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[darwin dali]

Thats vista, vista is crap.

the fact of the matter is if you want to play games on a Mac you will pay double the price of his budget, then additional £80 for a licence for windows.

Why would you list the MacBook Air which is really a slim-downed, minimalist netbook and not a full-fledged Mac laptop - deceptive. And did you not read the price comparison? It's a myth that Macs are more expensive when you factor in what comes with them standard. On top of it you get tons of very usable software for free (envy of any PC user who wants to deal with photos, movies, etc.) and you get the best OS of all (and if you really must, you can easily convert the Mac into a blazingly fast Windows machine).

[Gaz]

Thats vista, vista is crap.

the fact of the matter is if you want to play games on a Mac you will pay double the price of his budget, then additional £80 for a licence for windows.

Why would you list the MacBook Air which is really a slim-downed, minimalist netbook and not a full-fledged Mac laptop - deceptive. And did you not read the price comparison? It's a myth that Macs are more expensive when you factor in what comes with them standard. On top of it you get tons of very usable software for free (envy of any PC user who wants to deal with photos, movies, etc.) and you get the best OS of all (and if you really must, you can easily convert the Mac into a blazingly fast Windows machine).

Well its the only benchmark i could find but to fair it was comparing slimline laptops against the macbook which should still have the chipset of a mac?

Like i said Mac are great for photo and video editing but other than that you can't use them very well in a enterprise environment so they end up being unable to be locked down enough and people (use error) break them.

And on the price thing i bet i could build a windows desktop cheaper than a top spec mac that would be better than a mac for most things other than video editing and stuff

[Jensonb]

Well its the only benchmark i could find but to fair it was comparing slimline laptops against the macbook which should still have the chipset of a mac?

Like i said Mac are great for photo and video editing but other than that you can't use them very well in a enterprise environment so they end up being unable to be locked down enough and people (use error) break them.

And on the price thing i bet i could build a windows desktop cheaper than a top spec mac that would be better than a mac for most things other than video editing and stuff

Nobody said anything about Enterprise. We're talking about private, consumer use. Also, Macs are very difficult to break through user error.

You probably could, but you could not buy a pre-built Windows PC for less than a Mac which offered a comparable quality of experience

[Gaz]

Well its the only benchmark i could find but to fair it was comparing slimline laptops against the macbook which should still have the chipset of a mac?

Like i said Mac are great for photo and video editing but other than that you can't use them very well in a enterprise environment so they end up being unable to be locked down enough and people (use error) break them.

And on the price thing i bet i could build a windows desktop cheaper than a top spec mac that would be better than a mac for most things other than video editing and stuff

Nobody said anything about Enterprise. We're talking about private, consumer use. Also, Macs are very difficult to break through user error.

You probably could, but you could not buy a pre-built Windows PC for less than a Mac which offered a comparable quality of experience

Well nobody said anything about Mac's until DD brought it up.

I disagree on the pre-built comment would depend on your supplier.

[Jensonb]

Well its the only benchmark i could find but to fair it was comparing slimline laptops against the macbook which should still have the chipset of a mac?

Like i said Mac are great for photo and video editing but other than that you can't use them very well in a enterprise environment so they end up being unable to be locked down enough and people (use error) break them.

And on the price thing i bet i could build a windows desktop cheaper than a top spec mac that would be better than a mac for most things other than video editing and stuff

Nobody said anything about Enterprise. We're talking about private, consumer use. Also, Macs are very difficult to break through user error.

You probably could, but you could not buy a pre-built Windows PC for less than a Mac which offered a comparable quality of experience

Well nobody said anything about Mac's until DD brought it up.

I disagree on the pre-built comment would depend on your supplier.

He wants a computer to play games on, DD was suggesting Macs are better at that task than pre-built PCs.

I've never seen any PC manufacturer match the quality of experience Macs offer without being insanely premium-priced.

[irons_4_ever]

so what should i look for lol, if ya could do me a spec that would be top.

[Gaz]

Well its the only benchmark i could find but to fair it was comparing slimline laptops against the macbook which should still have the chipset of a mac?

