# Looking to buy a new PC...



## Culhwch (Jun 27, 2008)

As the thread's title so subtly suggests, my wife is looking to buy a new PC. Trouble is, neither of us are really up on the techy side of things. So here I am asking for some advice. We're looking at systems and it's all double-dutch to us. She currently has her eye on one whose specs read thusly:



> Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L M/b - P31, 1333MHz FSB, DDR2-1066, PCI Express x16, SATAII,
> Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 CPU, 2.33 GHz, FSB 1333MHz, 4MB L2 Cache, Socket LGA775
> Corsair VS1GB667D2 1GB Value Select PC-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 RAM,
> Seagate 250GB 'ST3250310AS' SATA 3Gb/s HDD - 7200rpm, 8MB Cache, 5-year warranty
> ...



The best I could offer was, 'Hmm, nice case.' So, thoughts? What's it all mean to us? To give you an idea she mainly uses it for general stuff, word-processing, photo-editing, some low-tech games, internet, and to play songs if the mood hits...

Any and all advice welcome!


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## BookStop (Jun 27, 2008)

Does it just have 1 usb port? I know practically nothing about computers, but only 1 port would not work for us as we are constantly plugging in thumb drives, and camera, game controller, headphones..it would be a pain if we had less than 4. It's good that it comes with 1gb ram, but is there room to expand it in a couple years to keep the pc more current as techn expands? Oh, and you didn't mention price. Might make a difference.


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## Lenny (Jun 27, 2008)

The card reader has one port, the case has at least one port, and the motherboard has four on the backpanel.

---

As for the system itself - it's not bad. At some point I'd upgrade the RAM to maybe 2gb, or swap the 1gb in there for a PC6400 or a PC8400 stick, but otherwise, I can't see anything wrong with it.

The case is nice, too - you were right there, Cul. 

How much is it overall? I've guessed at around £350, which converts to something like AU$700, but I don't know about taxes and other charges in Australia, so it might not be  straight conversion.


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## Happy Joe (Jun 27, 2008)

The mother board;
GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Specification - GA-P31-DS3L (rev. 1.x)
supports up to 4 gig of memory but the most that 32 bit operating systems can support is 3 gig. The machine comes with one gig (barely enough).

The E6550 is a good processor but is showing its age.

Corsair is name brand memory this is an inexpensive not particularly fast stick.

Seagate is a good manufacturer and the size type and speed of this drive are adequate.

Card readers just read cards nothing special to look for here, performance wise.

The case is an inexpensive generic one, although it looks nice.

Samsung's SH-202H 
ODD Support
Appears to be a moderately priced ATA/ATAPI(E-IDE) interface drive Samsung is a good manufacturer.

The 10/100 NIC is a bit puzzling as the motherboard includes an on board 10/100/1000 connection

The Hightech ATI HD2400Pro PCI-E 256MB 64-bit DDR2 , apears to be a (to put it kindly) a very inexpensive video card. I have never heard of this brand before.

The system kind of looks like this;
Ariel Pro System, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD DVD-RW 256MB Discrete Videocard 8-ch Audio MS Windows XP Pro

And would likely perform acceptably for web surfing and word processing and your other intended uses, the video is not up to even moderately old (last year's) gaming standards (at least it is upgradeable), however it can be used to view and record DVDs.

My overall impression is that this is a budget build being marketed by a small builder. I would compare prices and features with Dell and E-machine to see if additional software packages could be included or perhaps a monitor and speakers.

Enjoy!


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## Culhwch (Jun 28, 2008)

Happy Joe said:


> The system kind of looks like this;
> Ariel Pro System, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD DVD-RW 256MB Discrete Videocard 8-ch Audio MS Windows XP Pro


 
That's exactly it, actually. $A780 to answer your question, Lenny. And thanks for the input, guys. Still looking, so there may be more questions forthcoming!


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## Grimward (Jun 28, 2008)

Not up on my US - Australian currency conversion (or what workstations are going for over there, for that matter) to tell you whether the price is right, Cul, but based on what your wife wants to do, the machine is adequate.  Also, you usually can get much better prices on monitors when they are bundled with the new workstation, but I don't see anything about a monitor....just buying the box, then?


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## Culhwch (Jun 28, 2008)

Yeah, we have a newish monitor and all the peripherals, so really we just need the box. We even have a new DVD burner, so don't even really need that. But we don't know enough about it to get one built from scratch with just the bits we need...

Can anyone suggest a basic build for about the price I mentioned - around $A700, which is something like £350 or $US680? The best value components, and what goes with what, that kind of thing... Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.


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## The Ace (Jun 28, 2008)

There's nothing wrong with it, Culwich.  Unless you're a game nut, 1GB RAM and a 256mB Graphics card are perfectly adequate.

This PC may actually a bit more advanced than you need, but I'd grab it before they try to flog it with Vista instead.


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## Wybren (Jun 28, 2008)

Who is the computer through?


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## Culhwch (Jun 29, 2008)

Wybren said:


> Who is the computer through?


 
A place called I-tech, Wyb.

And cheers, Ace. It's always reassuring to get a few opinions from folks who actually know what they are talking about. I really should get up to date on this kind of stuff, but it's a little daunting. I used to be fine with it in high school, when the main pursuit in my life was gaming, but that was ten years ago...


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## Wybren (Jun 29, 2008)

My other half (who works for a computer store) says you should probably go the next hard drive up from that, and also look at computer alliance and umart


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## Culhwch (Jun 30, 2008)

Having a look at Computer Alliance now, Wyb. Much better in terms of flexibility. Thanks for the pointer!


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## Wybren (Jul 1, 2008)

No problem


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