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Where to buy desktop PCs

Might seem like an odd question. You'd think I'd know. But, a bit out of touch ;)

Current PC is an HP desktop, it's OK, nothing special - it replaced the last one which died one day (motherboard) and was necessarily a rush-purchase from PC World as I had to have it that day.

Looking to replace it. I wonder where to buy. PC World's aggressive sales tactics and school-boy staff coupled with the garbage they seem to get the manufacturer to pre-install for them put me off. It's probably the nearest store to here though, only about 9 miles away.

Looking for what would probably be best described as a gaming machine - I don't actually play games on it, I'm a developer: to run two monitors so decent graphics card (won't be keeping this one as only has 1GB memory), 8GB+ RAM on board - somewhere in the region of £500 should do it.

Where to buy.. online perhaps?
 
If it was me looking for a pre built one I would have a look at scans 3XS systems and customise it with a higher end graphics card.

You could always look at dell as well, their today only deals some times are extremely good value for money.
 
Have you ever thought of building your own? I ended-up going down that route because it was too expensive to pay for repairs. When you build your own, you get exactly what you want. If you think of it as just a tin box with a few bits screwed inside, it may not be so daunting. Find an old PC and dismantle it for practice. I have bought components from EBuyer and Dabs, plus used bits from EBay. There are three PCs in our house, in daily use. There is so much help on the internet, if you get stuck.
 
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I agree with "groucho". But if you want a ready to go PC have a look at "Novatech"
for something, then ask them to fit a better graphics card.
 
scans 3XS systems

Though I would question how secure their email systems. I know a few people who have brought from Scan on dedicated email addresses and now get spammed on the said address. I also know that those who have asked Scan for why their email addresses have fallen into the wrong hands are yet to get a reply.
 
Look around for a local Computer Fair and pop along, there will be at least one system builder there who will construct a system to order, and install the OS for you,.

That way you get to pick and choose everything, from the case, the PSU (very important you get a decent one!!), through to the exact GFX card (or cards) you want.

You could always go back to Dell, but in my experience their PCs never go as well as you would expect, because of all the crapware loaded on to them.
 
to be honest, no matter where you go and buy a pre-build PC your always going to end up with some pre-installed crap you dont want.. which is why lve always had custom builds.. that being said while it is easy to build a PC l tend to dislike stock heatsinks and tend to buy third party coolers for my cpu as l find stock coolers tend to be pitiful.

either way my main store of choice tends to be ebuyer, the only annoyance tho being that they use Yodel which is by far the most annoying company to deal with when they loose packages, luckily tho l havent had that issue yet when lve dealt with Yodel directly however Collect+ (which Yodel own if l remember correctly) and out of the three times Collect+ has been the only option they have lost all three of my packages.. thankfully they refunded me in full after lots of searching online for email addresses to CEO's (tho those were ebay auctions that used the service).
 
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No bloatware on a system built to order at at PC fair, they wont even install an OS if you dont want them to.

My only gripe about PC fair builds is that they tend to mostly have basic or flashy lighting cases, not many decent, strong cases; out of the 3 guys at my local fair (last time I went), only one had a supply of decent, full tower cases.
 
I do like the semi transparent funky casings. But then it just sits underneath the desk so it isn't as if I'll actually ever see it ;)

I have thought about building my own system, I did upgrade the motherboard on my old one. Which then died in the end, but not as a result of my efforts.. wasn't overclocked, but it does get worked quite hard.

Most on board graphics cards seem to only have 1GB of RAM and I think I need a bit more running two monitors. Doesn't obviously struggle until you have two YouTube windows plus other IE windows plus Photoshop plus Visual Studio open all at once. System memory is fine but dragging windows from one monitor to the other makes it hiccup a bit.

Mind you this HP has done well for an off the shelf (+ graphics card) machine for £400 or whatever it was from PC World.

Thanks for the tips, that gives me some research pointers to keep me busy later on. 3XS stuff looks interesting too.

Re: Yodel - certainly seemed to be an issue with the Southampton depot. From what I can see Amazon stopped using them altogether.
 
"I pointed a mate to one that has performed flawlessly for a couple of years"

...and so has a young lady I know, she's not had any trouble with it at all.
However, while it's quite possible she just got a slightly rogue one, and equally possible that they've improved things by now anyway, the one thing I would say against it is the noise level. The first time I went round to see her I thought she must have decided to do a quick clean-up in honour of my visit and had forgotten to switch the Hoover off!
 
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I believe that, with the right mobo, you can crossfire up to four Radeon gfx cards these days.

Be wary of the onboard RAM spec, there are DDR3 and DDR5 boards out there, and often it is the boards with several GB of Ram that are using the cheaper, slower DDR3.

If you want a quiet system, you have to pay more, but it can be VERY quiet. My current (soon to be replaced) system is so quiet, the only thing you can hear is a gentle whirr from the cpu fan, and the servo motors when the HDDs are seeking.
I recently replaced a passively cooled Radeon HD5450 with a HD6670 from Asus, and I only know the fan is working because I can feel a slight breeze coming from it.
(I should add that the case is open sided at the moment).
 
Though I would question how secure their email systems. I know a few people who have brought from Scan on dedicated email addresses and now get spammed on the said address. I also know that those who have asked Scan for why their email addresses have fallen into the wrong hands are yet to get a reply.

I've never bought from them online as they are localish so have gone to their warehouse for things.
 
I use "MaskMe now, so no-one ever gets my real email address.
 
I just built mine took only around an hour and costed me under £350. very easy now. I ordered parts from different supplier that was the difficult bit getting parts and finding the cheapest


Intel Core i5 4440
Asus H87I-PLUS S1150 Intel H87 DDR3 mITX
Kingston HyperX Plug n Play 8GB (2 x 4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM (Kit of 2)
Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 SATA 6Gb/s 2.5″ 7mm Solid State Drive
 
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