Looking For A Pc For Uni.

[dann2707]

Howdy. I'm after a new computer for when I head off to uni later this month.

I'm wanting a tft screen to be included in the price. I know its not a lot to spend, but I want something that can handle the games of today on mid to high settings.

But to be honest I just generally want somethings that is quick, opens programs with ease and that. Games are not a necessity actually.

Any ideas or links? Cheers.

[Mark W]

To be honest, I'd go for a laptop rather than a PC. I went to uni with a PC and it was alright, but when you go home over the holidays or go round somewhere else it's a bit of hassle having to leave work, etc., behind you. Depending on what course you're doing it's also handy to be able to take a laptop in with you. Generally speaking though, simply not having to lug a b*****d PC around with you the whole time when you move (which will happen a reasonable amount in uni) is a total win, and having the portable-ness of a laptop is banging too. Found mine really useful on f**king tedious group projects where we'd cruise over to a coffee shop of some kind with wi-fi then just do work there/f**k around on the internet.

For £550 you should be able to get a pretty decent laptop too. When my PC, then my second hand laptop shit the bed I bought a new Dell laptop (Studio something or other). It's got a massive screen, which is nice, is reasonably powerful, easy to use, etc. That was a good few years ago now too so you should be able to buy something better than that now. Mine had a 160gb hard drive, 2gb of ram, etc. - nothing amazing but enough to f**k about with Photoshop/Illustrator and some other shit while dicking around online too. You'll probably find you won't spend all that much time playing games on it when you get to uni as often you'll be either doing work, doing other fun shit or someone will have been a hero and brought some kind of console with them. I had two X-Box 360s in the flat I lived in and that, combined with working and riding meant that I didn't really do much with my laptop at all outside of serious business.

[Muel]

This.

Plus one of these.

Will cost £358.

As for a monitor, these are great value apparantly. One of those makes that bundle £530.

That should be a fairly decent system, good enough to handle most modern games. It doesn't have DDR3 ram, but from the benchmarks I've seen DDR3 isn't a huge increase over DDR2 really unless you have everything else at a higher spec.

The CPU in that, I'm fairly certain, is a cut down quad core, so you could unlock it to be a quad again in theory. If not, you could upgrade the CPU to one of these if needed in the future.

EDIT: Or what mark said.

Edited September 4, 2010 by Muel

[Token]

why not be a MacFag and get a Macbook, youll get loads of bitches wanting to come in your room to check how hawt it is and then they'll be on your cawk before you know it.

[Mark W]

Piss-taking aside, you do actually get a reasonable amount of discount on Apple shit if you're a student. Nearly persuaded me into getting one until I realised I'm not really at the stage of my life where I want to become a Mac fan-boy.

[Token]

Piss-taking aside, you do actually get a reasonable amount of discount on Apple shit if you're a student. Nearly persuaded me into getting one until I realised I'm not really at the stage of my life where I want to become a Mac fan-boy.

I was being deadly serious Mark.

[dann2707]

To be honest, I'd go for a laptop rather than a PC. I went to uni with a PC and it was alright, but when you go home over the holidays or go round somewhere else it's a bit of hassle having to leave work, etc., behind you. Depending on what course you're doing it's also handy to be able to take a laptop in with you. Generally speaking though, simply not having to lug a b*****d PC around with you the whole time when you move (which will happen a reasonable amount in uni) is a total win, and having the portable-ness of a laptop is banging too. Found mine really useful on f**king tedious group projects where we'd cruise over to a coffee shop of some kind with wi-fi then just do work there/f**k around on the internet.

For £550 you should be able to get a pretty decent laptop too. When my PC, then my second hand laptop shit the bed I bought a new Dell laptop (Studio something or other). It's got a massive screen, which is nice, is reasonably powerful, easy to use, etc. That was a good few years ago now too so you should be able to buy something better than that now. Mine had a 160gb hard drive, 2gb of ram, etc. - nothing amazing but enough to f**k about with Photoshop/Illustrator and some other shit while dicking around online too. You'll probably find you won't spend all that much time playing games on it when you get to uni as often you'll be either doing work, doing other fun shit or someone will have been a hero and brought some kind of console with them. I had two X-Box 360s in the flat I lived in and that, combined with working and riding meant that I didn't really do much with my laptop at all outside of serious business.

Cheers for that Mark. Appreciate the effort into posting that however I really am set on getting a dedicated PC that I can leave in my room.. I think my Sister is going to be awesome and give me her Laptop that she used for uni a few years back so I can use that and not worry about it being super fast having not spent any money on it.. Just a general laptop to drag around with me..

This.

Plus one of these.

Will cost £358.

As for a monitor, these are great value apparantly. One of those makes that bundle £530.

That should be a fairly decent system, good enough to handle most modern games. It doesn't have DDR3 ram, but from the benchmarks I've seen DDR3 isn't a huge increase over DDR2 really unless you have everything else at a higher spec.

The CPU in that, I'm fairly certain, is a cut down quad core, so you could unlock it to be a quad again in theory. If not, you could upgrade the CPU to one of these if needed in the future.

EDIT: Or what mark said.

Cheers. Seems like a good package. Looking at the monitor I was pondering having a 24" AND my current Samsung 32" 1080p TV in my room and realised that 32" would be epic overkill so I would probably end up just having the 24", nice average size I reckon. And I could hook my PS3 up to it aswell.

Piss-taking aside, you do actually get a reasonable amount of discount on Apple shit if you're a student. Nearly persuaded me into getting one until I realised I'm not really at the stage of my life where I want to become a Mac fan-boy.

A good friend of mine just spent £1800 at the apple store the other day on a macbook, printer and a nano and a bundle of software she is never ever going to use. She was really sucked in to their marketing it would appear. She's rich though so it's all good.

