PC Spec any good?

[leehack]

Hi all

Ive just been to see some custom builders and been quoted £800 for the following spec. Is this good, bad or indifferent. I'd really appreciate some guidance:

- Intel Core Duo E6400 processor
- ASUS motherboard
- 1GB DDR2 ram
- 250GB hard drive (SATA 300)
- Floppy drive
- 16x DVD re-writer incl. dual layer
- 512MB ATI Radeon x1600 PRO PCI-Ex graphics card
- 6 x USB
- keyboard and mouse
- 2 x AVIDAV 17" TFT monitors
- Windows XP Pro

What do you think? Im all excited so please hurry lol.

[RuralWeb]

Looks ok - whats the aftersales like

[leehack]

Its a local company, theyve been there for 8 years. Group of guys seem to know what they are talking about, they spent about an hour with me. I got a good feeling talking to them.

[RuralWeb]

I got a good feeling talking to them

Thats a good sign - I would go for it. Do they need a website should be your next question

[MASTERforge]

your processor E6400 ???? thats not 6.4gb processor? What speed is it. Most are under 3.0gb

Ram seems a standard spec. Good for most things. best not to take under 500mb

Hard drive seems quite small.

Do you really need a floppy drive? I haven't used mine in years.

I think its the two monitors that bump the price up.

The problem with custom builds is you have no idea what most brands do. For example you can buy a cheap high spec processor that works like pants but reads well on a spec sheet.

Shop around and Haggle your as* off to get the best deal if your going for a custom build. Try to find a family member or friend who would be willing to do it. Imagine the labour they shop would charge.

[RuralWeb]

You could always buy a DELL

Lets see who bites!

[Stereo Steve]

Even Sony floppy drives are under £3 nowadays so it won't make a lot of odds and can help in some situations.

I would push for 2GB RAM, it'll make a good bit of difference.

[leehack]

The E6400 runs at 2.13 GHz as standard, however it can be clocked up to 3.13GHz if you so desire.

160GB hard drive would be fine for me, hence i went one up from that. I Have a 320Gb external seagate drive for storage and backup.

In my experience the bigger the hard drive you have, the more crap and useless crap you keep on it. I work on a 40Gb at the moment and have never been over 30GB use.

I am toying with the idea of going to 2GB ram for an extra 70 quid.

[Duncan Rounding]

I would max out the ram - at least 2Gb - especially if you intend to Vista.

[leehack]

Yeah i think i will. I wont Vista for a while as all of my software is not compliant with it.

I could go 4GB if i wanted in the future.

[wjcampbe]

I'd also ask for the XP Advance - that allows a free upgrade to Vista when you are ready for it.

[pinbrook]

defo 2 plus gb RAM, and consider RAID drives

[chris ashdown]

Why not have a 19" plus a 15" or 17", do you really need both the same size, I would get one as large as possible

Agree with you on the smaller hard drives, easier to virus check, defrag etc

Next few months will see a big change in dual processor speeds and prices may be worth waiting a couple of months to see if they stabilize, as they are relatively new to the mass market

[jont]

In my experience the bigger the hard drive you have, the more crap and useless crap you keep on it. I work on a 40Gb at the moment and have never been over 30GB use.

Remeber the good old days when you had to offload some of the hard drive onto 5.25" disks to install another program?? And have separate autoexec files to trim memory so the lastest game would install??

[RuralWeb]

Buy it now Lee or there will be an upgraded version in the morning and you will be back to square one