New PC buying help!

[Morrus]

My girlfriend's PC exploded recently, and the insurance company have offered to replace it. It's an old PC, so she's not getting much for it.

So we have £300 in vouchers. These can be spent at Dixons. We are willing to spend a bit more to get a PC worth having.

What should we do? We have to spend the £300 at Dixons - no choice there. Obviously any extra we spend could be spent anywhere.

We're NOT needing monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.

The aim: to play Neverwinter Nights 2 (from my POV, at least!)

 

[Cergorach]

300 quid ain't a lot, especially when shopping at dixons...
Is buying a 300 pound computer and then returning it for 300 pounds in cash an option?
If you want the biggest bang for the buck, go for second hand components. An AMD 64 can be had for decent prices (second hand). NWN2 is going to be graphic heavy and with that budget i don't think you'll get a decent enough graphics card (go for PCI-E anyway).


But if you absolutely have to...
Suggested component list (dixons.co.uk):
- Motherboard: ECS NFORCE 4A939 AMD (£54.99)
- Processor
- Memory (2x512MB): 2x PNY PC3200 RAM Memory (2x £31.99)
- Video card
- Harddrive: HITACHI HDT722525DLAT80 Hard Disk (£68.55)
- Case: JEANTECH JN68UBK System Case (£19.99)
- Power supply
- Processor cooler

In good concious i can't recomment any of the Dixons components (and they don't have procs and vidcards), a power supply that's called jeantech or hipper i just can't trust...

 

[Morrus]

We're able to throw another £300 at it, making £600 total, but £300 of it must be from Dixons. With that in mind, is it worth grabbing one of their pre-built standard packages and just replacing the graphics card? They seem to have some 2.4 Gb packages with 1Mb RAM for about £400, leaving us £200 to spend.

So, assume £600, but £300 of it must be spend at Dixons.

 

[Mycanid]

Well Admiral - to play NWN2 the spec sheets say you will need at least a video card with 128 mb of memory and of either the ATI x000 or x100 cards or the nVidia 6000 or 7000 series. Something to keep in mind I guess. nVidia 6200's are cheap nowadays if you look for 'em. But maybe you want something with a little more ... umm ... future compatibility?

Anyway, my two cents.

 

[Morrus]

Thanks. Looking at that site, then, how would you propose I spend the first £300? And then, how should I spend the second (which can be spent anywhere!)

Assume I know nothing!

 

[Mycanid]

Okay sir - if you know NOTHING then you probably want a pre-built pc....

I'll also assume you are going to spend all 600 at the same place AND that you do not want any sort of extended warranty. And I'll also assume that the 600 does not include shipping.

I will also assume you want a windows based machine (not a mac).

That being said, I'd try this one:

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/sto...dgmi.0&page=Product&sku=317382&fm=2&sm=1&tm=0

Or something like it.

Whaddaya think?

 

[Morrus]

Okay sir - if you know NOTHING then you probably want a pre-built pc....

I'll also assume you are going to spend all 600 at the same place AND that you do not want any sort of extended warranty. And I'll also assume that the 600 does not include shipping.

I will also assume you want a windows based machine (not a mac).

That being said, I'd try this one:

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/sto...dgmi.0&page=Product&sku=317382&fm=2&sm=1&tm=0

Or something like it.

Whaddaya think?

Looks good, although it means buying a monitor which we don't need. Also, is the GeForce 6200 any good? It's gonna be used for games.

I don't object to spending money in two different places (but half of it MUST be at Dixons because of the vouchers), and can handle things like card installation (but no messing with motherboards, power supplies, etc.)

It looks likely that the vouchers can also be spent at Currys - they have some other stuff.

 

[Mycanid]

Hmm ... well, most of the computing products at dixons come with a monitor. And the only other option is the "build it yourself" option. And if you don't like messing with motherboards and power supplies, that's out.

The video card in the machine is a 6200 LE model (different than the straight 6200). It is 256mb in size and I thought it might work for NWN2 ... I wasn't thinking about other games. If you want more of a card, it'll cost a bit.

I'm rather loathe to recommend a Compaq ... nobody in the world seems to have luck with them (although I have been lucky with their laptops curiously when they are given to me as gifts). To be honest many of the offerings currys and dixon were giving on the lower end of prices didn't look all that good (except the one I mentioned already). But here is one possibility Compaq wise:

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/sto...=Product&sku=038883&fm=2&sm=0&tm=0&tabIndex=1

And then you could get a graphics card elsewhere with the 250 or so in your budget left over.

However I am VERY leary about recommending Compaqs.

These are just first impression ideas. When I come back on Tuesday I'll look around some more if you haven't already decided by then.

Actually ... if I was in England right now I'd come and visit you and help shop with you and build you the pc by hand for free! (I like building pc's for people!) But alas, I am in California....

 

[Bront]

You've heard my recomendations for piecing it at CM, but...

I would recomend perhaps buying what you can at Dixons and the rest buy from another online retailer in England.

I believe newegg ships overseas as well.

 

[ssampier]

Newegg.com does not currently ship internationally; we only deliver to locations within the United States and to Puerto Rico.

Doh!

I know a lot about computer hardware, but I know nothing about what makes a good gaming system. Sorry.