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Son wants a pc for xmas to mainly play games plus a bit of homework.
Realise not going to get a top machine for the money but what should i be looking for?
Price hasn't gother to include monitor etc.
Thanks
Gaming pcs are pretty much a marketing invention. decent multicore processor, 4Gig Ram (though8 won't break the bank) mid range graphics card will do for any average size monitor.
Novatech <-- sell PCs geared towards gaming an are quite cheap.
**edit: don't let your son start playing World of Warcraft if you ever want him to do well at school 😛
www.overclockers.co.uk
Picked up my entire set-up including 24" monitor for just shy of £700. It's now 2 years old and still twice as fast as the iMac mum and dad bought 6 months ago.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-210-OK
Decent value, it is what I'd be getting if looking for a budget PC if I sold this one. Loads of customize options. I'd be getting it with this case too just because it looks COOL.
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Tower is, right now today, £452 with Win7 and 12 months standard warranty. When it gets delivered there's someone with it to wire it all in and set it up for you. The case upgrade i've pictured is an extra £82.51 but for that I think it'd put a bigger smile on your sons face 😉
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-057-BQ&groupid=17&catid=510&subcat=
There's your 24" monitor for £140 too if you need/want a new monitor.
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Just as my son asks for a pc for gaming this thread pops up. 🙄
I've got a cool keyboard too what you can change the backlight colour of, picked it up from PCWORLD brand new for £20. Mouse is personal preference really because what works for 1 might not work for another 🙂
You can get a Dell Inspiron 660 desktop (with no monitor), I3 proc, 6GB Ram and 1gb 640 Graphics card delivered for £529.
Its not too shabby.
The real benchmark is actually what you lad wants to play - the moe graphics intensive the greater Graphics Card Memoy (2GB), RAM and processor he'll need.
Self build is often the cheapest and best way to get what you need for your money.
I think building one up yourself is still the cheapest option and it is pretty easy. A Nvidia GTX550ti or GTX640(ddr5) would be the cheapest graphics cards I would go for.
Are Dells more upgradable these days? Mine was a good PC but filled with annoyances like a nonstandard formfactor so the motherboard and PSU couldn't be replaced, and the PSU couldn't cope with much extra demand.
Nice thing about a assembled-from-parts machine (as opposed to a tailored build) is that they're so upgradable and therefore possibly longer lived... This PC's ancient now, the core of the system is about 5 generations old. It's had 3 GPU upgrades to keep it in the zone and that's pretty much it (extra RAM because it costs nowt, extra hard drive because my pr0ns overflowed)
[url= http://www.tier1online.com/728-3627a6g-bundle19/thinkcentre-m90p-intel-core-i5-650-3-20ghz-4gb-ddr3-320gb-7-200rpm-windows-7-pro-installed-19-tft-bundle ]Tier1online[/url] usually have some reasonable stuff from IT clearouts etc. I've had a few PC's off them & they've been fine.