Nice and easy - buying new computer

Sorry about that H :oops:

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I'm with Hugo.

Let's call them off the shelf computers.

They're generally bad and HM is exaggerating to troll or look cool, whatever it is he does now.

My family had an HP machine that had a fairly hench, small case, was reasonably quiet and to my knowledge never failed. It did get packed with dust, but so did my custom build because my mum smoked like hell and never dusted (she's disabled). It seemed possible to replace the GPU but the PSU and drive bays were weird and proprietary. Generally it seemed a pain in the ass to modify. It did at least have an Asus motheboard. You would have had to upgrade the PSU to put a decent GPU in there, which would entail rewiring pretty much the entire thing and dismantling these weird plastic latches, tonnes of screws in difficult to reach places and generally it was obviously made to be difficult to fix.

You also get stuck with 1 year warranty.

So no it won't blow up in your face but it won't normally be adequate to upgrade with decent graphics or include decent parts. This machine cost over a grand so even the "high end" machines are still difficult to upgrade and they will make compromises for you to increase the profit margin.

= waste of money really and poor overall gaming performance. Unless you go specifically to a company for gaming machines like Dell, with the same underlying issues and which might be dead money in a few years.

The most common issues I have ever had when servicing off the shelf machines are cpu critically overheating (poor thermal compound / cooling) and PSUs blowing up (not built to high enough tolerances).

These things have never happened in the 7 machines I have built over 7 years.

For the same money as the premium you pay on a prebuild you can massively upgrade your GPU and possibly CPU performance; the the PC remains good for gaming for longer. The extended warranty and ease of repair means your investment is less likely to go to gooseberry fool as quick as a year down the line in some cases.

Green Gecko wrote:Let's call them off the shelf computers.

Would you include this as an 'off the shelf computer'?

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers ... livery/75/

HSH28 wrote:
Green Gecko wrote:Let's call them off the shelf computers.

Would you include this as an 'off the shelf computer'?

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers ... livery/75/

Technically, yes it is. It's a shame they don't list the full spec/make of each component, but they do it because they'll use the cheapest they possibly can to maximise profit.

Holpil wrote:
HSH28 wrote:
Green Gecko wrote:Let's call them off the shelf computers.

Would you include this as an 'off the shelf computer'?

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers ... livery/75/

Technically, yes it is. It's a shame they don't list the full spec/make of each component, but they do it because they'll use the cheapest they possibly can to maximise profit.

That only applies to the brand of 560Ti and the Hard Drive. Everything else important you can see what they are using.

By off the shelf in mean traditional branded computer like Dell, Zoostorm, HP, Packard Bell, what used to be Tiny, Time etc.

This is academic anyway.

Yes.

The point is that if he doesn't want to build one himself and doesn't mind spending an extra £100 or so then he can have a good gaming PC that would rival anything he could build himself.

I personally haven't contested that but you have to be careful who you buy from, and I can't currently speak from experience, as I haven't done that.

I did ask if anyone else has bought from a custom build site they've been happy with recently.

The only company I've heard of people being happy with is MESH who no longer exist and even then I remember someone had problems. On the contrary I've heard plenty of gooseberry fool about Dell for example.

Sure you have to be careful (like when buying anything).

I think problems can get way overblown though, if you believed what some people say then buying a Dell would never be a good choice...however I was (and still am) perfectly happy with the machine I bought from them, its been through a pretty major upgrade (basically everything but the case, motherboard and CPU) with no problem. Price wise I actually paid less at the time for what I got than if I'd built it myself.

If you are very aware of what you are buying and the possible issues then its not always the worst thing to buy from somewhere like Dell (though at the moment I wouldn't unless there was a really good offer on).

Yes Hugo I agree.

You did clearly make a choice to upgrade your machine once it fell out of favour though. What fell short?

My god you people just strawberry floating talk and talk and talk and oh my god its so dull.

YouTube

Wow thanks hugo. I now see the errors of my ways. I feel like such a dick for attempting to save a guy money.

Falsey wrote:My god you people just strawberry floating talk and talk and talk and oh my god its so dull.

You think everything is gooseberry fool though so how can you tell the difference?

Stugene wrote:Wow thanks hugo. I now see the errors of my ways. I feel like such a dick for attempting to save a guy money.

I think the point is the guy asked for specific information and said he didn't want to self build and everyone then told him to self build.

I think the point is that we were asked to recommend a good prebuild, there are none, ergo we cant recommend any. Hugo has just flown off on his own tangent as per usual so Ill leave him chattering into the mirror until he can fight off the erection.

Green Gecko wrote:Yes Hugo I agree.

You did clearly make a choice to upgrade your machine once it fell out of favour though. What fell short?

It was just a few years out of date, I bought it in January '08 and upgraded about a year ago, wouldn't have been any different if I'd built the machine in '08 myself.

The graphics card (an 8800GT) was getting a bit long in the tooth (oh and massively overheating too), so I replaced that with a Radeon 6950. I also had to replace the PSU because the unit that came with the Dell wasn't powerful enough. Other than that I bought a 2TB HDD, a 60GB SSD (which has already failed), a BluRay drive, upgraded to 8GB of RAM and bought a copy of Windows 7.

As it is I have a Q6600 machine that still runs games on high settings at 1080p at perfectly acceptable framerates.

Falsey wrote:My god you people just strawberry floating talk and talk and talk and oh my god its so dull.

I thought agreeing with Hugo was novel enough.

Jesus christ, people.

I have a shitty laptop that can play the games I want to at basic graphics levels. I'm really not asking for much. I cannot be strawberry floated to build a computer, and I'm also living in Japan now, so I have no idea where I could buy one other than the internet. I am so busy as well. I don't want to build one. Not because I don't think I can, or because I don't think it's worth it, but because I want to save myself the time.

This whole topic was supposed to be easy but you guys have gone on your strawberry floating self-dick-sucking spree and been all "build your own PC otherwise you're a noob" and my god I do not care enough to build my own PC. I'll keep this shitty laptop for a while. I never knew it could be so hard to recommend a half-decent computer for a half-decent price.

Stop sucking your own dicks and just give me some half decent specs to look out for and I'll do the rest.

G-Ratasaurus Rex wrote:Jesus christ, people.

I have a shitty laptop that can play the games I want to at basic graphics levels. I'm really not asking for much. I cannot be strawberry floated to build a computer, and I'm also living in Japan now, so I have no idea where I could buy one other than the internet. I am so busy as well. I don't want to build one. Not because I don't think I can, or because I don't think it's worth it, but because I want to save myself the time.

This whole topic was supposed to be easy but you guys have gone on your strawberry floating self-dick-sucking spree and been all "build your own PC otherwise you're a noob" and my god I do not care enough to build my own PC. I'll keep this shitty laptop for a while. I never knew it could be so hard to recommend a half-decent computer for a half-decent price.

Stop sucking your own dicks and just give me some half decent specs to look out for and I'll do the rest.

No, strawberry float off.

Nice and easy - buying new computer

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