Advice on new PC

I'm going to buy a new PC (using the office laptop at the moment) in January.

Will be using it for the odd game, Internet, playing and burning DVD's, a bit of video editing and storing photos etc etc. Afet scanning the hundreds availalbe on offer (what a minefield!!) - I'm thinking of the Mesh computer link below:

Any comments? anyone seen any better offers, am i over-speccing for what i need, anyone got any experience of MESH ??

All advice appreciated

http://www.meshcomputers.com/updated/review_feb05_xtreme643500csx.htm

Thank - Paul

 

Hey Paul,
System looks nice.
Can't comment on the value, but the memory does seem a little on the low side compared with the rest of the specs. I would see if you can get 1GB instead of the 512MB.
Not sure if it is important for you, but you might want to find out the response time of the 19" flat screen to see if it is 16ms or less which is good for games and DVDs.

 

You might as well get the latest in technology.
I would be looking at a AMD 64 CPU, SATA Hard Drive, and a graphic card and suitable MB that has PCI Express.

 

I haven't had any personal experience of Mesh PCs, but they do seem to have a good reputation for quality and value.

I agree with amped, if games and movie performance is important to you, you might want to check out the reponse time of the monitor. It ought to be below 16ms. The graphics card should handle virtually any game for at least the next 12 months, and unless you're a professional working with audio, the sound card will be more than adequate too. The processor also offers you good performance, but as amped has said, the weak link seems to be the RAM. 512MB is a bit weak and I'm surprised that a PC that is so strong in other areas should be limited in this regard.

However, upgrading to 1GB is easily done. Alternatively of course, you could look for another specification. On the whole, it's a very capable system at an attractive price from a respected manufacturer. Only the RAM bothers me, but it can be easily (and affordably) rectified after purchase.

 

Checking, but I think the screen is 16ms. Ram upgrade to 1Gb is priced at £100 - will i be better off upgrading the ram myself ?

 

did not look at the specs on the link, most are what I was stating apart from PCI Express as this is taking over from AGP it would be an idea to make sure it has it if you will be self upgrading in the future.

 

Hi Paul, I hesitate to suggest this in the PC Gaming forum but from your description of the "odd" game and "a bit of" video editing it sounds like the computer will mostly be used for internet, email etc.

I think a £1200 pc is probably overspecced for this kind of usage - I'm happily playing music, dvds, browsing the web and using MS office regularly on an Athlon 2000 with a 16Mb graphics card from the 1990s!

My pc won't play HL2 or Doom3 etc but it's fine for everyday use...I'd say you probably don't need to spend more than £600 for an email/internet pc, maybe buy a good graphics card to be able to play more recent games.

 

Agreed. My PC cost about £400 (+monitor) and plays HL2 quite happily. Look out for the following features to give you the best price/performance:

Athlon64 socket 939 - something like a 3000+ should be cheap
PCI-express graphics (something like a nVidia 6600gt or Ati X700XT will be fine for gaming unless you buy a stupidly large monitor)
1Gig Ram
250gig HDD minimum
DVD+/-RW drive
A decent (branded) PSU at least 400w (cheap noname brands like Qtec tend to go bang and take a lot of other things with them)

 

Hi Paul
Got myself a nice new pc from Mesh in December. Bought the base unit (which is the same as the one your looking at bar the video card , i went for the ATI X800XT for the same price) on it's own via their design your own unit section then added a 19" TFT monitor from a different source as i didn't like their option.
Barring a slight hicup in the delivery date/location Mesh gave a good service and a good price after a lot of research on my part.
I think if you spend a bit more now on the components you'll future proof yourself a bit and may find you get into pc games a bit more as well. That pc plays HL2 and FarCry really well though i did opt for the extra 512mb of ram which i think is vital these days with XP.

Good luck.

Panic

 

Hi Paul

I bought my PC from MESH 3 years ago and I've no complaints. If/when I upgrade, I'll probably be returning to them. I had a few problems at first, which were down to me being new to PCs but a quick call to their helpline and all was sorted.

I'd recommend them