Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > Anyone build/sell PCs

[Backmarker]

I'm looking to buy self-configure. Anyone in the business?
Backmarker

[TP]

Looks like Weeksy and I are on the same wavelength ...

I did the full hunting process nearly two years ago and bought all my bits through www.aria.co.uk and built the trucker myself. (still got 2GHz P4, 512MB RAM, 60GB RAID 1 set, blah blah blah ... nice machine ...)

Like weeksy I haven't kept up on these things because I'm not in the market and they change every 5 seconds (the work laptop seems to do me fine really - wireless built in and I'm running a wireless router (Vigor Draytek 2200We) - once you've gone wireless and broadband you'll wonder how you ever coped without it!!) . I can recommend the use of Aria though - when I had a video card turn up dead I told them what I did to fault find it and sent it back and they had a replacement in the post very quickly - none of your usual "It was good when it left here mate - sorry" type bs.

Good luck Backmarker.

TP

[Backmarker]

Thanks for your help boys.

[antonye]

I'd recommend these two - have used them in the past and found them to be the best:
http://www.ebuyer.co.uk/
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/

I've used places like Scan, Komplett, etc but the others have always been better.

[fodder]

Built a few.
My advice is to buy the technology that is about six to twelve months old (unless you really want the latest at a big premium) ie P4 2.8 or Athlon 3000xp £100 or less and more than quick enough for everything in use today. Get a mainboard with 8xAGP, a 400mhz Front side bus and at least 5 PCI slots form a reputable manufacturer (Asus or Gigabyte are good) for around £50 and you can't really go wrong. A 7200rpm HDD of whatever size you want or can afford.
The graphics card really depends on whether you intend to play the latest games. You can get some pretty good 8x ones with 128mb ddr for around £70 (nvidia or ATI chipsets).

Build the one you want online in the shopping basket using ebuyer, dabs, aria or Komplett and see who is the cheapest.