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[Martin_1962]

I had modern Asus recommended in quite a few places, and this was a sensible price with enough ports

Spinpoint drives - yes they are quiet and only £75 or so

MB purchasing is the most difficult bit

[Laz]

I rebuilt a PC, kept case DVD burner and FDD

New MB
New CPU
2GB RAM
2 x 1TB HDDs
Graphics card
New PSU

£490 roughly

Bought middle market stuff like Samsung drives for quietness, Asus MB and GFX card, Intel Quad core CPU

Here is the specs for the Aldi one, (now £487 due to VAT)
Intel® Core™2 Quad processor Q8200 (2.33GHz, 4 MB cache, FSB 1333MHz).
4GB DDR2-RAM, Dual Channel Mode.2
1TB Hdd
NVIDIA GeForce® 9600GT (512MB GDDR3 RAM with HDMI and DVI output).
High Speed Wireless LAN 802.11n Draft
DVD/CD Writer
Integrated triple-use TV tuner for analogue TV, DVB-T and DVB-S.6
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium. With new Media Center
Accessories included:
Remote control
Wireless multimedia keyboard
Wireless optical scroll mouse

Linky-
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_7963.htm

[TheBoy]

I had modern Asus recommended in quite a few places, and this was a sensible price with enough ports

Spinpoint drives - yes they are quiet and only £75 or so

MB purchasing is the most difficult bit

Had too many Asus' go wrong.  Suppliers like them due to high feature set, and good margins.  Had a stack of around 8 of them here up til a few months ago, all with similar faults (random BSODs, or simple power done for no reason).  USB ports tend to fail quickly as well ime.

I agree mobo purchasing is the most difficult - I want to knock the MCE up to C2 Quad (HD pushes 3.2G P4 to limit - I'm about 90% CPU on HD playback), but can't find a suitable mobo

[TheBoy]

I rebuilt a PC, kept case DVD burner and FDD

New MB
New CPU
2GB RAM
2 x 1TB HDDs
Graphics card
New PSU

£490 roughly

Bought middle market stuff like Samsung drives for quietness, Asus MB and GFX card, Intel Quad core CPU

Here is the specs for the Aldi one, (now £487 due to VAT)
Intel® Core™2 Quad processor Q8200 (2.33GHz, 4 MB cache, FSB 1333MHz).
4GB DDR2-RAM, Dual Channel Mode.2
1TB Hdd
NVIDIA GeForce® 9600GT (512MB GDDR3 RAM with HDMI and DVI output).
High Speed Wireless LAN 802.11n Draft
DVD/CD Writer
Integrated triple-use TV tuner for analogue TV, DVB-T and DVB-S.6
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium. With new Media Center
Accessories included:
Remote control
Wireless multimedia keyboard
Wireless optical scroll mouse

Linky-
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_7963.htm

Can only really use a little over 3G with 32bit Windows - unless it comes with 64bit Windows, which is unsuitable for home use still.

Its easy to chuck in cheap memory to give the spec the 'big numbers', but doesn't make it a good system.

You've missed the most critical part of spec, what chipset?

[TheBoy]

I rebuilt a PC, kept case DVD burner and FDD

New MB
New CPU
2GB RAM
2 x 1TB HDDs
Graphics card
New PSU

£490 roughly

Bought middle market stuff like Samsung drives for quietness, Asus MB and GFX card, Intel Quad core CPU

Here is the specs for the Aldi one, (now £487 due to VAT)
Intel® Core™2 Quad processor Q8200 (2.33GHz, 4 MB cache, FSB 1333MHz).
4GB DDR2-RAM, Dual Channel Mode.2
1TB Hdd
NVIDIA GeForce® 9600GT (512MB GDDR3 RAM with HDMI and DVI output).
High Speed Wireless LAN 802.11n Draft
DVD/CD Writer
Integrated triple-use TV tuner for analogue TV, DVB-T and DVB-S.6
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium. With new Media Center
Accessories included:
Remote control
Wireless multimedia keyboard
Wireless optical scroll mouse

Linky-
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_7963.htm

Looked all over Aldi and Medion's site, no mention of what chipset it uses.  On that basis alone I would avoid it.

