can anyone recommend a suitable pc please?

[Joseph Helm]

300W PSU is pretty low for a quadcore.. lowest I’d go for is 400

Vista 64bit… I’d try and get XP on there instead.. then upgrade to windows 7 when it’s out.

22" Iiyama ProLite… My boss has one, and it’s the worst monitor he’s had.
(Which is odd because Iiyama are usually good)

Try somewhere like aria.co.uk
They have some good deals.

[Adrian Yeo]

Don’t know how ‘handy’ you are with components, but could you not have a look at building your own?

I had a Mesh for years (still have if you look at the case!) but insides are long gone and upgraded. Only downside is obviously the warranty. Just a thought though.

[David Rowland]

PROCESSOR Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q8200 Processor (2.33GHz, 1333MHz,4MB cache) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Business with Service Pack 1, 32-bit – English edit
MICROSOFT SOFTWARE Microsoft® Office 2007 Basic – English edit
MONITOR 22in 2208WFP WIDESCREEN UK/Irish Black (1680 x 1050) TCO99 DVI-D Height Adjustable edit
MEMORY 4096MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2×2048] edit
HARD DRIVE 750GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst™ cache edit
GRAPHICS CARD 256MB ATI® Radeon™ HD 3450 graphics card edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD +/- RW Drive edit
KEYBOARD Dell™ Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard – UK/Irish (QWERTY) edit
MOUSE Dell 2 Button USB Optical Mouse edit

SUPPORT SERVICES 1Yr Basic Warranty – Next Business Day Included – No Upgrade Selected edit
SECURITY SOFTWARE No Security/Anti-Virus Protection edit

Base Vostro 420 LMT Standard Base Mini Tower Chassis
Power Cords 2 Meter Power Cord – UK
Documentation/Disks English – Documentation Vostro Desktop
Bundle d034206
Base warranty 1Yr Basic Warranty – Next Business Day
Order Information Vostro Desktop 420 LMT Order – UK
Dell System Media Kit Vostro 420 Resource DVD – (Diagnostics & Drivers)

£1,017.99 + vat + shipping

I have 5 PC’s with similar spec for the staff, not a complaint.
Only thing I couldn’t do with the above is have two harddrives set to RAID 1 mirror, strange.

Dell every time and I am a system builder /computer guy. I dont bother now except gaming pc’s

I have included Office Basic and Windows Vista 32bit Business instead, thats pushing price up a bit but don’t know ur surrounds.

Alternatively, Apple MAC PRO laptop and run PC emulator

My thoughts are in this order

1: Biggest monitor with correct colour balance (we have apple monitors) – do your homework
2: Processor Speed and FSB
3: Memory speed
4: Boot drive and RAID 1 mirror for data
5: Operating system to suit what u need
6: Office to suit your needs
7: Graphics power capabilities are not important.
8: Sound not important
9: Upgradeable sadly is not important these days, most people scrap.

Serial ports/ Parellel ports vs USB (especially for dongles and cutters)

[Russell Huffer]

To be honest a PC is now a consumerble use it then bin it and buy a new one.
I have a quad core, big hard drive and lots of memory that i bought of ebay for £345.00 bought Vista 64 bit for another £100.00 and the machine is sweet does exactly what it is supposed to do.

Times are tight you could buy two off ebay for the cost of one dell.

Regards

Russell.

[Matt Hards]

There is just tooooo much choice. My budget is really up to £750ish really. I have played around with two more setups on the mesh site. Not sure if the crossfire one is more of a gaming machine though :S
Either machine I would ask to downgrade to XP i think anyway.
Why is it so hard? lol

Matrix II Dragon £706.97

AMD Phenom™ II X4 940 Black Edition Quad Core Processor AM2+
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium with Service Pack 1, 64-bit – English
NZXT HUSH Silent Brushed Aluminium ATX Midi Tower – Black + 700W PSU
ASUS M4A78-E – AMD 790 CrossFireX™ Phenom/Phenom II ATX Mainboard
8192MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM – (4 x 2GB)
2x 500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer (1TB Total)
Raid 1 Configuration (Mirror)
Samsung 22x Dual Layer DVD Writer Super Format +R/-R/RW/RAM
512MB Onboard ATI Radeon HD 3300 GPU – Hybrid CrossFireX Technology
7.1 High Definition onboard sound card – for 8 Channel Cinema sound
Free Microsoft® Works® 8.5 + Limited Microsoft Office Trial
Free Cyberlink Video Editing Utility Suite – 7 titles (oem)
2x IEEE1394 Firewire (onboard)
3 Years RTB Hardware Warranty – (1st year parts & labour, years 2 & 3 labour only)
Fast Track Build – 3-5 Working Days (B)

