Lo, on the 17,912th and ¼ day I wrought creation.

[witchieblackcat]

Originally Posted by Woz

Buy one. It's not worth dicking about building one.

My thoughts exactly.

I have built several PCs and maintained many more over the last 20 years. Then I bought a Dell and had so much spare time that I can now permenantly lurk on YD.

One word of warning. My Dell died a few days before the warranty expired and it took over 3 weeks for them to fix it. This was somewhat exasperated by the Indian call centres not really understanding English like wot I speak.

[Scuttler]

Originally Posted by Finless

So .... are you saying to go ahead and build one or go out and buy one?

Soz....Meesa saysa buysa!

[Jezza]

Originally Posted by benwild

I have built quite a few now, for myself and friends it used to be a lot cheaper for everything but dell can't be beaten at the bottom end of the market now. .

I'm in the trade and I have to agree with the above recommendations, Dell can sell the stuff cheaper than I can buy it for. I used to assemble loads for myself and friends, i don't bother anymore. I just bought a reasonable spec laptop for Mrs Jezza, 15" Widescreen, Pentium M, DVD-RW and 4hr battery for £400. Can't argue with that.

[gibbon]

Originally Posted by EdHornby

nowadays most places will sell you a board with a processor chip already on it (this is the most sensitive part of a PC build in terms of static and/or component damage) and you simply hook up the other peripherals via the cabling

Would love to see you justify that the CPU is more sensitve than processors on video boards to static... or perhap RAM chips/modules?

In fact, perhaps you would care to enlighten us with your understanding of how static electricity traverses electronic circuits and why some are more sensitive than others?

On the other hand perhaps this is not an area of expertise for you so that would be unkind.

Tsk tsk.

[applepie]

ah depends slightly though, our machines are from some crappy company somewhere because they are on our approved vendors list.

the last few batches we purchased used non-standard parts, so we had to scrap loads of them because we cannot simply upgrade bits of it. I dont know it in detail, from chatting to my IT dude.

I built mine because it was fun and I swap components out bit by bit to keep up to date ish. no problems at all. but i did plan mine with specific components so I could overclock it like mad.

personally for what you want, I would recommend just buying off the shelf. Saves you money and hassle.

its not worth building your own unless you have very specific demands or want to overclock your PC significantly.

[BigHairyAl]

Build it! Far more fun!

The main problem is sorting out which bits you want to buy - Ebuyer, for example, offer a bewildering array of products. They do however allow customers to post reviews on their offerings, so you can read up on what other peeps think of them.

Don't scrimp on the power supply though - try and spend more than a tenner, the cheapo ones have a habit of frying your motherboard............