Desktop PC buying advixe

[murphy's law]

Looking to get a new desktop PC & not really up on what is what.

Have a Dell Inspiron that is 5 years old, been happy with it so was thinking to just get the latest version, which is £450 odd (http://m.dell.com/mt/www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-3847-desktop/pd?fl=m&oc=cd84747 - no wireless mouse or keyboard is a downside though). Are there any other makes I should be considering in that price range?

I want it for music, browsing + downloading & streaming TV & film, not games (apart from a cheeky bit of CM01/02 now & then).

In the £500 price range are Dell, PC world etc much the same?

Cheers for any advice.

 

[5mins-from-amex]

Build it yourself you will end up with a MUCH better PC.

 

[Wardy]

Most of what you want to do will depend more on your bandwidth then the PC itself. Personally I would avoid PC World since their PCs tend to come with a lot of bloatware. Ebuyer are normally good and a quick look shows the following in your price range. http://www.ebuyer.com/670680-exdisp...-i7-4790-16gb-ddr3-ram-2tb-hdd-ebr1-7260-0038

 

[Wardy]

Build it yourself you will end up with a MUCH better PC.

Have to agree with this

 

[Barham's tash]

Buy a laptop. For that money you'll get one with huge hard drive space, tonnes of RAM and an awesome processor.

I bought a Lenovo Z50 to replace a desktop and am completely loving it. Only £420 too.

 

[Husty]

Would you be happy using the screen of the old one? If so that package doesn't seem like good value.

I'd suggest stumping up the cash (it shouldnt be much) for a Solid State Harddrive (SSD), these are much faster than traditional spinning-wheel harddrives. They make a massive and very much noticeable improvement to PC and application start-up and loading and are well worth the today quite small investment.

The trade-off is that a similar priced SSD Harddrive will have much less storage, say 250GB compared to 1TB storage in an old, slow harddrive. If you have a LOT of music etc then this might be a concern but the average person doesn't come close to acquiring that much data anyway so the smaller capacity shouldnt be a concern.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Buy one with good spellcheck software.

 

[5mins-from-amex]

Would you be happy using the screen of the old one? If so that package doesn't seem like good value.

I'd suggest stumping up the cash (it shouldnt be much) for a Solid State Harddrive (SSD), these are much faster than traditional spinning-wheel harddrives. They make a massive and very much noticeable improvement to PC and application start-up and loading and are well worth the today quite small investment.

The trade-off is that a similar priced SSD Harddrive will have much less storage, say 250GB compared to 1TB storage in an old, slow harddrive. If you have a LOT of music etc then this might be a concern but the average person doesn't come close to acquiring that much data anyway so the smaller capacity shouldnt be a concern.

I run my OS and a couple of games off a SSD and use my HDD for everything else, much quicker load times.

 

[perseus]

I paid 20% an extra and chose a local shop. My specs, no bloatware. The advantages of a local shop is if something goes wrong. Nothing has. Two hard discs, SSD for programs and an ordinary hard disc for files etc. External HD for back-up (probably bought that from PCWorld).

Bought a secondhand flat screen TV in a charuty shop to use as a monitor.

 

[beorhthelm]

Build it yourself you will end up with a MUCH better PC.

though also doing more than the poster needs. if we take it down the DIY path, just upgrade some bits on the existing one for couple hundred, a freash OS and it will be like new.

The trade-off is that a similar priced SSD Harddrive will have much less storage, say 250GB compared to 1TB storage in an old, slow harddrive. If you have a LOT of music etc then this might be a concern but the average person doesn't come close to acquiring that much data anyway so the smaller capacity shouldnt be a concern.

trade off is best solved with keeping the OS and apps on the SSD, music, video and other data on standard spinning rust. SSD are bonkers fast and do make massive improvments, really only gets noticed where one needs to load large amounts of data quickly. so a freash install to a new SSD (about £50), add some memory (Crucial will provided correct modules for the model), budget end GPU (say £75), and be like new.

but if do go with a new machine, Dell arent to be sniffed at, i always say to look at the business ranges (Optilex) as they tend to be better built and dont have so much bloat. Or look at the models that simply look nice, some look quite a long way from the beige boxes of old. Or, ask a local shop to spec one, throw some money locally, especially if keeping the monitor (you wont get any improvement here without spending lots, and probably wouldnt notice it)

 

[Fungus]

Another vote for (smallish) SSD as system disk, plus a larger HDD for data. Bought my powerful Chillblast with two 2tb hard disks, but they were a real bottleneck (task manager frequently showed them maxed-out, while the processor and memory were barely doing anything). Added a 250gb SSD for Windows, programs, and small data, and it's much better balanced.