lowlandsmatt
Novice Member
Hello and Happy New Year to you all,
First post so here goes!
I am looking to purchase a new PC for around £1000 ish or thereabouts
. I would like to play the latest PC games (the last game I played on PC was Carmageddon 2 and the old Unreal Tournament a long while ago
(
ahh memories!) so would like to get back into it) but I will also be spending too much time (according to my girlfriend
) downloading and playing music , browsing the Net etc etc
I will be connecting to it the Logitech z5500 speaker system which I should imagine sounds pretty good via a decent sound card (anyone else have this setup?) so I would want the best sound card I could get.
I have been looking at the Dell XPS 420 which with the 24" Monitor & 3 year warranty came out at around £1300
PROCESSORIntel® Core 2 Quad-Core Processor Q6600 (2.40GHz, 8MB, 1066MHz) with
MEMORY 4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [4x1024
HARD DRIVE500GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100 Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst cache
GRAPHICS CARD SINGLE 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT card
OPTICAL DRIVE16x DVD+/-RW & 48x CDRW/DVD Combo Drive
SOUND SOFTWARESound Blaster® X-Fi Xtreme Gamer PCI Soundcard
I was all ready to purchase this tonight (especially with the 10% discount that runs out tonight) but then this little beauty caught my eye from Overclockers 2.4 Ghz with overclocking to 3.1 3.3 Ghz and the 8800GTX card for £1115 inc VAT - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-005-OC and now I am in two minds...
1) Would the Ultima overclocked PC be suitable for my needs as I will be be spending as much time downloading/playing music as playing the latest games. To be honest, I dont know much at all about overclocking a PC bar the real basic principle - Is an overclocked PC likely to be more tempermental than the XPS 420? I have read some bad reviews of Overclockers aftersales service any other opinions? Love that case though
!
2) Will the XPS 420 spec cope with power hungry games now and in the near future FEAR, Crysis etc? Is it worth waiting until after the next gen of cards are released (I know everyone asks that but its soon from what I can tell?) I understand the 8800 GTX card is someway better than the GT but is it going to be that much more future proof?
3) Is a 24 monitor comfortable for general use apart from gaming? I like the thought of a big screen for gaming with the Logitech z5500 sound blasting away around me or is it a bit OTT when simply net browsing?
4) Should I be looking at a better sound card - I need to be hearing Jimmy Page's fingernails sliding down the fret board
!!!
Could anyone suggest any better deals or any other advice
? The other option I have considered is CCL online custom build would I pay more for what I want this way but would this provide better after sales?
Apologies for length but this is a big purchase for me (probably last one before I get a mortgage so want to make it a good one and get a PC thats going to last me 3+ years )
Thanks for reading.
Matt
First post so here goes!
I am looking to purchase a new PC for around £1000 ish or thereabouts
(
I will be connecting to it the Logitech z5500 speaker system which I should imagine sounds pretty good via a decent sound card (anyone else have this setup?) so I would want the best sound card I could get.
I have been looking at the Dell XPS 420 which with the 24" Monitor & 3 year warranty came out at around £1300
PROCESSORIntel® Core 2 Quad-Core Processor Q6600 (2.40GHz, 8MB, 1066MHz) with
MEMORY 4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [4x1024
HARD DRIVE500GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100 Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst cache
GRAPHICS CARD SINGLE 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT card
OPTICAL DRIVE16x DVD+/-RW & 48x CDRW/DVD Combo Drive
SOUND SOFTWARESound Blaster® X-Fi Xtreme Gamer PCI Soundcard
I was all ready to purchase this tonight (especially with the 10% discount that runs out tonight) but then this little beauty caught my eye from Overclockers 2.4 Ghz with overclocking to 3.1 3.3 Ghz and the 8800GTX card for £1115 inc VAT - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-005-OC and now I am in two minds...
1) Would the Ultima overclocked PC be suitable for my needs as I will be be spending as much time downloading/playing music as playing the latest games. To be honest, I dont know much at all about overclocking a PC bar the real basic principle - Is an overclocked PC likely to be more tempermental than the XPS 420? I have read some bad reviews of Overclockers aftersales service any other opinions? Love that case though
2) Will the XPS 420 spec cope with power hungry games now and in the near future FEAR, Crysis etc? Is it worth waiting until after the next gen of cards are released (I know everyone asks that but its soon from what I can tell?) I understand the 8800 GTX card is someway better than the GT but is it going to be that much more future proof?
3) Is a 24 monitor comfortable for general use apart from gaming? I like the thought of a big screen for gaming with the Logitech z5500 sound blasting away around me or is it a bit OTT when simply net browsing?
4) Should I be looking at a better sound card - I need to be hearing Jimmy Page's fingernails sliding down the fret board

Could anyone suggest any better deals or any other advice
Apologies for length but this is a big purchase for me (probably last one before I get a mortgage so want to make it a good one and get a PC thats going to last me 3+ years )
Thanks for reading.
Matt