New PC required - any recommendations?

[d000hg]

Either Scan.co.uk, local computer shop, or build it yourself.

If you're only spending £500, building your own seems a waste of time. If you value your time that is and don't enjoy building PCs as a hobby. If it's just for email/web/office, buy any old POS...

[cojak]

If I was going to buy another PC I'd go back to Overclockers UK. I got a good value PC promptly and received excellent customer service.

[eek]

If I was going to buy another PC I'd go back to Overclockers UK. I got a good value PC promptly and received excellent customer service.

The trouble with overclockers is that its a marmite company. Some people who use them love them, some who have had to use their customer service department hate them.

Although that is probably true of all companies.

I used to highly recommend Kustom Pcs in Ayr. Unfortunately they've stopped build to order as there was no money in it.

[Scrag Meister]

Second vote for anything from Scan.

Check out the bottom of the Today Only page, they have some nice pre-built kits too.

Been shopping with them since 2002.

Ordered new PC parts on Wednesday, would have arrived yesterday except that I wanted a Saturday deleivery to have someone to receive it.

[VectraMan]

Other than on a laptop why would you need proprietary drivers... with XP maybe but W7 is so much better for such things.

WHS. My experience of my Dells and lots of clients' Dells is that Windows 7 has no trouble detecting everything and just working (and these were machines originally supplied with XP/Vista). Even in the XP days, the Dell website made it very easy to find the drivers you needed just by entering the code on the back of the machine. I can't imagine the smaller online operations can provide that level of service, assuming of course they're still in business at the time you need a reinstall.

[doodab]

The trouble with the name brands like Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Lenovo is that they have the economies of scale to do things their own way so upgrading later on can sometimes be a pain with odd sized motherboards being hard to replace and suchlike. If you only plan to use the box until it's no longer useful and then replace with another box that's not so much of a problem I suppose.

I've only bought components from scan but their systems always get good reviews and on the one occasion I've had to use customer support it was hassle free, so +1 for them, although personally I would self build, even at that price point. That might be because I used to do QC in a PC factory though

[Durbs]

If I was going to buy another PC I'd go back to Overclockers UK. I got a good value PC promptly and received excellent customer service.

Another vote here for www.overclockers.co.uk, used them for donkeys years and have always been good.

[Spacecadet]

Other than on a laptop why would you need proprietary drivers... with XP maybe but W7 is so much better for such things.

The trouble with the name brands like Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Lenovo is that they have the economies of scale to do things their own way so upgrading later on can sometimes be a pain with odd sized motherboards being hard to replace and suchlike. If you only plan to use the box until it's no longer useful and then replace with another box that's not so much of a problem I suppose.

On the low end desktop systems Dell use a lot of laptop parts, basically to streamline manufacturing so they just make laptop not laptop AND desktop components. These systems are generally sold in huge numbers to large companies who just swap out any which die and send them back to Dell

If you are buying Dell, don't go consumer level, make sure you get the decent support package and haggle over the price.
Pro support with Dell is actually very good and parts are replaced with zero fuss and almost no contact with the indian call center.

[administrator]

Take your pick:
Desktop Computers | All In One Desktop PCs | Ebuyer.com

These all have Windows 7 Pro and at least 4GB of RAM. Some are more expensive than you wanted but the filters are only either up to £500 or above £500.

I have bought a couple of Zoo Storm ones for staff here and they are really nice machines so far. Have used Ebuyer customer services before for returns and they are fine to deal with.

[SimonMac]

About time I got a new PC for the home office - aiming to spend approx 500 - 600 quid.

So not a gaming PC (for the office remember), mainly used for admin (email / office etc), software dev and able to cope well with virtual machine images.

Was tempted by the Dell Optiplex ranges but also seen some good reviews of Palicomp and ChillBlast boxes - anybody here have experience of them?

ChillBlast without a second thought, friend of mine were screwed over by Mesh, I pointed them in the direction of ChillBlast and they are now a very very happy customer