wheres best place to buy cheap p.c

[#1]

im looking for a cheap p.c just the base no monitor or keyboard.
1gb of ram min. decent size hd. xp or vista.
bein all over net but cant find any dirt cheap ones looking for under £150.
ordered my sisters comp last year from dell 3gb of ram top notch video card pretty cheap but that was because i had a monitor allready for her but they dont seem to let u opt out of having a monitor any more.
any tips on where to go would be great but pelaese don't recomend ebay.

[#2]

Yes they do (no monitor @ Dell). Go in as a small business user.
Also gives you XP (or did until recently).

[#3]

Ebuyer do boxes but not at your spec and price.

[#4]

Build one yourself?
Case with PSU (about £16)
Motherboard (about £25 with onboard audio/video)
CPU (about £25)
RAM (1gb = about £10 at the mo)
HD (250gb = about £30)
DVDRW (about £15)
Correct me if I'm wrong but that works out about £121

[#5]

You wont get much of a pc for that price genuine windows you are looking at  is £69 for vista.
You may get a second hand one on a car boot or a buy and sell mag. The quote above didn't cover Vista or XP. I know locally you can pick up a 3 gig pc with 200 gig hd etc for £30 on the car boot

[#6]

try ebay.  i got me a cute shuttle ss85 recently for £62 and another, lower spec, for a friend for £125.

[#7]

would be great to build one but don't know nothing about building comps is that the full list of what i would need or is things like cooling fans and cables to connect every thing to the motherboard needed as well.
just had a look at some component sites and i haven't got a clue what processers and memory go with what motherboard i would probably end up with a stylish coffee table.

[#8]

Choose your software first.
If you just want WP + web + a few other internet things then Linux will easily do this (and much more).
It's:-
(a) free
(b) Needs less memory (1GB is much too small for M$ Vista, but quite sufficient for future-proofing Linux).
(c) No need to buy firewalls, virus checkers etc (for home use anyway).
I went for Ubuntu - there are a few apps you would find it difficult to find, but since it comes with about extra 18,000 installable packages, there aren't many gaps.

[#9]

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/results.aspx/desktops?~ck=anav&c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1
Most of them will allow you to remove the monitor during ordering (saving up to £90 from the price) although the very cheapest ones for some reason don't allow you to!
You could get a Vostro with the spec below for £150, although remember that on the business site the prices don't include VAT or shipping. (Although I've never paid Dell a penny to ship anything to me, I hear some people are prepared to pay for shipping?!?!)
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/4x_vostro_200st?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd

Quote

Components Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache) Genuine Windows Vista® Business - English Monitor Not included 1024MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x512] 250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100 16x DVD +/- RW Drive Dell™ Enhanced USB Multimedia Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY) Dell Optical Scroll Premium Mouse

The Dell site does take a bit of time to get used to, but you can of course give them a call. If you tell them your budget, and what you want (or don't want) they should be able to tell you the best/closest thing they have.

[#10]

Incidentally because ^ ^ is from the business site, you can choose XP Pro if you prefer at no extra cost.

[#11]

Quote from: axisofevil

Choose your software first. If you just want WP + web + a few other internet things then Linux will easily do this (and much more). It's:- (a) free (b) Needs less memory (1GB is much too small for M$ Vista, but quite sufficient for future-proofing Linux). (c) No need to buy firewalls, virus checkers etc (for home use anyway). I went for Ubuntu - there are a few apps you would find it difficult to find, but since it comes with about extra 18,000 installable packages, there aren't many gaps.

i have bein giving distros ago over past few weeks. i have a laptop runing vista on 1gb ram not the fastest in world but runs it quite well.
any way the best linux i ran from live cd on the laptop was ubuntu as it detected the wireless card and was able to use wpa encpt as well with out any messing about. but as the laptop is used for bussiness i dont want to use it for main machine to surf with.
i have a two mac minis but i hate the os x tryed a few ppc distros only 1 installed and ran but was one that i need to set the driver up for the wirless adapter and set up wpa_supplicant.conf file to get wpa encpt work so clean installed the rotten apple os back again.
the ubuntu ppc version just dosent want to play ball.

Quote from: James_H

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/results.aspx/desktops?~ck=anav&c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1 Most of them will allow you to remove the monitor during ordering (saving up to £90 from the price) although the very cheapest ones for some reason don't allow you to! You could get a Vostro with the spec below for £150, although remember that on the business site the prices don't include VAT or shipping. (Although I've never paid Dell a penny to ship anything to me, I hear some people are prepared to pay for shipping?!?!) http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/4x_vostro_200st?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd Quote Components Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E4500 Processor (2.20GHz,800MHz,2MB cache) Genuine Windows Vista® Business - English Monitor Not included 1024MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x512] 250GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache Integrated Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator X3100 16x DVD +/- RW Drive Dell™ Enhanced USB Multimedia Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY) Dell Optical Scroll Premium Mouse The Dell site does take a bit of time to get used to, but you can of course give them a call. If you tell them your budget, and what you want (or don't want) they should be able to tell you the best/closest thing they have.

great for the love of god i couldnt get the customize options to let me opt out of having a monitor last night. looks like what i need maybe could do with a graphics card to run vista. but as a base machine to pimp a few things up in the future is good for genral surfing.
how do u get out of paying the shipping fee's as i would order it staright way at bout 160 ish quid with vat.
but with shipping fees i might just hold on a bit and save bit more and get some thing local.

[#12]

I buy from them fairly often, and sometimes in fairly large numbers, but the principle is the same I presume (my account manager knows better than to try to charge me for delivery, I do know numerous resellers who send quotes through +delivery - when you send them back to Dell for an improvement, they come back without the delivery charge and lower.)
Point out you could get it somewhere else for the same money including delivery, and the only thing preventing you placing the order straight away is the delivery charge and they will probably drop it faster than you could think of a second reason not to pay it!
Perhaps be prepared to massage their ego's a little, saying you'd heard how great they were at being flexible, and a few people had recommended you buy from Dell.
They are human, and respond well to human-like approaches, I also understand that they do have a degree of discount etc they can offer themselves, before having to hand the process upwards.
I reckon they should be able to make you a happy chappy (/chappess?)

[#13]

There are some pretty cheap systems at Aria, unfortunately alot of them don't come with an OS installed.

[#14]

Quote from: Chris

unfortunately alot of them don't come with an OS installed.

Thats a good point, not a bad one. Not everyone wants to be forced to purchase an OS with their machines. I am due a new company laptop, comes supplied as standard with Vista, so the first thing we have to do is purchase a copy of XP 

[#15]

Actually, if it's Vista Business or Ultimate OEM, you're entitled to downgrade to XP for free!
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9040318
B.