[HELP] Planning to buy a computer in New Year

[Kawee]

I know it's only February, but I'm looking to buy a new desktop in the UK for New Year. Let me explain my situation. It's a bit of a rant, so bare with :

I live in Thailand, but is looking to go study university in England (subject to being accepted into LSE, but I'm quietly confident ) I saved up and just bought myself a laptop two years ago since it's pretty useful to have at school, and I know it'll be useful in university as well (type much faster than I write.) However, it being a laptop, I can only play MTWII on normal quality at normal scale with it.

Being a complete noob at computer technicalities, I had my cousin buy this laptop for me. Not sure where to check my specs but by going to "Properties" on My Computer and "Setting" on the Display Properties, this is what I gathered:

Windows XP Professional
Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo CPU
T5550 @ 1.83 GHZ
1.83 GHZ, 3.00 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS

Now, I don't actually understand what any of that actually means But I found that it can only really play Football Manager 2010 well, and that's all the gaming I hope to use it for once I buy the new desktop.

So although I'm just a casual gamer, I still want to play my games smoothly, as any gamer would. So obviously, a desktop is the way to go.

Buying one in Thailand now is out of the question for three reasons:

1. I don't have the money. I'm estimating that I can save up to $1000 by New Year, which is my budget for the new desktop. I could have saved up more but the economy is not good so my income from my part-time job is lower than ever Minimum wage in Thailand is about $1/hour and I earn only slightly more
2. Buying one now would mean I have to ship it to England as well. Definitely out of the question for both financial and technical reasons.
3. I want to first learn and gather as much information as I can before parting with my hard-earned money.

So, let's get to the part where it actually matters, and I ask for actual help . I've been reading around, but without any sort of basic knowledge, I find myself not being able to absorb a lot of information. I understand that the best way to build a desktop is to build it online? Basically, I purchase all the parts from the manufacturer and they put it together for me? Or do I need to hire a separate service? Or do I need to learn how to do it myself?

The reason I'm asking now is because I want to know what I can expect to put together in 10 months time with $1000. Since I've saved up for so long for this thing, I want it to last a good three years. Is it reasonable to expect a $1000 desktop to be good enough to run games smoothly for three years? I know that the computers become out of date every 6 months, so in a way, there are bargains to be made every 6 months, basic Ecnomics. I would appreciate any advice I can get on what I should be looking forward to, and any bargain I can make in 10 months time. Also, if possible, can you quote the manufacturing website that is England based?

Cheers!

[Doono]

you quoting this as US dollers? I think it would be foolish to make any sort of guess this early, currency conversion rates have been fluctuating rather erratically in the last few month. Pegged at current rates $1000 USD is roughly £650 in 10 months you could find that 1000 USD would be worth less or more depending on the market in 10 months. However £650 will buy you a relatively decent machine however I assume you will need to buy a monitor.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...d=1444&subcat=

You can build a similar desktop yourself for around £500 ish leaving enough for a monitor but in 10 months time you would be looking at completely different specs and prices.

[Kawee]

Is it pointless to plan ahead when buying a desktop, then?

I only quote in $ because it's probably the easiest currency for people to recognize and calculate, no? I earn money in Thai baht though.

[Musthavename]

Well, if you're coming to the UK, you're going to be buying the machine in sterling. So i'd only consider how many £s you're going to have. Also, there's a fair amount of Brits here, so you're not going to have any trouble getting those recommendations. (There's also on most things a mark up from the price Americans end up paying, so again you get into sketchy territory if you're using $s).

10 months is also a fair amount of time in tech terms. Kit will get cheaper in those 10 months, not to mention better kit may be available for the same budget. Though ofcourse, if the currency rate between your Thai currency and Sterling changes, you may find yourself with a completely different sum of money to use.

[Kawee]

Well...the Thai baht has been appreciating against the Sterling for a while now (good news to me as a foreign student)

Assuming the Sterling appreciates against the Thai baht in the next ten months, I'm looking at a budget of around 650-750 pounds. Should I just return in 10 months time and ask again? I just like to plan ahead that's all.

Just one question though, can I expect a 650-750 pounds computer (Sterling pounds that is before you make the weight joke) to serve me well at gaming for about three to four years?

[Freddie]

Just one question though, can I expect a 650-750 pounds computer (Sterling pounds that is before you make the weight joke) to serve me well at gaming for about three to four years?