[weirdoku]

I was gonna say, have a laptop (which you are now getting you sisters old one) for taking around with you and also have a proper desktop in your room for the intensive stuff like some serious photoshopping gaming.

[konstant]

You'll regret not bringing the 32" along IMO. You can surf on the 24" while watching TV. Every slob's dream.

[dann2707]

Thing is... I wasn't even intending on getting a tv licence and not bother with watching terrestrial tv anyhow. I only really use it for Big Brother and the occasional Road Wars!

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

Pro Tip - Paying for a TV license is like an idiot tax.

[Boswell]

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.207-9909.aspx

Find someone with staff discount and your laughing!

[Simpson]

Thing is... I wasn't even intending on getting a tv licence and not bother with watching terrestrial tv anyhow. I only really use it for Big Brother and the occasional Road Wars!

A 32" linked up to your PC as a 2nd monitor (too big for doing general stuff on) makes the, "Wanna come to mine and watch a movie" more beliable.

If I can find a good 32 for sub 250 im buying it for 2nd yr uni

[Matthew62]

As you do get a very good discount on Mac stuff as a student I'd get a mac mini and then just pick up a cheap monitor (which is easily done). Portable for when you go home and a very good machine with no real worries about viruses etc.

I'd never use a pc again myself, but I know macs aren't for everyone.

Edited September 5, 2010 by Matthew62

[forteh]

If you can budget in for it I can throroughly recommend the intel i3 chips, cheap as well chips and stonkingly fast

Changing from my aging athlon64 x2 @2.6ghz to my current i3 530 @ 4.05ghz doubled my framerate in arma2 (same graphics card), you will not find a more cpu/memory intensive game than arma2. The OCUK pre-overclocked bundle is awesome and builds a very fast, stable system, add a 5770 on as sam suggested and you will have no issues for quite a long time. I wouldnt bother looking at one of the triple or quad core chips unless youre going to be doing number crunching on it (rendering/encoding/decoding etc etc), most games out dont even support more than dual core so pretty pointless spending the extra cash on it; with the i3 you can always upgrade to a quad core i5 at a later date if you need to.

Regarding sams link to the drone system, I built one up for someone at work and its very fast

[Muel]

i3s are a little on the gay side to be honest though...?

I'm building up a new system to take to uni with me, just don't fancy taking my current desktop. It's cost me a fortune and a lot of time has gone into building it, don't really fancy it getting bashed up on the way or stolen.

Should be enough for working on, will cost me about £50 in total once I have all the bits that I don't have already.

[forteh]

i3s are a little on the gay side to be honest though...?

i3's rock and you know it

85 quid processor that will top 4 ghz without breaking a sweat?

The new intel hyperthreading is alot better than the old shite they had aswell, mine uses all 4 of its cores (2 physical 2 virtual) on applications that only support dual core.

Ok so the i5 is technically a better chip but they dont overclock quite so well and unless you have software written to run on 4 cores its not really worth it right now.

[steve g]

Have a browse through here, theres usaully some good deals : http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/dfo/df.aspx?refid=df&s=dfo

[Muel]

i3's rock and you know it

85 quid processor that will top 4 ghz without breaking a sweat?

The new intel hyperthreading is alot better than the old shite they had aswell, mine uses all 4 of its cores (2 physical 2 virtual) on applications that only support dual core.

Ok so the i5 is technically a better chip but they dont overclock quite so well and unless you have software written to run on 4 cores its not really worth it right now.

Still a glorified dual core...

I wants a 930 setup, but there's no point. My 965BE is fast enough for me and will be quicker still if I can be bothered to get an SSD (or two).

[N.Wood]

I know next to nothing about computers, but if you can get away with a laptop then do it. The amount of times I moved it was rediculous. Then you dont have to be the sad b*****d who sits in his room all day, you can sit in other peoples rooms with the tinterwebs,play music on it in communal areas, watch films on it in communal areas etc etc.

[Muel]

Or just get a cheap netbook as well, then you can have a proper desktop at home, AND watch porn on the bus.

[Wrayvon]

I'm building up a new system to take to uni with me, just don't fancy taking my current desktop. It's cost me a fortune and a lot of time has gone into building it, don't really fancy it getting bashed up on the way or stolen.

Should be enough for working on, will cost me about £50 in total once I have all the bits that I don't have already.

Why can't you take your current PC? I took mine and that at the time was ridiculously high specced. Nothing got damaged...

[Boswell]

A 32" linked up to your PC as a 2nd monitor (too big for doing general stuff on) makes the, "Wanna come to mine and watch a movie" more beliable.

If I can find a good 32 for sub 250 im buying it for 2nd yr uni

Taking my 40" samsung!

[dann2707]

This.

Plus one of these.

Will cost £358.

As for a monitor, these are great value apparantly. One of those makes that bundle £530.

That should be a fairly decent system, good enough to handle most modern games. It doesn't have DDR3 ram, but from the benchmarks I've seen DDR3 isn't a huge increase over DDR2 really unless you have everything else at a higher spec.

The CPU in that, I'm fairly certain, is a cut down quad core, so you could unlock it to be a quad again in theory. If not, you could upgrade the CPU to one of these if needed in the future.

EDIT: Or what mark said.

Ordered this system!

Wondering if I could use my Nvidia Geforce 8500gt with this system out of my current system.

Just to get me by for now?

Cheers

[Muel]

I would recommend not buying a graphics card ATM, since that post some of the prices have changed £40, even I can't keep up. The ATI 6*** series is on the way so the prices are all over the place.

You moved in yet Dan?

I'm taking my big PC now, built a basic shitter up for leaving at home for when I come back for the weekend and that.

Edited September 14, 2010 by Muel