Planetarion Forums

Ragnarak · 17 Jun 2004, 12:09

My computer just passed away and i think it's time to look for a new one.

I was hoping some people could point me in the right direction.

Is the dell outlet still a good place to look? Anything i should know about ordering from there (i know how to find the cheap ones)? Do they rip you off on delivery or anything?

Are there any other places that people could recommend?

Basically my motherboard has died. It takes pc133 sdram and a athalon 1.4Ghz. This means i still have a working hard drive, cdrom, dvd, sound card, ethernet card, etc.

What about the shuttle option? I have no idea about them except "they're quite small".

I don't thinki i'd be that confident putting it all together from scratch in case something went wrong but i'm fine installing more ram, a new hdd, pic things etc.

Thanks for any help guys

pablissimo · 17 Jun 2004, 12:19

I've got an older Shuttle (SN41G2). And I love it so, had it about a year now. Currently got it running an XP2800+ with a Radeon 9600XT, no problems with heat if you're using one of the newer AMD procs (though there are P4 Shuttle cases too).

It's a bit fiddly putting things in sometimes, you're routing cables round through little holes which can get a little frustrating but in return for a couple of hours work you have a very quiet little box, that looks pretty neat, is perfect for lanning etc etc.

I have recently been buying all my components off www.overclockers.co.uk, having been ****ed about by Ebuyer one too many times.

Ragnarak · 17 Jun 2004, 12:37

Can you buy shuttles with the cpu/motherboard/etc already all connected?

Where's the best place to look?

Am browsing OCUK but all not sure if they come already connected etc..

pablissimo · 17 Jun 2004, 12:44

Shuttles come with

Motherboard
Heat-pipe cooling doohickey
Some onboard stuff, normally LAN, sound, usb, firewire, GFX

You don't get a CPU, RAM, drives. There's two slots, one for a PCI card and one for an AGP card. You may be hard pressed to run a very high-end GFX card in it since the power supply is only 200W in my one, but at the minute as I say I have that proc, that GFX card, two hdds, a cd-rewriter, wireless lan pci card all chugging away happily, never had a problem with the power.

Ragnarak · 17 Jun 2004, 12:58

http://www.instant-shop.com/ishs-esh...ory390164.html

Here they let you select what you want and then build it for you for an extra 40 quid.

Are there any similar sites that anyone could recommend?

How much ram should i be looking at? It's like 4 years since i looked for a computer

At the minute i have a 1.4Ghz Athlon with 512MB pc133 sdram. Apart from dying on me it performed fine.

Vaio · 17 Jun 2004, 21:27

Dell = shite

~Vaio~

flapjack · 17 Jun 2004, 22:39

Vaio, I agree.

Custom systems all the way.

Or if you're lacking in want to do so, Sky computers did a very good job with the computers over at my dad's work and our first computer, never had anything problems with either in 3 and respectively 6 years

Luckeh!!!! · 17 Jun 2004, 23:02

what is your price range btw?

Zar · 18 Jun 2004, 01:26

the standard these days is about 512-1gb of ddr ram.

unless you're a serious gamer - i would suggest going for the cheapest of the high range machines you can get because price increases tend to be geometric and its not that wise to spend bucket loads when the perfomance increase isnt proportional

Ragnarak · 18 Jun 2004, 11:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Luckeh!!!!

what is your price range btw?

It's not really fixed but i'd like it to be as cheap as possible. I was thinking somewhere around £400 but could go more if that wasn't enough.

Zar · 18 Jun 2004, 13:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ragnarak

It's not really fixed but i'd like it to be as cheap as possible. I was thinking somewhere around £400 but could go more if that wasn't enough.

you can get a very nice computer for £400.

Are you looking for a monitor also?

Vaio · 18 Jun 2004, 14:18

Shuttle boxes are pretty cool. I used a couple as mini servers in my last job and apart from being 'a little noisy' for other users (I always had music playing so it didn't bother me) they ran fine until I discovered how cool rack mount servers are but thats another story.

You could get hold of a new motherboard pretty cheaply. It's not difficult to install one and once you've done your first, your confidence will grow for the future when you need to do a similar upgrade.

~Vaio~

Ragnarak · 20 Jun 2004, 10:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zar

you can get a very nice computer for £400.

Are you looking for a monitor also?

Nope my monitor works fine.

The thing is i don't really want to put it together myself cos in theory i can do it easily but then when something doesn't work i dunno if i could diagnose what's wrong.

1-X · 2 Jul 2004, 20:00

have a look at these...

http://www.autdirect.co.uk/
http://www.aria.co.uk/
http://www.cpucitystore.co.uk/catalog/
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/

e.g. http://www.autdirect.co.uk/acatalog/...ml&CatalogBody (scroll down)

...AMD 3000+ and everything except HD and video card for £225, needs a bit of extra memory too. (they have "barebones" P4 and shuttles too)

I'm looking at buying something similar myself this weekend

I've been looking (drooling) at shuttle/SFF systems, not sure if they're "the future" or just a gimmick though. Seems a waste getting one without having a tft screen too.