building new computer / spotonuk

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DirtyEddie

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2 Jan 2008
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although i said i wouldnt buy a new one my current pc is doing my head in and was thinking of putting a new one together. have been pricing things up on various websites online and think ive got myself an ok package at a good price from spotonuk.com, as a bonus they are based in manchester which means i could collect the bits instead of having the hassle with deliveries and work.

anyway i havent built a computer for about 6 years so am completely out of the loop when it comes to these things, does this look like a good deal?

case: Midi Tower Case with 350 Watts Power Supply £17.69
motherboard: Asrock ALiveNF5-eSATA2 Socket AM2 DDRII £37.05
cpu: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual Core 2.2GHz £30.52
graphics card: 512MB Asus ATi Radeon HD4350 £36.02
memory: 4GB Transcend Jetram DDR2 800 £33.01
hdd: 500GB Seagate Barracuda SATA-300 7200rpm 32MB Cache £44.71

total price: £199.04 (inc vat)

i didnt really want to spend over £200. do you think this is a good deal?

has anyone had dealings with spotonuk.com before?

also, im planning on dumping windows - would linux (probably ubuntu) work well on this machine?

thanks
 
my ex-mate is head techy at spoton...andy

i used to run a prem league gaming clan many moons ago and spoton used to sponsor our team and provide servers/hosting

i have bought from them in the past but tbh i think aria (belle vue) is better value and a lot better returns policy

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.aria.co.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.aria.co.uk/</a>
 
asrock boards are a little on the slow side

fantastic value and good support for AMD based CPU's....i ran a number of asrock boards with AMD's up until my recent change to a-bit & pentium based

a-bit.....you pay a little more, but get a whole lot more performance wise
 
What are you going to be using the PC for Eddie? I wouldn't touch Aria with a bargepole, i worked there and seen enough not to buy from them even with staff discount.
 
thanks for the replies. the computer doesnt need to be particularly high spec, all i'll do with it is watch downloaded tv, play a few old games (like wolfenstein enemy territory) and of course streams of city matches.

i have looked at aria and didnt think they were particularly cheap.
 
Russ218 said:
eBuyer are cheap..I would not buy a cheap case with psu. Buy a cheap case without psu, and get a good psu.
Click to expand...
thanks for the reply. can you tell me why you're recommending this? ive never really put much thought into the psu...
 
Russ218 said:
eBuyer are cheap..I would not buy a cheap case with psu. Buy a cheap case without psu, and get a good psu.
Click to expand...

Agreed, 350w psu is not enough...should be at least 400w
 
mancmackem: who did you work with. The days of Paul "source of all knowledge" Gibbs or later with Farshad?

Eddie: aria can be okay for some stuff but like mancmackem says watch out! Scan in Bolton are okay, wouldn't touch MD with a barge Pole myself. To be honest prices aren't gonna be hugely different from one place to the next it's the after sales service you should take into account for example if something goes tits up.

With regards to Ubuntu you would need a version that will support all that RAM, so many different versions of Linux out there but you have to remember you wont be able to install and run any Windows based Software so unless the game states it will run on Linux forget it. Windows 7 is about to hit the streets, probably public release around September is the latest word on that. The beta version works sweet, it's Vista but better. I've put it on a machine with 1Gb ram and it is rapid.
 
thanks for the replies. ive already bought the computer and am using it now, got the ubuntu 64bit version and it runs fine. i did download and burn the windows 7 64bit beta but had trouble installing it. looked online and a lot of other people have had problems with installing it - the problem seems to be it takes 6 hours to install (i cancelled it after an hour) and then hangs on bootup. the only thing i'd use windows for is to play games which im not that bothered about sat the moment. going to leave it a few weeks before trying windows 7 again when hopefully a solution to my problem will have been found. if not i'll use my old windows xp and upgrade it to service pack 3 although as you mentioned i dont think windows xp would fully utilise 4gb of ram? which is why i need a 64bit operating system. i think...
 
I got 7 loaded in just over 15minutes, well impressed. Found drivers online rapid, again impressed. If youir gonna use Windows for gaming you will need Vista or 7 as this has support for Direct X10, XP doesn't so you wont get the best out of your games with XP. Whichever Windows you use it will have to be the 64bit version else you will only be able to use 3.25Gb max.
 
auction294 said:
I got 7 loaded in just over 15minutes, well impressed. Found drivers online rapid, again impressed. If youir gonna use Windows for gaming you will need Vista or 7 as this has support for Direct X10, XP doesn't so you wont get the best out of your games with XP. Whichever Windows you use it will have to be the 64bit version else you will only be able to use 3.25Gb max.
Click to expand...

Trouble is that some games still need DX9...thankfully DX9 and DX10 can exist side by side.
 
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