Originally Posted by The-Lord-Flasheart

Actually worked out cheaper and easier to buy off the shelf for what I wanted.

Yesssirreee. Those 'educational' movies just don't seem the same using crappy 512mb cards do they? (It's a bugger when the soundtrack outruns the actual picture!), heh heh heh.

Personally I would look at upping your RAM to at least 2Gb and possibly go for a graphics card update although that probably wont make a massive difference to viewing video as I believe the majority of the processing is done on the CPU not GPU.

If you want to upgrade I would recommend having a look at www.aria.co.uk. Ive used them alot and found them very good on the whole and one of the best priced places ive found in UK. Their Home PC range goes from £299 - £414 (inc vat) for base unit only, which is possibly all you need anyway as long as your LCD, keyboard, mouse etc. is all OK.

Another vote for Novatech here, have been using them for 10 years or so now, as Flash said it is cheaper to buy from them than to build your own these days.

Originally Posted by Harry_Monk

Personally I would look at upping your RAM to at least 2Gb and possibly go for a graphics card update although that probably wont make a massive difference to viewing video as I believe the majority of the processing is done on the CPU not GPU.

If you want to upgrade I would recommend having a look at www.aria.co.uk. Ive used them alot and found them very good on the whole and one of the best priced places ive found in UK. Their Home PC range goes from £299 - £414 (inc vat) for base unit only, which is possibly all you need anyway as long as your LCD, keyboard, mouse etc. is all OK.

Thanks mate. Nice site and sound recommendation; good value too. Looks like I'm going to have to rob the kids of £500 worth of food and clothing iot to get what's required!

How important is the GHz?

Originally Posted by Storeman Norman

Originally Posted by Harry_Monk

Personally I would look at upping your RAM to at least 2Gb and possibly go for a graphics card update although that probably wont make a massive difference to viewing video as I believe the majority of the processing is done on the CPU not GPU.

If you want to upgrade I would recommend having a look at www.aria.co.uk. Ive used them alot and found them very good on the whole and one of the best priced places ive found in UK. Their Home PC range goes from £299 - £414 (inc vat) for base unit only, which is possibly all you need anyway as long as your LCD, keyboard, mouse etc. is all OK.

Thanks mate. Nice site and sound recommendation; good value too. Looks like I'm going to have to rob the kids of £500 worth of food and clothing iot to get what's required!

Dont take them as the 'be all and end all' though. I had a look at Novatech today and they have some good systems on there at great prices. I hadn't even looked at them for a while and was quite surprised, so compare the two and see what best suits.

Haven't found anywhere significantly cheaper than Aria for components yet though.