Hi there,
One of my customers (I'm a PC fixer-upper by trade) is looking for a new PC. He wants to play CoD5 and has been sticking his head in all the PC magazines (I didn't know you could still buy those!) getting himself confused.
He bought his last PC 4 years ago & paid about 2 grand (!!) for a top-of-the-range Evesham. He recognises that shopping with Evesham, at least, was a mistake.
My advice is generally to not to spend too much - ?300 or ?400 from Dell - and then you won't worry too much if you have to chuck it away in 3 years or so. Money spent tomorrow will buy a lot more performance than it will today, so you're better off having the money in the bank. At the end of the day, however much you spend now, it's still be a crappy 3-year-old PC in 3 years time. But I don't have any experience with "gaming" systems as most of my customers only want to play Solitare, or maybe The Sims for their kids.
I'd suggest the cheapest decent QuadCore he can find + an extra ?100 on a graphics card as a build-to-order option. Is this a fair & reasonable assessment?
He's looked at Mesh computers - another customer of mine swears by them & I find them to have a pretty nice "feel" to them, so I suggested the Elite M6600 LE + either:
If you untick the SurgeMaster extension lead, BullGuard internet security suite & 2nd monitor on the first page the price comes to ?430 (inc. VAT) plus the main monitor + whatever graphics card he decides on. That seems a little pricey to me, considering deals I've seen from Dell in recent months, but he seems to have a bit of an aversion to Dell, having made the mistake of phoning their Indian call centre.
I guess Call Of Duty 5 on his shelf does indicate that he wants to play fairly recent games, but I don't think he'd notice (or, at least appreciate) the difference between a ?500 graphics card & a more basic one. It doesn't matter what he buys now, it'll still be an upgrade for him - I think his current machine has a GeForce in it?? - and he'll enjoy playing on the new system. He's definitely a casual gamer and I doubt that he spends more than 6 or 8 hours a week playing.
I hate it when a customer raises the question of graphics cards, because the market changes so rapidly and I spend hours reading forums & reviews trying to work out what's best. My local wholesaler only ever seems to have the GT model of the card & not the other one that's mentioned in my researches. I just play games on a console myself, so I'd appreciate any help.
If the ATI Radeon HD 3650 series is good enough then I reckon I could find a decent deal on a Dell Vostro with the option for a 24" 1920x1200 which would probably appeal to him.
Cheers,
Stroller.
One of my customers (I'm a PC fixer-upper by trade) is looking for a new PC. He wants to play CoD5 and has been sticking his head in all the PC magazines (I didn't know you could still buy those!) getting himself confused.
He bought his last PC 4 years ago & paid about 2 grand (!!) for a top-of-the-range Evesham. He recognises that shopping with Evesham, at least, was a mistake.
My advice is generally to not to spend too much - ?300 or ?400 from Dell - and then you won't worry too much if you have to chuck it away in 3 years or so. Money spent tomorrow will buy a lot more performance than it will today, so you're better off having the money in the bank. At the end of the day, however much you spend now, it's still be a crappy 3-year-old PC in 3 years time. But I don't have any experience with "gaming" systems as most of my customers only want to play Solitare, or maybe The Sims for their kids.
I'd suggest the cheapest decent QuadCore he can find + an extra ?100 on a graphics card as a build-to-order option. Is this a fair & reasonable assessment?
He's looked at Mesh computers - another customer of mine swears by them & I find them to have a pretty nice "feel" to them, so I suggested the Elite M6600 LE + either:
- 512MB ATI Radeon 3650 (Direct X10.1, PCI Express 2.0)[upg ? 70.00]
- 512MB nVIDIA GeForce 9600GT - Dual DVI, HDTV, TV Out[upg ? 100.00]
- 512MB ATI Radeon 3870 (Direct X10.1, PCI Express 2.0)[upg ? 120.00]
If you untick the SurgeMaster extension lead, BullGuard internet security suite & 2nd monitor on the first page the price comes to ?430 (inc. VAT) plus the main monitor + whatever graphics card he decides on. That seems a little pricey to me, considering deals I've seen from Dell in recent months, but he seems to have a bit of an aversion to Dell, having made the mistake of phoning their Indian call centre.
I guess Call Of Duty 5 on his shelf does indicate that he wants to play fairly recent games, but I don't think he'd notice (or, at least appreciate) the difference between a ?500 graphics card & a more basic one. It doesn't matter what he buys now, it'll still be an upgrade for him - I think his current machine has a GeForce in it?? - and he'll enjoy playing on the new system. He's definitely a casual gamer and I doubt that he spends more than 6 or 8 hours a week playing.
I hate it when a customer raises the question of graphics cards, because the market changes so rapidly and I spend hours reading forums & reviews trying to work out what's best. My local wholesaler only ever seems to have the GT model of the card & not the other one that's mentioned in my researches. I just play games on a console myself, so I'd appreciate any help.
If the ATI Radeon HD 3650 series is good enough then I reckon I could find a decent deal on a Dell Vostro with the option for a 24" 1920x1200 which would probably appeal to him.
Cheers,
Stroller.
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