11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi all, we've been looking around for a new PC, I've just got the urge to try it, any advice would be most welcome.

DS1 built his own a few months ago, with about 99% input from a friend who had done it himself at least once. It actually looked a lot easier (and quicker) than I had imagined, but it was quite an expensive undertaking - you can choose more or less what you want in the way of components, and the point for both of them was to get the best spec that they could (in DS1's case, within the bounds of DH's generosity from his early retirement lump sum ).

I have to admit part of the reason I want to do it is so I can the specs i want.

Got a colleague from work to build one for me - did it overnight once the components were delivered. I would say we have paid about £300 for a system that would probably cost over a £1k in the shops

Ds is about to do it - parts are on order! He wants a high spec machine for gaming, and it isn't going to be cheap (e.g. graphics card for over £200), but an awful lot cheaper than buying a ready made one. Lots and lots of help and advice out there - he used partpicker a lot, and the forum users there will critique your selection before you buy which is helpful

(Btw, I'm not paying for this! He is spending a few hundred he inherited )

I built our last one. It's incredibly easy and quite satisfying if, like me, you have an inbuilt need to construct things. It cost something like £300 (motherboard, CPU and an OEM copy of Windows from EBay accounted for about 75% of that) and I assembled it in a morning with no previous experience.

There's a good forum here where you can find some useful information and also get constructive advice on what you're proposing to build (well worth doing, it can save you a lot of money):

http://forum.buildyourown.org.uk/

The main thing to be careful of is that whatever component you're contemplating, you can always get something just that little bit better/faster for "only a few pounds more". Decide what you want/need, set yourself a budget and stick to it.

Mike

We have always built our own pcs. We are a bit OCD and we like to be able to spec our pc ourselves. It's not hard to build a pc. In a previous life, I used to teach a course on building pcs (for youngsters who had just left school and needed some practical skills). The kids could build a pc from scratch in about 25 minutes.

That's what love most about this place... You can ask for help with anything(almost)... Thanks guys, convinced..

Getting a combination of components that work well together isn't always completely obvious... Look at Bundles... try googling 'PC "system & bundle offers"'
Also... you really need to decide your pricepoint... the latest tech is normally expensive.. the sweet spot for cost/performance is usually around the mid-range.
Regards
SVE
PS
Buy a decent graphics card... don't use Motherboard graphics.

Yes, there's a bit on partpicker where it will tell you whether your parts are compatible.

Anyway, ds's parts all arrived successfully, and he and dh (mostly dh, lol, he has done it before) built it yesterday. All works well