I would be grateful for any assistance and opinions here:

I'm looking to get a new PC and only want to spend 500 quid, 600 max.

Games are not really a priority, they might have been when I was younger but no more (a sign of age catching up with me!).

what i really need though are:

-DVD player
-CD writer
-256 meg ram and 40gb hd minimum
-amd processor

Can all this be done on this budget, or am I being unrealistic?

And what parts would you suggest? I've been out of the hardware game for a while, last time I remember, 2 gig hd was big and EIDE had only just come out!! USB-what's that ? ;-)

I'd be grateful for any help here, and also, as I'm in UK any websites would be helpful. I've been checking out meshplc.co.uk, they seem to have some good deals, can anyone vouch for them?

cheerz

jairzinho

Well I'm not in the UK but dont' see why not.
DVD player LiteOn LTD-163
CDRW LiteOn agin would be a good choice
HDD any will do, IBM or Maxtor would be my choices
Motherboard, if you want cheap look at ECS K7S5A or K7S6A a little better would be Soltek SL-75DRV4 or DRV5

Look at the sticky post at top of forum for some good online UK sites

jairzinho can't fault Hoss's rec's at all (sounds like one of my built PC's there Hoss. :) ) All good quality stuff & V cheap too.

I use www.ebuyer.com/ a lot, it's cheaper for me than buying trade most of the time because I don't have to buy in huge stocks. They are about the best in the UK overall on price and give FREE delivery on all orders over £100.

have to agree with lazza in the uk the best place to buy pc spares cheaply and reliably delivered is ebuyer.i have ordered before many times they are cheaper then most and the main thing for me reliable.colin

Just priced you up a base unit all from EBUYER.COM except the operating system which is from overclockers.co.uk built a system with most of the below componants for my m8 and is working very well for him.

LG 12x8x32x8 IDE Internal (Combo) CD-RW / DVD Drive - OEM £65.45
Diamond 56K V.92 SupraSST PCI Internal Modem - OEM £9.56
JNC 8850 Nokia Style ATX Full Midi Tower Case With 300W PSU £21.68
Alps 3.5 1.44Mb FDD - OEM £6.89
Maxtor 740X Hard Disk 40GB UIDE133 8.5ms 7200rpm - OEM £59.46
256MB DDR PC2100 RAM £28.43
Asus A7N266-VM Socket A Motherboard £72.74 (onboard sound and graphics)
AMD Athlon XP1900+ 1.6GHz Boxed Inc Heatsink & Fan £117.16

£381.37
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition - OEM £81.08

wow, all looks excellent, thanks for the help everyone. Is it not worth buying all the components as an assembled package though?? Would I not make savings this way? Or is it cheaper to buy components separately and assemble? I'm not as confident with assembly as I once was....

I would NOT get a combo drive though! A seperate dvd and cd-rw would not be much more and you can have much faster drives.I gave $80 for my LiteOn 32x cd-rw and the LiteOn 16x dvd! The combo drive will run you that or more!

Again it depends, if you can find a site that will custom build/assemble for you resonably then why not?
But I never buy a pre-built PC myself...ala Gateway, for many reasons, not that there is anything wrong with these either, but better to build IMO

Many sites will assemble and test a Barebones system... Install Mobo, CPU, RAM & test. then you just add drives and software.