PC Suggestions

[vex]

I haven't looked at PC specs for about 3years and it is now time for a new one in the study.

I have an acceptable LCD screen so I am just looking for a base unit, keyboard and mouse.

Ideally I want the business to spend about £500 ex vat.

What spec should I be looking for? Ideally I want to be able to edit the DV out from my new camcorder, 512Mb or 1G Ram, 100+ HD and DVD Recordability.

After what specs, comes the where from question?

[telecat]

Depends what else you want it to do? Dell are cheap and do the job but you'll have to pay more for better video cards etc. You'll also find the instant you buy it, it's out of date. Hence try to buy one where you can replace as many components as possible. For DV editing you need to know if the camera uses Firewire as most PC's don't have this as standard. Get as much RAM as you can afford and if you are editing video the biggest fastest Disk. Mice and Keyboards the choice is endless including Bluetooth or Infra red cordless or ergonomic for those prone to RSI. I'd be careful with Bluetooth if you are installing a new OS. It doesn't pick up the Mouse very well until you load the drivers.

[silverfox]

Sounds like you might struggle to to get something to fit your budget so you might compromise for something that won't be the highest end configuration but will do the job. tiny.com do some cheap bundles but you usually need to purchase a keyboard, mouse and monitor of some sort. They can be priced at around £650 (AMD 64 based)

Certainly suppliers like Dell and Mesh allow you to configure your PC online but sometimes you have to get some sort of monitor as well as keyboard and mouse. Dells offers seem as though they change daily...

Suppliers like Scan offer barebones systems that would suit your needs or be configurable to suit your needs.

If you know someone who can build you a system then it should be easy.

If you are predominantly going to do video based PC work then do consider a Pentium 4 based system. Generally P4 systems operate very well in this kind of scenario. However, there can be a cost saving on an AMD 64 based system.

Suggested component list:
Case, psu (I suspect you current power supply unit might be borderline for current power requirements) motherboard, cpu and fan, ram (1gb), dvdrewriter, video card, 160gb hard drive, miscellaneous cables, OS

I used scan.co.uk to price up the components (without cutting corners significantly) and the total was £637 exc carriage exc vat and time to build.

The components I found quickly on Scan are listed below with exc vat and inc vat pricing.

LN6459 Chenbro Gaming Bomb Case Black/Blue w/o PSU PC61166-003 £24.00 £28.20
LN7920 60cm Akasa Serial ATA Cable ATA150 £1.49 £1.75
LN7924 45cm Akasa Round Floppy Drive Cable £1.39 £1.63
LN2677 50cm 3XS Round ATA133 Certified IDE Cable £1.31 £1.54
LN10106 HP DVD640i Lightscribe Black 16x16 ±R Dual Layer DVD-Writer, Retail UK £42.72 £50.19
LN10083 630 Intel Pentium® 4 LGA 775 CPU (3.06 Ghz 800FSB) HT 2MB Cache with Intel® EM64T *Retail* £134.75 £158.33
LN9888 128MB Leadtek WinFast PX6600 GT TDH 6600 GT £104.50 £122.79
LN6644 160Gb Hitachi (IBM/HGST) Deskstar 7K250 (7200rpm,8Mb) - SATA £49.07 £57.66
LN9316 Abit AA8XE S775 PCI-E i925XE 1066FSB DDDR2-533 Gbit Lan SATA Raid USB2/1394 7.1Ch Audio £84.49 £99.28
LN10111 1Gb DDR2 PC4200, 533 MHz, non-ECC, 240 DIMM, unbuffered, CL4 Infinion £60.49 £71.08
LN9102 520W SilverStone Zeus aPFC PSU (Titanium black colour), Temp Controlled Fan (22 dBA min) £55.11 £64.75
LN8090 Microsoft Windows XP Professional Inc. SP2 OEM Single £77.89 £91.52

You can save on that price by using an AMD 64 processor and cooler, cheaper DDR memory along with a slightly cheaper motherboard. You'll then be closer to your target budget.

All a bit geeky but you could have a phone conversation with someone like Mesh or Dell and see what they offer (if you can't configure online to your liking).

I hope that gives you some ideas.

What does everyone else think?