Railworks 3.
I will get back when this current health bad spell gets a little better.
Kind regards James.

Hope you feel better soon James, take care.

Gary

I have been offered a second-hand desktop computer (was said to be about three years old) rather cheap (it is only the computer itself, without monitor, keyboard, mouse etc and without an O/S installed). The relevant specs:

-Intel P965 chipset (not sure of the make of motherboard, possibly an Intel original)
-2.1 GHz Core2Duo CPU
-2 gb of RAM
-350W PSU
-PCIe graphics card, but unsure of the make (definately no GeForce)
-120 gb SATA hard drive
-Built-in sound (it has two rows of connectors on the backside, so probably capable of 7.1, at least).

I have an X-Fi i previosuly purchased for a now-shelved PC-building project. Obviously it'd also need more RAM, and a better graphics card, possibly a more powerful PSU? I'm a bit uncertain if this is something to go for or not?

Anyone any experiance with a Saphire 6970 video card, am considering installing one

A 6970 should be a very powerful card, but it will also be very long and will need a good PSU to drive it. Keep those things in mind.

A 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo is really a bit on the old side - compare this to the cheapest option in my hardware guide which runs at 3.2GHz - but if it's a step up from what you've already got and it's very cheap, go for it. You should be able to get away with 2GB RAM, at least to begin with. Just pay attention to the PSU and the graphics card.

USRailFan wrote:I have been offered a second-hand desktop computer (was said to be about three years old) rather cheap (it is only the computer itself, without monitor, keyboard, mouse etc and without an O/S installed). The relevant specs:

-Intel P965 chipset (not sure of the make of motherboard, possibly an Intel original)
-2.1 GHz Core2Duo CPU
-2 gb of RAM
-350W PSU
-PCIe graphics card, but unsure of the make (definately no GeForce)
-120 gb SATA hard drive
-Built-in sound (it has two rows of connectors on the backside, so probably capable of 7.1, at least).

I have an X-Fi i previosuly purchased for a now-shelved PC-building project. Obviously it'd also need more RAM, and a better graphics card, possibly a more powerful PSU? I'm a bit uncertain if this is something to go for or not?

Whether this is worth buying would depend on the price.

As Kromaatikse has said, the CPU is probably older than 3 years and the graphics card and PSU are weak links. You would almost certainly need a more powerful PSU if you wanted to upgrade any components. a 120GB hard drive is also very low capacity these days. By the time you had upgraded the weak components, added an OS, monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers you could have bought a more powerful new PC off the shelf (although nowhere near start-of-the-art) for the same price or less.

While I don't want to get on the wrong side of the moderators, I have a much more powerful PC for sale (complete with everything except speakers) and including Windows Vista Home Premium. Don't know where you are located, but if you are interested PM me and I can let you have more details.

Mervyn

I've got a question on this theme.

There is no way on earth I would have the time to build my own PC (full time job, 3 young kids) so if I want a new one I'm going to have to buy one ready made. I'm not in a position to do so but I'd like to have an idea of cost so that I can maybe start preparing.

We all hear talk of minimum spec, recommended spec etc, followed by endless threads of debate but surely the simple questions on most peoples minds are:

what is the minimum spec needed to run TS2012 on highest settings?
what is the current cost of obtaining a PC of that spec?
where can I get one off the shelf?

Take away all the techincal debate and surely those are the million dollar questions!!