Any tips for good value sites for buying PC's?

Frank - also have a look at Elara (Irish). Pretty much same as Komplett but probably without the shipping charges. I've bought from both and been happy.

As far as the PC goes, I honestly think that for 500 snots you're going to get a pretty basic machine. Now, if that's what you want, then happy days.

Like Seanie, I built a high spec machine - probably around 4K a few years back. Probably half that price today. But I had specific requirements - the most important being data storage and integrity. I have 10 hard disks in use with 4 spares (these are backups that are stored off-site). In order to achieve that, my money had to go on a good tower case, a good power supply, a suitable MOBO, a NAS box and a bucket load of hard disks. That's where the majority of the cash went.

Have a good think about what you need the PC for. If its light tasks, you're not worried too much about data loss and you can put up with it being sluggish, then 500 should do it.

HTH
Dave

Hey Frank, whether you go for build or buy, the recovery of Sterling is such that you'll still benefit from a daytrip up North, though not quite as much as you would have a year ago. have a look at pcworld.co.uk - if they have what you want at the right price then you'll do fine, but don't count on top quality advice!

Paul.

Dont forget out of the €500 you will probably need an operating system, thats prob about the €200 mark!

You might get away without having a monitor if you have a HDTV and have a HDMI Output on the Graphics card. otherwise thats another €250 for a small decent one (new).

Not much left to kit out a computer!

Im not sure how easy it would be or even possible but what about buying a Dell then upgrading it on the cheap? more ram, faster CPU (sell old one), Big Graphics card?

Graham

I picked up a fairly decent enough PC not too long ago secondhand on www.adverts.ie for 150euro. More than enough for an observatory PC.

As for www.komplett.ie I am having quite a difficult time with them at the moment. I recommend you read boards.ie to see what is going on there. Suffice to say, I would recommend you steer clear of them - a pity as they used to be very good.

Michael.

i have used www.dabs.ie and found them quite good and reasonbly priced. if you are building pc you should look out for and oem version of the operating system. if you get it you'd have to buy it with hardware such as ram or a video card but it is a third the price usually of the full thing. the drawback is that you can only use it on one computer once you activate it. it is not easy to transfer to another computer as if you change too much of the hardware it has a fit.
stephen.

And on that OS question - Ubuntu is free and very capable - I recently upgraded my laptop by changing the 120GB disk for a 320GB and didn't bother replicating the previous Vista / Ubuntu dual boot, I just went for Ubuntu. No regrets thus far!