or

Matrix Essential £575.14

AMD Phenom™ II X4 940 Black Edition Quad Core Processor AM2+
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium with Service Pack 1, 64-bit – English
New Stylish Mini-Tower Micro ATX Chassis with 550W PSU – Piano Black
ASUS M2N68-VM – AMD HDMI-DVI Mainboard, AMD Socket AM2+ – Micro ATX
4096MB 800MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM – (2x 2GB)
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
Samsung 22x Dual Layer DVD Writer Super Format +R/-R/RW/RAM
512MB ATI Radeon HD4350 (Direct X10.1, PCI Express 2.0) – PC Pro Best Value
52-in-1 Multi-format Memory Card Reader (matx)
7.1 High Definition onboard sound card – for 8 Channel Cinema sound
Logitech Cordless Keyboard & Cordless Optical Mouse
Free Microsoft® Works® 8.5 + Limited Microsoft Office Trial
Free Cyberlink Video Editing Utility Suite – 7 titles (oem)
3 Years RTB Hardware Warranty – (1st year parts & labour, years 2 & 3 labour only)
Fast Track Build – 3-5 Working Days (A)

[David Rogers]

In the interests of keeping small businesses alive…

pop in to see your reputable local PC building shop(s) and take along any one of these specs…get a quote.

Dave

[Peter Normington]

pc world,

now before you poo poo it, go in and see the business peeps
take your spec sheet in and see what you are offered.

even if you are buying something like a usb cable go to the business dept.
they are always loads cheaper than the retail
Peter

[Paul S Martin]

Hi Ya

Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium is a No No, Try and stay with Genuine Windows XP With Service Pack 2 much better and more stable and many programs run fine unlike with VISTA 👿

Paul 🙂

[David Rowland]

Our Dell’s were actually about £400-500 each, was quite surprised at the price when i adding it up above but i was choosing options by considering my circumstances.

After poo-pooing the Intel Atom in those mini-notebooks that are taking the range, we had one in the office and we got corel installed to see how it would cope. I was pleasantly surpised to find that Corel was running pretty damn fast on it.

i built an Intel a PC not long ago, put on Vista 64bit and it is my gaming setup, cost me about £800+vat, but using same case, dvd drive, keyboard, mouse and monitor etc. Just replacing boards inside and its games sweet as! To use it in the office, yes would be good but to be honest all that power is unnecessary if you only use Corel

[John Gregson]

Cheers Dave for the Atom/notebook info, it was me that was thinking of getting one. Will now take another look. 😀

[David Rowland]

yep, it was you

this is the model we tried
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150182

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT7ZXxkDbRc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxNl9Kq7Av4

Not bad at all, the video shows it a little sluggish but I still would invest into a desktop pc for digital graphics but the netbook is very good.

[Peter Dee]

I got my last one from PC Specialist who custom build to your spec.

I didn’t want fancy sound systems and bloated pre-loaded software etc.

They supplied it with just XP Pro loaded.

Similar to Mesh where you can build up a system on screen from menu choices.

[Tomas Vidziunas]

Hope you checked if all your essential software will work with 64-bit Windows 🙂

[Matt Hards]

Well i finally got my new pc, I kept surfing for the best deals, and had pretty much decided to stick with my mesh system. When along came a good friend of mine with a pc for sale, 6 months old. Hes off traveliing for 6 months and wants cash to take with him so decided to sell it.
What do you reckon on this

Intel quad core 6600 @ 2.44ghz
Asus motherboard
8gb ram
500gb seagate hard drive
nvidia geforce gtx 260 (896MB)
Windows vista 64bit home premium

plus the usual ports and dvd re writer etc etc.

All for £300

Im well chuffed with it, very fast.

And i just bought myself a samsung T220 22" and samsung T200 20" wide lcd monitors to run both 2ms refresh and 20000:1 dynamic contrast
Which im very impressed with, going to run them both together and split my screen up.

Im quite new to all this high spec pc stuff, but it certainly makes a difference.

Do you think this is a good setup for the money?

Cheers

Matt

[Tomas Vidziunas]

😮 I wish I would have a friend like this 😀
That system is not that old all warranties are in place.
If you would want to buy equivalent it would probably cost you more than 600 pounds.
I think that’s an excellent deal for you. Hope that your friend is not reading this forum 😉

[Michael Dunn]

interestingly i’m justabout to get a new system tomorrow after mine is feeling slow

500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue 3.5" Hard Disk Drive SATA II
7200rpm

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Dual Core CPU 3GHz x2
1333MHz FSB
6MB L2 Cache

MSI G31M3-F Motheboard Socket 775, 1333MHz FSB
Intel G31 / ICH7 Chipset, DDR2 533/667/800

4GB Corsair XMS2 DHX 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Memory Kit 800MHz

GeForce 9500GT 1GB Core Clock: 550MHz
Shader Clock: 1350MHz
Memory Clock: 1000MHz GDDR2
Stream Processors: 32

£284 plus vat

so if anyone wants to comment i’d appreciate it
am planning to run xp as i have heard a lot of incompatibility issues with vista
also planning to use my existing case – a full size tower or is it wise to get a new one
just bought a 22" lg to replace my crt and have a llayama 15" as a second screen

[Peter Normington]

if you run 2 screens, have them both the same size and make.