[Laz]

Looked all over Aldi and Medion's site, no mention of what chipset it uses.  On that basis alone I would avoid it.

Aye it took some finding!  Eventually found it on a French site -
Chipset - Intel Bearlake-G33
Its bundled with Vista 64 so that may be an issue. But for the average user, at this price with 3 year warranty, I dunno, looks pretty damn good to me.

[TheBoy]

Looked all over Aldi and Medion's site, no mention of what chipset it uses.  On that basis alone I would avoid it.

Aye it took some finding!  Eventually found it on a French site -
Chipset - Intel Bearlake-G33
Its bundled with Vista 64 so that may be an issue. But for the average user, at this price with 3 year warranty, I dunno, looks pretty damn good to me.

G33 not too bad

3yr warranty is

With Vista, to get the 'Designed for Vista' accreditation, hardware manufactures had to provide 64bit as well as 32bit drivers.  Great in theory, not so hot in practice.  I would recommend most Vista home users stick to 32bit for now.


Its not a bad price, but its not a great price - similar quad cored Dell is £418 (http://www.dmxdimension.com/blogcategory/dell_uk_inspiron_530.html)

[Laz]

You are right of course, I am putting want I would want from a PC
(Media Centre, remote control, 1tb drive, built in Tri-TV Tuner Card, HDMi outputs, optical audio outputs) and not what Shyboy has actually specified- gaming,office and internet access.
 The think the conclusion here is there is plenty of reasonbly priced pre-builts out there, just need to think hard on what you want it for and a budget.

[TheBoy]

You are right of course, I am putting want I would want from a PC
(Media Centre, remote control, 1tb drive, built in Tri-TV Tuner Card, HDMi outputs, optical audio outputs) and not what Shyboy has actually specified- gaming,office and internet access.
 The think the conclusion here is there is plenty of reasonbly priced pre-builts out there, just need to think hard on what you want it for and a budget.

Just be aware, that unless your Vista Media Center has the TV Pack 2008 installed, it can only use 1 'type' of tuner (analogue, dvb-t, dvb-s).

TV Pack is only available to OEMs, and last time I checked, no OEMs were putting it on (TV Pack is also available to Vista Ultimate users, but MS strongly recommend rebuilding)

[Entwood]

One of the hardest, and most important parts, of building your own system is actually making sure you get compatible  "core" bits ....  motherboard/memory/CPU ... if these are incompatible you have major problems.

One way around this is to buy a "bundle".. where the makers have done the work for you, and sometimes even tested the "bundle" before shipping. I have used and recommended this system for several years. Using it many friends have successfully built there own with just a little help from "Entwood help line"

I would strongly recommend Novatech, although others like eBuyer, Dabs etc do bundles as well

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/bundles.html

It is also worth haveing a read here .... some good info ..

http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/

[Marks DTM Calib]

I to have had a number of issues with Asus motherboards....had a lot of success with Gigabyte ones though

[TheBoy]

I to ahev had a number of issues with Asus motherboards....had a lot of success with Gigabyte ones though

Gigabyte do tend to be more reliable.  Had some weird compatibility issues with them, and they tend to fit crap northbridge/mch fans.

[shyboy]

Thanks for all the info., even though a lot of it is over my head at the moment. This is another reason why I thought of building my own outfit; I hate not being able to understand the ins and outs of something I use every day.
Thanks, Nige, for the links. I'll have a read and see if it sways my decision. Hope you and Chris are both well.
Bill.

[Marks DTM Calib]

I to ahev had a number of issues with Asus motherboards....had a lot of success with Gigabyte ones though

Gigabyte do tend to be more reliable.  Had some weird compatibility issues with them, and they tend to fit crap northbridge/mch fans.

I always ditch the standard cooling setups anyway....to cheap and compromised

[Martin_1962]

2 year warantee though!

I wonder if they have improved their quality?