Like i said Mac are great for photo and video editing but other than that you can't use them very well in a enterprise environment so they end up being unable to be locked down enough and people (use error) break them.

And on the price thing i bet i could build a windows desktop cheaper than a top spec mac that would be better than a mac for most things other than video editing and stuff

Nobody said anything about Enterprise. We're talking about private, consumer use. Also, Macs are very difficult to break through user error.

You probably could, but you could not buy a pre-built Windows PC for less than a Mac which offered a comparable quality of experience

Well nobody said anything about Mac's until DD brought it up.

I disagree on the pre-built comment would depend on your supplier.

He wants a computer to play games on, DD was suggesting Macs are better at that task than pre-built PCs.

I've never seen any PC manufacturer match the quality of experience Macs offer without being insanely premium-priced.

I disagree Mac's are very expensive and are not faster from bench marks i've seen, when running boot camp to play games

Iron i'll do you a spec.

[Denthúl]

Thats vista, vista is crap.

the fact of the matter is if you want to play games on a Mac you will pay double the price of his budget, then additional £80 for a licence for windows.

On top of it you get tons of very usable software for free (envy of any PC user who wants to deal with photos, movies, etc.) and you get the best OS of all (and if you really must, you can easily convert the Mac into a blazingly fast Windows machine).

Last time I checked, there was a mountain of FOSS that could deal with all that which will run on practically any platform. There are enough free alternatives to things like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, Vegas, After Effects etc.

And to be honest, claiming that Mac's OS X is the best operating system of all is a little silly. The best operating system is usually the one that does the job perfectly for you. OS X could not begin to do what I want.

To irons, generally anything pre-built that comes from manufacturers such as Acer, HP, Dell etc. might come with good hardware for gaming, but will also come with a lot of bloat. I really would not aim for Vista as your operating system, due to the resources it demands to run smoothly - try to get XP if at all possible. If you don't need to use any legacy hardware and you want to use more than 3GB RAM, then you could look in to using the x86_64 version of XP, although some people have reported it as being problematic. Generally, sites that specialise in building performance computers for gamers will do you a decent deal, so you could take a look at those.

If you were local, I'd offer to assemble a machine for you to cut any extra costs that another company would charge for building it, but of course you lose certain warranty advantages that way (as in, every part of your machine would be in warranty, but you'd have to track down the individual component and its fault and return it yourself rather than sending the machine back to your supplier).

[Jabberwocky]

After working on and around PC's for a very long time. I would go for a pre built every time. for the 20-30 quid extra it cost over the basic parts could save a lot of heart ache of "Why the feck is it not working!?!" due to strange incompatibilities between parts.

Every experience I have had with Dell has been good to be honest on a business and personal machine level. IBM are expensive and I would not reccomend as a gaming machine type of PC.

[Denthúl]

After working on and around PC's for a very long time. I would go for a pre built every time. for the 20-30 quid extra it cost over the basic parts could save a lot of heart ache of "Why the feck is it not working!?!" due to strange incompatibilities between parts.

Well, that's purely a case of doing some research before you buy any components.

[Jabberwocky]

it is indeed, but I would rather spend the money than spending hours doing research on it. TBH it has been a few years since I built a system from the bottom up. I would imagine/hope it is easier now as the internet is a better research tool now than it was then.

[Gaz]

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 LGA775 "Kentsfield" 2.66GHz (1066FSB) - OEM £139.99
(£121.73) £139.99
(£121.73)

- Intel Quad Core CPU highly recommend these they are very fast and very stable i use one myself and the past 10 machines I've built for friends and family have use them

Gainward GeForce GTX 260 Golden Sample "Core 216 55nm" 896MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) £134.99
(£117.38) £134.99
(£117.38)

- Rapid graphics cars offers great value for money.

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 Intel X48 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £99.99
(£86.95) £99.99
(£86.95)

- Stable reliable motherboard with a fast chipset, the chipset is the device that connects everything to everything else and can be a real bottleneck if a poor chipset used.

OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w Silent SLI Ready ATX2 Modular Power Supply £71.99
(£62.60) £71.99
(£62.60)

- Power Supply for the system stable clean power for graphics, and motherboard.

OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (OCZ2RPR10664GK) £57.49
(£49.99) £114.98
(£99.98)

8gb of high spec ram please note you will need windows vista 64bit or Xp 64bit to take advantage of this as anything above 3.25-3.5 does not pickup in 32bit

I'd go with XP Pro 64bit.

2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (ST3250318AS) £36.98
(£32.16) £73.96
(£64.32)

2x 250gb Hard disks i'd have these setup with Raid 0 this uses 2 hard disks as one therefore Double the speed since each hard disk has its own channel 2 channels can be used.

Asus TM-261 Case - Black/Silver (No PSU) £25.29
(£21.99) £25.29
(£21.99)

Nice case looking with good thermal dynamics so everything is nice and cool

Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.77) £16.99
(£14.77)

DVD RW burner.

Samsung TS-H493B SATA DVD-ROM / CD-RW Drive - OEM (Black) £6.98
(£6.07) £6.98
(£6.07)

DVD Rom

Sub Total : £595.79
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £13.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £91.43
Total : £700.9

Source for Parts:http://www.overclockers.co.uk

i believe they offered a custom build service you may be able to contact them to assable and install this for you.

I might of gone ott with this system threes lots of ways the price could be reduced.

let me know if you have any questions.

[Denthúl]

I'd say that that's a pretty good spec, Longbow. However, the 8GiB of RAM really would be excessive. When I had Vista 64-bit on my machine, 4GiB was enough to deal with top games like Crysis and Far Cry, with plenty to spare. Also, in terms of graphics cards, the Radeon HD 4870 performs better than the GTX 260 and I believe Overclockers (awesome guys, I buy from them as well) offer one for the same price as the GTX 260. Of course, the ATi/nVidia thing is also down to personal preference. ATi's drivers have been somewhat lacking at times, but in terms of raw performance the HD 4870 tends to have the edge.

On the subject of using a RAID0 configuration, I feel it important to point out that if you do that then the failure of one drive will lead to a loss of information stored across the pair. I'd go for redundancy over speed and use the money saved on dropping half the RAM to buy two 500GB drives and have them configured as RAID1 if you wanted a RAID setup at all. Otherwise, I'd just avoid it. A pair of 7200RPM drives with 32MB cache will be sufficient in most cases.

[Gaz]

I'd say that that's a pretty good spec, Longbow. However, the 8GiB of RAM really would be excessive. When I had Vista 64-bit on my machine, 4GiB was enough to deal with top games like Crysis and Far Cry, with plenty to spare. Also, in terms of graphics cards, the Radeon HD 4870 performs better than the GTX 260 and I believe Overclockers (awesome guys, I buy from them as well) offer one for the same price as the GTX 260. Of course, the ATi/nVidia thing is also down to personal preference. ATi's drivers have been somewhat lacking at times, but in terms of raw performance the HD 4870 tends to have the edge.

On the subject of using a RAID0 configuration, I feel it important to point out that if you do that then the failure of one drive will lead to a loss of information stored across the pair. I'd go for redundancy over speed and use the money saved on dropping half the RAM to buy two 500GB drives and have them configured as RAID1 if you wanted a RAID setup at all. Otherwise, I'd just avoid it. A pair of 7200RPM drives with 32MB cache will be sufficient in most cases.

Yeh good point on the raid 0 could just dump the ram get raid 0 and an additional 500gb hdd for important stuff?

I'd always use Nvidia for gaming since they now have the monopoly with the producers and games are built to work better with Nvidia systems.

How many times do you see "works best with Nvidia" with games nowadays.

however if you have a backup drive already then i'd keep the 8gb of ram it would be very noticeable and future proof.

[irons_4_ever]

thanks longbow i have to say man that makes little sense to me lol but i have a friend thats helping me with a bit more computer know how than me so il pass it on to him