Peter

[David-Foster-]

Looks neater that way Peter but using a CRT as his second screen might be better at colour repro so have photo window over on CRT. I used to have the 24" Sony CRT, a beauty, it just took up all my desk though.

[Tomas Vidziunas]

Micky,
I think that is really good price for a new system. Can I ask where are you buying it from?

[Michael Dunn]

i have run 2 screens for about 10 years with a matrox duel head card – always different makes, sizes and one crt one flat (because when i set it up originally a big flat sreen was too much) and its always been fine

tomas – i have used these for a long time
partly because a lot of small builders/resellers buy from them, and they are a good price compared to dabs etc
and partly because they are about 5 miles away

http://www.cclonline.com/

[David Rowland]

Micky, that spec is slow… no way!!!

[Michael Dunn]

where is it going wrong?
any suggestions?

my system right now is 1.4 processer with 768mb ddr ram – so it looks like lightening to me
but i’m prob out of touch – as the one i have was £2100!!!!

[Tomas Vidziunas]

I would disagree with Dave.
I think for that price system is good enough.
Maybe if that would be me I would choose Asus or Gigabyte for motherboard, maybe ATX not mATX. And depending on what you are doing with that PC change video card, with your current motherboard you don’t even need separate VGA.
If it will be used more for signs for example Illustrator or CorelDraw and Photoshop then you basically need computing power, that is fast CPU and loads of RAM.
Of course it is not a hi-end system but you are paying just more than 300 pounds for it.
Probably it is my way of thinking – I ask how much can I spent on PC, then I ask what will I need that PC for and then get best parts for that price. If you look other way around – I need super duper fast PC – then you have to be prepared to spend thousands I still some one will come and tell you that it can be better 🙂

[Peter Normington]

quote Micky_D:

i have run 2 screens for about 10 years with a matrox duel head card – always different makes, sizes and one crt one flat (because when i set it up originally a big flat sreen was too much) and its always been fine

tomas – i have used these for a long time
partly because a lot of small builders/resellers buy from them, and they are a good price compared to dabs etc
and partly because they are about 5 miles away

http://www.cclonline.com/

Well if it works for you, carry on.

how do you match the colours between crt/lcd/ different makes?

Peter

[Michael Dunn]

tomas – i just want to be able to work in photoshop and corel at a decent speed – especially when it comes to manipulating photos and rendering
i figured reasonably fast against price – as whatever i spend will be outdated in time – at least it is a low enough price to not be too bothered to replace in a yearor so.

peter – i dont bother really, the second screen i use for outlook, internet browsing, opening and searching files etc without disturbing what im working on

[David Rowland]

Thomas, u miss read my english… that spec that is posted is very fast indeed! my games machine is similar to that spec and that is fast with applications, my office pc that I use is a quad core but a little slower then my dual core.

I would like to see the results of i7 cores, not yet got around to that yet but TomsHardware pages results is normally a good indicator

[Michael Dunn]

quote Dave Rowland:

Micky, that spec is slow… no way!!!

i misread it too dave

instead of
that spec is slow? no way!
i read it as
that spec is slow! no way(should you buy it)

😀

edit – i see what happened – i said my system was feeling slow – then posted the spec of what i am going to replace it with!!

[David Rowland]

Actually the charts haven’t been updated for a while .. shame

Photoshop CS3 spec in Quarter 3 of 2008.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desk … 3,826.html

[Tomas Vidziunas]

Micky,
compared to your old (current system, 1.4 Ghz, 768 MB) new one will be blazing fast 🙂 I know that from my own experience – sometimes I have to work with huge photoshop files on a PC with similar specs and its just "click, wait wait wait … wait again, click" When I do the same on my home PC (Core 2 Duo, 4 GB) its a totally different story 🙂
Of course you could change to Quad CPU, but you will be able to do that later when the prices will drop more.

Dave – tomshardware tested three i7 system few days ago. But I think it is a bit to early for i7 to buy, there is not that much of motherboards to choose from.
i7 processors are already in those charts.

[Matt Hards]

i cant get my flexisign 7.5 to work on vista, is it worth downgrading vista to xp to make it easier. Will Xp still support dual screen etc.

[Tomas Vidziunas]

Have you tried Compatibility mode (Rigth click on program – Properties- Compatibility – check "Run this program…." and choose Windows XP? Also try to run it as Administrator (you can check a box in same dialog window). Maybe that will help.
Windows Vista is more resources hungry, that’s minus compared to XP