Your going to need a monitor with that so that's going to be £120/£130 for decent 22" 1680x1050 or the ever increasing popularity of 1920x1080 screen. After that you need £100 for the OS along with £25 for miscellaneous items like keyboards, mice etc which leaves you with £445 from a budget of £700 which isn't going to get you a great PC but if your preprepared to build it yourself and learn to overclock you will be able to get a respectable gaming PC for that sort of cash and if you could get the maximum budget of £700 it would help a lot. At this end of the price scale £50 goes a long way.

I would expect you to get a mainstream dual core like one of the new Intel Core i3/i5 CPU's, P55 motherboard, 4Gb of ram (hopefully memory prices will have come down latter this year, their sky high at the moment), mainstream DX11 card, Antec 300 case, quality 500 watt PSU (don't buy crappy PSU's), 1Tb hard drive and a DVD burner.

[Kawee]

Cheers Freddie. I simply don't trust myself to build the PC myself, unfortunately.

By the sound of it, I don't actually have that big a budget do I?

I see that you suggest I get a 1TB hard-drive?
I don't think I need that much space. Hell...I still got space left on my 100 GB laptop. Having said that, I do want adequate amount of space.
Will I be able to save a bit of money if I bring the hard-disk down to say 500GB or even 250GB, but without compromising the speed?

I don't actually understand much else about computer specifics, but I'll get down to studying it a bit more so that I can better appreciate and evaluate the advice you've given me.

[Musthavename]

Cheers Freddie. I simply don't trust myself to build the PC myself, unfortunately.

Firstly, building a PC is much simpler than at first glance. Once you understand the basics its pretty much plain sailing. Plenty of people here will offer good advice, there's plenty of videos on youtube of people building PCs, and the motherboard manual tells you almost everything you need to do.

By the sound of it, I don't actually have that big a budget do I?

Your budget isn't going to get you a machine that'll play everything on max at a very high resolution and then laugh about it. Your budget will get you a machine that can play things on High settings at a reasonable resolution for a few years.

I see that you suggest I get a 1TB hard-drive?
I don't think I need that much space. Hell...I still got space left on my 100 GB laptop. Having said that, I do want adequate amount of space.
Will I be able to save a bit of money if I bring the hard-disk down to say 500GB or even 250GB, but without compromising the speed?

Buy how much HDD space you need. When buying a Hard drive, you first want to make sure it's SATAII, which most Hard drives are nowadays (unless ofcourse you have an insane budget and get a solid state drive, but that's not relevant here). The figures that determine speed after that are the RPM and the Cache size. But, all this will do is mean things like games will install, and maybe boot slightly faster. The speed of a Hard drive makes no difference when you're actually running the game.

Just looking quickly on my favoured parts site, the cheapest 1TB drive is £58, cheapest 500GB drive is £38. There's little point in going lower than that though, as the cheapest SATAII drive they stock is a £28 160GB drive. So unless you need more than 500GB, that size will serve you fine. But yeah, I know how it feels to not use much space. I'm still running a 320GB drive and i've only just half-filled it.

[Capt. Fozdike]

Your going to need a monitor with that so that's going to be £120/£130 for decent 22" 1680x1050 or the ever increasing popularity of 1920x1080 screen. After that you need £100 for the OS along with £25 for miscellaneous items like keyboards, mice etc which leaves you with £445 from a budget of £700 which isn't going to get you a great PC but if your preprepared to build it yourself and learn to overclock you will be able to get a respectable gaming PC for that sort of cash and if you could get the maximum budget of £700 it would help a lot. At this end of the price scale £50 goes a long way.

I would expect you to get a mainstream dual core like one of the new Intel Core i3/i5 CPU's, P55 motherboard, 4Gb of ram (hopefully memory prices will have come down latter this year, their sky high at the moment), mainstream DX11 card, Antec 300 case, quality 500 watt PSU (don't buy crappy PSU's), 1Tb hard drive and a DVD burner.

This sounds good for what you want.

Also, if you did want to go with building one yourself there are some good guides out there to help and there are instructions with most PC parts. There are also a lot of geeks on TWC that would help

[Musthavename]

Well, I built a machine Summer 07 for £420 and it's served me well (and at 1280x1024, is still running new releases pretty well), though I did already have monitor, case, PSU, and OS and all that. But yes, that sort've budget would get you a pretty competent machine.